Around Carn Brea
Truro is one of the wettest cities in the UK. Wetter than Manchester, Bangor, Lancaster, Carlisle..... but not Glasgow. It rains here on average for 150 days a year, almost every other day.
Apart from that it is a lovely place. Warm enough all year round, we only have 4-5 frosty mornings a year. It just rains a lot.
Yesterday when it was raining (again) I turned to the internet to find out how much bike weight affects uphill cycling. The answer is 1kg of extra weight slows you down by one second for every 100 metres of ascent. There are four things you can do:
1. Improve power / weight ratio by losing weight or gaining power. Or both. If that's not enough turn to:
2. Reduce wheel weight. If thats not enough then and only then:
3. Reduce bike weight. But options 1 & 2 work better. Which leaves option 4:
4. Move to Norfolk.
There is a long uphill from Redruth to Four Lanes where I contemplated all four options quite seriously, especially option 4. Particularly during the half mile of 15-18% in the middle. But at least it wasn't raining; although the weather forecast said it would so I was lugging extra weight in terms of waterproofs and warm layers. Option 5 then, wear less clothing.
Some blue in the sky and some grey and a cold north westerly wind blustering around my legs. Out of Truro and uphill taking a line northwards to avoid the traffic. I have had more close passes and seen more generally crazy driving in the last month than in all the preceding years. Outside Chacewater there is a red hatchback at a junction waiting to turn across me. I look at the driver. He looks at me. I am wearing orange and yellow with a flashing front light and going at about 20mph. He looks at me again and when I am 10 metres away pulls out in front of me. My brakes lock as I swerve around the back of the car. This keeps happening.
Out of Chacewater and I am back on quiet lanes, uphill, downhill heading through the old mining villages, the frayed granite chimneys from the abandoned mine pumps popping up every few hundred metres. Spoil heaps where nothing much can grow because of the lead and arsenic in the soil. Patchy heathlands of gorse and bracken with whitewashed cottages sunk into the ground.
A long uphill brings me up to the spine of hills that run longitudinally across Cornwall and there is the sea, visible across the roofs of Redruth and Camborne, a darker grey smudge against the lighter grey of the sky.
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To the west is the TV mast that is visible across mid Cornwall, tearing a hole in the clouds.
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Downhill from here through the back lanes behind Redruth before the beginning of a long uphill past Carn Brea and up to Four Lanes. Carn Brea is an iconic hill, visible from much of mid Cornwall and dominating the mining towns of Redruth, Camborne and Pool that form an untidy and intermingled patchwork of housing, new industrial estates and old mine workings beneath the hill. The headstock wheels of the mines are still visible although only one mine remains open. This is where steam powered locomotives were invented; the giant beam engines that pumped out deep mines began here; some of the earliest rail tracks in the world were laid here. Now it is one of the poorest parts of the UK and in receipt of millions of pounds of EU funding as a deprived region of Europe, along with parts of Greece and Albania.
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The memorial pillar on the summit of Carn Brea is tribute to 'caring capitalism'. The Bassett family owned many of the mines locally and did a lot (well more than most owners) to improve the welfare of miners, except perhaps pay them more. When Francis Bassett died it is said every mine closed and 20,000 people followed the funeral cortege and subsequently donated funds to create the 35m high obelisk. On a clear day you can see the north coast and the south coast from here.
I planned todays route on
RidewithGPS whilst eating breakfast and missed the fact that the software had diverted from the road into a bridleway at one point. I thought at first it was just a short section but slipping through the mud and bouncing off stones for a mile cured me of that belief. It added variety to the day but I was hoping not to get a puncture.
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From the hills behind Carn Brea it is a long downhill to Twelveheads on tiny lanes, weaving in and out of tiny woods and granite walled Celtic fields and then a gentle uphill for 300 feet through a quiet valley, rich with autumn colours from the scattered trees set among bracken slopes. The wind is quiet and no one is trying to kill me in a car or van. I feel very content.
What do you think about when riding alone? Thoughts drift through my mind but I can never catch them afterwards. They vanish like quicksilver dreams as soon as I arrive home. I just have the pleasant ache in my legs, a throat sore from breathing too hard, a sense of having been part of a landscape waiting for winter but enjoying autumn. Damp from yesterdays rain but vibrant with turning leaves and sudden vistas towards the sea or over patchworked fields.
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The final lane to home.
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