footloose crow
Veteran
- Location
- Cornwall. UK
5 Feb. Where do you go to my lovely....
When I get back from a ride, pushing the bike across the lawn and leaving a track through the grass, my wife always spots me and opens the patio doors to let me in. It is good being welcomed home. She always asks if I enjoyed the ride (Yes...I like being on a bike even when it is raining and cold) and then she asks "where have you been today?".
I could give her a list of places. Place names, even minor road junctions have names down here although only the cows and crows would pay any attention to them, the names of lanes, a gazetteer, an A-Z of Cornwall.....
But that isn't where I have been. I have been inside my own head for five hours on a lonely ride. I don't mind riding alone although it is both physically and mentally more tiring. I have been day dreaming. I have been watching out for mud and avoiding potholes, remembering conversations from many years ago and replaying them to see if I could have handled them better. I have been looking for snowdrops and daffodils and the first buds on trees and listening out for traffic. I have been monitoring the rasp of my own breath on hills and feeling mildly anxious about my health. There is no problem with my health but I can't stop being vigilant. I have been thinking about which hills are still to come and if I am going faster than last time I came this way or is age and time wearing me down. I tried to think of words to describe the blue of the sky or how the cold pinches the ends of my fingers even through gloves. I ponder how to avoid being too hot on hills and too cold on descents or in the shaded valley bottoms.
Snowdrops!
Where have I been?. Riding out of Truro and onto the quiet, muddy lanes lined with winter bare hedges around empty fields. Through St Stephen (or St Stephens according to the sign on the other side and it has another name in Cornish. Villages here are like cats with a name we call them and a secret name that only they know) and onto the clay hills. The excavated hillsides in this area are called 'pits' but these pits are visible from space, pure white with deep turquoise lakes at the bottom. Next is Roche, which has recently been identified as the site of a Roman fort big enough for 10,000 soldiers although what 10,000 soldiers were doing here is a mystery. There wouldn't have been enough food locally to feed that number. Maybe they built the fort too big. Even the Romans made errors.
Clay pits above St Stephen
There is a fast, flat road from Roche to Indian Queens and the wind was behind me so I managed 50km/h for a while. Made up for the grovelling, low gear spinning, breath grunting, leg complaining slow hills earlier. Then a turn to the north and onto more quiet lanes, mud brown with chewed up verges as tractors pull silage tanks from one field to the other. The cows are all indoors being laughed at by the sheep who are lambing happily outdoors in January down here in the mild south west. Not that it feels mild today despite the clear sky. It is six degrees above zero and in the wind chill it feels colder.
Up, down, up and down again....
Onto St Newlyn East and I can find nothing to remember about this village except I know I passed through it and it possibly had a pub that was still open. Across more lanes but against the wind now and then through Goonhavern and on until I can see the north coast, the wide blue Atlantic beyond and the waves are big enough to show as lines of white rollers even though Perranporth is still three km away. Perranporth is as busy today as it is in summer, the car parks filled, the pasty shops have queues and the waves are crowded with surfers. Sitting on a bench and listening to the people passing in front of me. I can hear accents from the north west, the hard vowels of the midlands, the sloppy consonants of London and the south east. I wonder why they have come here in February. It will be raining until May.
Perranporth beach
Seventy km done now and thirty to go. Uphill from here for a while to cross the spine of hills that runs longitudinally across Cornwall and then a fast downhill to Chacewater where I can set all the speed awareness signs flashing - such small things bring me great joy. It is beginning to warm finally, the sun has reached its zenith or at least as far as it is prepared to go at this time of year. More lanes and they are filling with walkers and children and prams and my bell is paying for itself as I weave between jerking dog leads, irritated by having to slow but aware that pedestrians have priority.
Along Restronguet Creek, the low sun shining wetly on the tidal mud flats and all the yachts pulled up on the foreshore until it gets warmer. One last hill, a real leg stinger and Truro is in sight.
Restonguet Creek - it leads to the sea eventually.
So where have I been? Nowhere really...just a winter ride on a rare blue sky day and now I can't even remember what it was I was thinking about as I rode around. That means I will have to do it again in a few days.....
When I get back from a ride, pushing the bike across the lawn and leaving a track through the grass, my wife always spots me and opens the patio doors to let me in. It is good being welcomed home. She always asks if I enjoyed the ride (Yes...I like being on a bike even when it is raining and cold) and then she asks "where have you been today?".
I could give her a list of places. Place names, even minor road junctions have names down here although only the cows and crows would pay any attention to them, the names of lanes, a gazetteer, an A-Z of Cornwall.....
But that isn't where I have been. I have been inside my own head for five hours on a lonely ride. I don't mind riding alone although it is both physically and mentally more tiring. I have been day dreaming. I have been watching out for mud and avoiding potholes, remembering conversations from many years ago and replaying them to see if I could have handled them better. I have been looking for snowdrops and daffodils and the first buds on trees and listening out for traffic. I have been monitoring the rasp of my own breath on hills and feeling mildly anxious about my health. There is no problem with my health but I can't stop being vigilant. I have been thinking about which hills are still to come and if I am going faster than last time I came this way or is age and time wearing me down. I tried to think of words to describe the blue of the sky or how the cold pinches the ends of my fingers even through gloves. I ponder how to avoid being too hot on hills and too cold on descents or in the shaded valley bottoms.
Snowdrops!
Where have I been?. Riding out of Truro and onto the quiet, muddy lanes lined with winter bare hedges around empty fields. Through St Stephen (or St Stephens according to the sign on the other side and it has another name in Cornish. Villages here are like cats with a name we call them and a secret name that only they know) and onto the clay hills. The excavated hillsides in this area are called 'pits' but these pits are visible from space, pure white with deep turquoise lakes at the bottom. Next is Roche, which has recently been identified as the site of a Roman fort big enough for 10,000 soldiers although what 10,000 soldiers were doing here is a mystery. There wouldn't have been enough food locally to feed that number. Maybe they built the fort too big. Even the Romans made errors.
Clay pits above St Stephen
There is a fast, flat road from Roche to Indian Queens and the wind was behind me so I managed 50km/h for a while. Made up for the grovelling, low gear spinning, breath grunting, leg complaining slow hills earlier. Then a turn to the north and onto more quiet lanes, mud brown with chewed up verges as tractors pull silage tanks from one field to the other. The cows are all indoors being laughed at by the sheep who are lambing happily outdoors in January down here in the mild south west. Not that it feels mild today despite the clear sky. It is six degrees above zero and in the wind chill it feels colder.
Up, down, up and down again....
Onto St Newlyn East and I can find nothing to remember about this village except I know I passed through it and it possibly had a pub that was still open. Across more lanes but against the wind now and then through Goonhavern and on until I can see the north coast, the wide blue Atlantic beyond and the waves are big enough to show as lines of white rollers even though Perranporth is still three km away. Perranporth is as busy today as it is in summer, the car parks filled, the pasty shops have queues and the waves are crowded with surfers. Sitting on a bench and listening to the people passing in front of me. I can hear accents from the north west, the hard vowels of the midlands, the sloppy consonants of London and the south east. I wonder why they have come here in February. It will be raining until May.
Perranporth beach
Seventy km done now and thirty to go. Uphill from here for a while to cross the spine of hills that runs longitudinally across Cornwall and then a fast downhill to Chacewater where I can set all the speed awareness signs flashing - such small things bring me great joy. It is beginning to warm finally, the sun has reached its zenith or at least as far as it is prepared to go at this time of year. More lanes and they are filling with walkers and children and prams and my bell is paying for itself as I weave between jerking dog leads, irritated by having to slow but aware that pedestrians have priority.
Along Restronguet Creek, the low sun shining wetly on the tidal mud flats and all the yachts pulled up on the foreshore until it gets warmer. One last hill, a real leg stinger and Truro is in sight.
Restonguet Creek - it leads to the sea eventually.
So where have I been? Nowhere really...just a winter ride on a rare blue sky day and now I can't even remember what it was I was thinking about as I rode around. That means I will have to do it again in a few days.....
