Your ride today....

[Witzend]

40.47 miles; 336m of ascent; 1 stop; 17 other cyclists seen.

Far from the still, sunny day that was forecast, but still miles better than of late, which drew the other cyclists back out as well. Only stop was early on to help an elder statesman who's skinny tyres had succumbed to the rural potholes, otherwise quiet miles amongst familiar autumn fields of green shoots, stubble, over-ripe maize and dying sunflowers.

The shortest ride of the week to clock up another 200-miler with 3 days to spare, and whilst the legs still aren't back to what they were a couple of years ago, I'm confident they can now haul me, bike and gear through the Central Highlands thanks to mixing in some off-road and load-carrying and minimising the stops - certainly better than 18 months ago when I could barely do the 14 mile shopping trip.

 

[slow horse]

Had to flip a coin whether this belonged here or on the wildlife thread. No picture, so here it goes.

A squirrel ran between my wheels, no harm done. Fortunately I was only going about 10mph at the time, or it might have been a different story for both of us.

The rest of my ride (20ish miles) was entirely unremarkable.

 

[HLaB]

Nothing special, just the 2nd workout of my recovery week on the same route as yesterday down to Holme and back on the new cyclepath along side the A15 old and new. You can feel the weather is changing yet again with it 1degC colder (17deg C) than after dark yesterday (18deg C) with a stronger fresher wind. The only annoying thing was round one of the bends a mini digger and mini tipper truck were blocking the cycle path and they had torn up the wide verge. They could have at least signed you onto the road before the bend :-/

 

[Rickshaw Phil]

After a monumentally wet day yesterday it looks like I won't be working for a couple of days. I therefore got out to see what could be seen of the high water levels. It would have been good to have taken Doug out too but he started with a migraine this morning before we could set out.

I headed into town initially, crossing over a raging Rea Brook on the way and headed for the town centre as I needed to visit the work office. With that done I headed down by the River Severn - the level is not at its most impressive but it has come up by about 2.25 metres since Tuesday, which I think is a fairly big jump. (Edit: correction, it was 1.85 metres) After a bit of looking round (the first of the barriers were going up in Frankwell) I headed through The Quarry. The path was of course blocked at Greyfriars Bridge so I headed across The English Bridge, past The Abbey and round to Castle Walk and over the footbridge there.

At Sydney Avenue there were closure signs out but I went to look to see if I could ride through anyway. The water was over the road and a braver cyclist than me was already riding through. When I saw that she was dunking her feet with every turn of the pedals I decided I'd rather take the long way round.

The old canal path was wet and mucky but no problem apart from that. There were a couple of places where you could see that the path had been damaged by the heavy rain.
From Uffington I took the road to Upton Magna - lots of water running off the fields on this road but a little drier on the way to Atcham. I found that signs were prepared to close off the road to Cross Houses but they hadn't been put out yet. The road was flooded but was still passable to cars. Again I didn't risk wet feet, headed round onto the lane to Chilton Farm yet still found a couple of places I had to splash through minor floods.

Headed along Lyons Lane I thought I'd take a detour to look at Boreton Ford. This is definitely impassable today and even the footbridge was as it was covered in debris. It looks like the level here has been up around two metres.

With a southerly wind it made sense to head back the short and flat way. Not too much traffic on the A49 to bother me this time.

A tad over 23 miles for this one at 11.7 mph moving average. Strava tells me 799 feet of climbing for this trip. Nice to get out. Shame Doug couldn't join me again.

Far from being the highest I've seen it at the Welsh Bridge but the water has come up an impressive amount in just a day.

Water lapping the garden at The Boathouse.

I'm not getting any further along this path at Greyfriars Bridge.

Debris heading down stream and the place where I stood to get a photo only a few days ago is a tad damp.

The weir is just a ripple in the flow today.

She is braver than me! I'll keep my feet dry if it's all the same to you.

At Atcham the flood plain is doing its thing.

The road to Cross Houses. Again, I'm not risking it.

The ford at Boreton is impassable today. As mentioned recently, someone drove into the ford when it was this deep a few weeks ago and had to be rescued. What were they thinking?

Even the footbridge is blocked today. It shows how high the water has been.