Mucky Wet Roads

For some time now I have been doing a bit of work for a local business - just one day a week, but it gets me out of the house. The trouble is that the local business isn’t that local, it’s 17 miles away. That may seem nearby, but in my van, it’s a 34 mile round trip and that’s an expensive litre of petrol. And I earn so little that using the van to get to work is really rather uneconomic, so I have been thinking all winter that when the weather allowed, I ought to try cycling to work.  After all, it’s only 17 miles each way, how bad could it be?

Yesterday, I did it - and it turned out to be the hardest commute I have ever done! Thirty four miles plus a few extra due to choosing a different route by bike than I would by car - and during my morning journey at least, there were also a few extra hills due to a rather poor route choice. Not that it was flat on my return journey!

When I came to Bishops Castle, I was conscious that my mileage dropped. This was because hilly rides are so much harder than flattish ones and my ride to ‘work’ couldn’t have been much more hilly. Seventeen miles took me almost two hours, in an up and down, up and down, up and down sort of way. I’m a terrible hill-climber on a bike at the best of times and I had constant hills to contend with - the muddy, slippery roads didn’t help. They just made for skidding whenever I tried to put the power down.

Those mucky, wet and slippery roads look utterly grim from a car window. But from a bike, the compensations for my hard-riding came in bucket-loads. Dodging the mud and the debris made for a close involvement with the landscape, and the budding trees moved by slowly enough for their buds to be evident. Birds, whose biological clocks pay no heed to the rain, sang from every wire; the warm smell from steaming cattle in the fields drifted over to my nostrils on the breeze. The daffodils are nearly out, the snowdrops are everywhere. You need to stop the car and get out to see those, but from a bike, they bombard you at every turn.

I’m not sure whether I will ride both ways to work again, it was perhaps a bit too hard and a bit too time consuming. But I will try to find a way of incorporating my bike into at least a part of my journey because cycle commuting, as I’ve written before, is a very special way of adding quality of life to a normal working day. Once, it was just four miles each way and I did it every day - it became a part of my personality which I valued. For all its difficulty yesterday, when I got back from work, I felt I’d truly come home.

Mother Nature

It's wet, wet and it's wet. There have been 50 days of rain.  Huge swathes of the countryside are flooded - particularly those areas visited by England's longest river, the Severn.

• The Severn - its winding and circuitous route falling only a hundred metres over hundreds of miles. 

• The Rain - water from the sky, driven by the wild, wild wind.

• Humans - not so immune to the weather as we might think.  No amount of science can make us master of the whims of …

• Mother Nature - whose wet hand is raised in defiance as she reminds us:- "I am in control".

There are days when I feel like taking up canoeing. But I am a cyclist first, and Mother Nature's work is all the inspiration I need to love the life-affirming hobby I have, without following the urge to try something else!

Floods

The River Severn
stops me in my tracks

No sooner had I uploaded my last piece than I realised that the wet roads I’d been writing about were as nothing as compared to what was to come.  The very next day the rain started, and continued, with devastating results for many unfortunate people.  Let me say right now that I am not one of the people whose homes have been inundated - although many of the roads I have been riding have been wet (and I’ve had to turn back once or twice) I am always privileged to have a warm, dry home to return to at the end of the day.  I’ve no direct experience of being flooded, so I can’t profess to truly understand.

But it’s not by accident that our flood risk is low.  When we moved into this house, I privately lamented its lack of proximity to water.  There’s a little stream by us (some would call it a drain) but it’s very little indeed, and no risk to us or our neighbours.  To stand by a proper river I have to cycle a good few miles, and descend quite a few metres.  It’s not much, but that small descent, and the ten accursed steps between the street and my house (which I struggle to carry my bike up), keep us free from the risk of water ingress.  This is something we considered carefully before we parted with our money, and we will again, if ever we move.

My husband added a comment onto my last blog entry, saying that the Severn had flooded around Welshpool.  I rode there a few days later to see what he meant and it was quite a dramatic sight, in many places a rather beautiful sight. But I can only say it was beautiful because I don’t think any homes were flooded in Welshpool.  The flood plain around the Severn is undeveloped, so it can do its job.  The sheep might find their field size reduced for a while, and doubtless many farmers are being significantly affected, but the water birds are in heaven. 



In other places of course, that's not the case.  Flood plains have been built on, with dreadful consequences.  Winter always brings wet weather and flood defences have been tested in the past.  But our drains and defences seem to be inadequate these days - is this because of particularly adverse and unusual weather, or because we have become complacent in thinking we can always build structures to tame nature?   

I can’t answer that question.  But it’s no secret that I love nature, in all its wild fury.  I like bad weather, with its stormy purple skies and underlit clouds reflecting onto the ripening crops in autumn. And I revel in the sound of trees swaying in breathtaking windiness, when my wheels are stopped in their tracks and I can only gaze in wonder, even as the rain stings my eyes.   

Wind can be very destructive, and rain can be too.  But they were here before us, and they will be here after us.  Whatever the misery they cause, they have my unfettered and humble respect, and I would hope that our city planners have respect for them too. 

Short Days, Short Rides

We were away attending to family commitments last week, and when we returned, it seemed that winter had arrived all of a sudden.  The days are short, the sun is low, the light is dim, and the temperature struggles to reach double figures.  If there were leaves on the trees it would seem darker still, but as the wind has torn most of the leaves from most of the trees, then the weakened sunlight can work its way through.  But it doesn’t stay light for long. 

There’s always a challenge aspect to winter riding.  Cold muscles don’t perform as well as warm ones, so it always seems like hard work.  The sheer quantity of clothes you need to wear feel like a handicap in themselves.  And even if the weather is dry, it doesn’t mean that the roads will be dry too, as water from past rainstorms pools in the roadway and can hang around for days if the fields are too saturated to allow water to drain away.  

To get out in winter, motivation can be key.  Good weather provides its own motivation but if the weather is inclement then I find that the best motivation is the company of good friends.  If I have neither of these encouragements then I have my fallback motivation of my real and desperate need to ride, whatever the conditions, when I have been off my bike for too long.  

That was how I felt yesterday.  One of those pesky winter viruses has had me down (my husband too) and I can’t even say I’m fully over it.  But I set out into a cold and dull day, glad that the morning’s rain had passed.  I found minor lanes to be close to impassable, so much water lay on them, and so I reverted to main roads (which are not busy around here).  

Soon I found myself in an avenue of oak trees, still clinging to their leaves, but dropping enough to leave a bronze edging to both sides of the road and brightening the otherwise straw and grey coloured verges.  The trees themselves, sturdy and magnificent, were swathed in a cloak of rich bronze with shards of red giving form and depth.  My phone camera couldn’t catch a fraction of it. 

The promise of reward is always a good motivation.  And in the absence of any other encouragement, then that promise is the one which gets me out on my bike in all seasons, all temperatures, and even on my own, in inclement weather.