This gallery contains 5 photos.
An extract from our Christmas family circular of 2006 talks about a new family member. “Our surprise family addition was subject to some debate, cat loving father bring out voted 2:1 in favour of the arrival of a pooch. Needless … Continue reading
This gallery contains 5 photos.
The New Year’s Day ride has a special status for Idonotdespair. It is the anniversary of my first blog post here in 2012 and has generally provided me with excellent days out and a great start to the year. This … Continue reading
My son and I came back to the house and there was only one thing to do.
Glorious late evening light. No breeze worth mentioning. Eager dog ready for the off. We rode.
I was lifted up. Oh I needed this. So good to have all this on the doorstep.
And we were not alone.
Thanks Ben, thanks Murphy.
I last posted on 30 days of biking back on the 14th of April.
That doesn’t mean I stopped riding, it just means I ran out of steam on the blogging. It’s a great concept and it probably lends itself to the 140 characters of Twitter but I assumed my readers will probably run out of patience if I write “went to the station again” for the 15th time in a month. And it’s not as if I haven’t ridden a bike almost every day since too.
The bigger problem however was that I completely ran out of time to blog, I have had some pretty good content but I haven’t had time to do it justice. So while I am catching up with those posts I have looked back at the second half of the month and pulled out just a few highlights to close out the sequence, even if it is late. Almere and Paris were the travel highlights, but I have already blogged about those.
What was really great was being forced to note as I went along why even daily cycling is so uplifting, especially when you live out in the countryside and spring brings changes almost every day. This has been especially true this year, the late cold winter has compressed spring into a ferocious burst of energy and all of that broke during the 30 days of April.
So glory number one from the end of the month is blossom, bursting out all over.
And number two is the rediscovery of touring. At last the weather has been good enough to do proper touring rides and I managed three or four of those, both local explorations, another club ride with Cyclottignies and my big trip across Wallonia. I ended April a lot fitter than I started it!
Finally there was one other big beneficiary of my determination to ride every day. He is a lot fitter too. When I might have just nipped out for a walk instead Murphy got lots of great cross country rides even after work and we explored a some great new local lanes off the Lasne Nature maps although not without a few barriers.
Anyway I managed to ride every day except one in April, probably more than I would have done without the incentive of the challenge. So Murphy and I thank the 30daysofbiking guys in Minneapolis, great idea. We’ll be back next year.
To see how the rest of the world fared click here
The blizzard was the worst of the year. Holed up inside watching the wind scoop the snow into weird shapes in the garden with all the roads around us impassable. Belgian travel chaos even made the international news, the boss is stuck in Paris etc. etc.
I may have mentioned that I am over snow.
But the effect of the snow drifts was to alter the shape of the countryside around us a remove certainty underfoot. Most of the roads and tracks are sunk some distance below the surrounding fields which means they were like magnets to the snow drifts and impassable to traffic, not something common in Western Europe in March, or rather not historically normal. Who knows with the changes in our weather systems.
This photo is our road, about 500 metres from the house. No, not the line running left to right, that is a track. The dark line heading up to the hill is a one metre high verge. It hasn’t been passed by a single vehicle all day.
So we staggered about late afternoon, falling down holes and watching the dog almost swimming in powder snow. Great fun. But it can stop now. Personally I’d like to see a daffodil flower. That would be nice.
One of the pleasures of being out in the snow today was to see the many wheel tracks in the snow that indicated that several local clubs must have taken to mountain bikes for the morning.
This provided my comedy sequence of the day.
I was perhaps 300 metres away across the fields from some farm buildings when I heard a commotion – dogs barking, people yelling. When I looked back I saw a nice compact group of about a dozen riders just heading towards the buildings. They ducked out of site briefly and I got out my camera hoping that I might get a good image of riders against the snow when they came out.
Instead there was a further commotion and two groups going absolutely flat out shot along the track with one man suspended in between. I clicked off a couple of shots rather in hope because it was clear the blowing snow and their determination to race away meant they would be rather hazy. It was only as I took the camera from my eye that I spotted a further shape behind the final group which explained the split.
I have no idea how far the angry pooch followed them, but he was still going well when I lost them in the haze. Only doing his job I suppose, but I was awfully glad I had turned short of his territory. I don’t think I would have got away as quickly as the group I was watching and I would have been a much easier target.
I wanted to publish a small gallery of favourite photos from the Berkshire village where I have lived for the last ten years as a farewell and a memento.
I had never heard of Finchampstead when I got a job in Guildford but friends encouraged us to consider Wokingham as a place to live because of its environment and its schools. Quite by chance my wife found a house and a school place for our son out in Finchampstead. It was formerly a tiny village with origins as a hamlet in the Royal Windsor hunting forests. But in the 20th century it grew rapidly as housing was carved out of the woods but there is a real legacy of woodland with its country parks and National Trust woodland, not to mention the remaining Crown estates which provide the magnificent mountain biking at Swinley Forest, just a few miles away.
As well as all the great things that go with family life I found one really unexpected thing in Finchampstead. Don’t tell anyone but I actually started enjoying walking. The environment has a lot to do with it but of course the most important stimulant was my furry sidekick. So just a few seasonal favourites from the last five years of walks , culminating with the leading actor himself in the autumn’s leaves, our last walk before we packed the car.
Spotted in Stockholm.
A most unusual attachment for a sporty road bike. Speculation as to purpose welcomed.
I Do Not Despair 