Well, the world appears to be going mad. As I haven’t stockpiled any loo rolls or tinned potatoes, (although why on earth you would want to stockpile tinned potatoes as they’re about as edible as wood chippings is beyond me), I thought that I’d best do my bit for Coronavirus avoidance by self-isolating on my bike and the allotment for the weekend. With last week’s wee Travelodge wheeze working so well, I thought I’d give it another go this weekend, and managed to blag a nice cheap room at Fontwell for Saturday night. As with last weekend I was on the allotment with the Lark (Ok it was 08:00, but that’s early enough for most people) and jolly nice it was too. For the first time in ages the sun was shining, and I wasn’t struggling to stand up in a force 10 gale. In fact, half and hour of digging soon had me down to just my overalls, having rapidly discarded my jacket and hat, and even then, it was a bit too warm. The little seedlings seemed to be enjoying the warmth in the greenhouse too, and there’s plenty of new growth showing on the fruit bushes and the roses at home. Give it another couple of weeks and the trees will be starting to green up and I’ll be back to running in shorts. Another winter over with? Well I’m not counting my chickens just yet as we have often seen snow well into March and even the start of April, so there’s plenty of time yet. Anyhow, I digress as usual, so back to the main event. Fontwell’s not actually that far from home, so to increase the mileage and make for a bit of a longer day out I took a rather indirect route. Heading out from home towards Farnham, and then looping around towards the bottom of Guildford and cutting across from there, pushed the distance up to 65 miles. With the sun continuing to shine and the little Tit’s and Finches flitting in and out of the hedgerows to great me as I passed, it was a lovely afternoon’s cycling.
Having left just after 12:00 and stopped for lunch on the way, I was safely tucked up in my new abode, supping endless brews and generally chilling out by 18:00. A quick check of the weather forecast for Sunday showed that things might not be quite so pleasant tomorrow though, with a band of heavy rain moving across the country and forecast to be making a general pain of itself right over my head by 11:00. I can deal with that though, a quick bit of adapt and overcome, change the alarm time to 05:00, get a shift on in the morning and I could probably race the rain home. And that’s exactly what I did, I was flying along on the deserted roads by 06:15 Sunday morning, racing the rain, and you know what; I nearly made it too. The rain was forecast to arrive at 11:00 and at 10:58 I was 62 miles into the 65 mile journey home when the heavens opened! Now you can say what you want about the weather forecasters, they’re getting pretty good at this guessing what the weathers going to do lark. I think that as long as your looking at the right predictions and can accept the odd error (no there’s not going to be a hurricane) and their current fixation for over dramatizing everything, then they do a pretty good job. It’s just a shame that in this instance they couldn’t have been 5 minutes out, because then I wouldn’t have got wet!
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Paul PerrattOld enough to know better, young enough to still feel invincible, stupid enough to keep on trying the same thing again and again. Cyclist, Gardener, Runner, Hiker, Cook, Woodworker, Engineer, Jack of all trades and master of none, Anti social old git and all round miserable bugger. Archives
March 2024
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