Two Ride Catch Up.

Ah yes... I've been playing in puddles again...

I've had a couple of other rides this week, nothing too strenuous or ambitious, just riding bikes around my local lanes again. These lanes though aren't boring, not to me anyway, or repetitive, I could ride them every day and still find them refreshing, interesting and rewarding. 

Marcel Proust once said "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." Quoting some French novelist makes me look really intelligiment and clevver, but it's a quote I saw in a photography book recently, and it sort of struck a chord with me with how when you look at familiar things, really look, there is always something to notice, some change that has occurred, something going on that can inform the curious and so on. 

I sometimes ride other lanes and find myself thinking it's a good job I don't live round here as I'd never have anything to photograph, or look at, it's all a bit boring. The reality is I just don't know those lanes well enough, I don't ride them every week, and I don't think hard about how best I can illustrate yet another ride along them. I don't see the changing seasons and their affect on those particular lanes, the hedges, trees and verges, or the crops in the surrounding fields. I haven't got to know them like the back of my hand basically. It also helps to be a bit nosy! 

There is also comfort in the familiar I suppose, and the security of not being far from home if I tweak my back or suffer some other sort of biological or mechanical malaise. You can also switch part of your alertness off and concentrate instead on what is going on around you more, as you know where the road goes, where the pot holes are and so on. So keeping an ear out for traffic from behind and an eye out for traffic coming towards you, you can find more time to peer over or into hedges, through gates or up at the tree tops. On strange to you lanes, everything is new, including the road surface, junctions, gateways and side roads and all those other things you give priority attention to so you have less spare for gawping as you ride. 

I've lost count of how many times I've ridden round my usual loop, but every time I head off down Tregassow Lane I still feel a little buzz of anticipation as I know the next half hour, or however long I choose to poke around  - and it can be two or three hours before I return home having only done a few short miles, will prove enjoyable.

A lot of folk ride the same routes repeatedly of course, commuters for one, and those keeping fit or in training for another, but they will seldom see the benefit of the repeated bimble, where you have time to get to know your route quite so intimately.

I still repeat some photos though and playing in the puddles and taking splashy shots is something I've done many times before and no doubt will do many times again, and Tregassow Lane is always good for a flood or two after some rain, and we have had some rain alright!

Woohoo... Tregassow Lane has flooded again and the inner big kid can be released once more... Oh... hang on... can I hear something coming...

 Ohhh... this could end badly...

Boshhhh!!! 

The perils of the solo ride past shot. Leaving a camera unattended while you ride up and down and some random vehicle appears when you're too far away to grab your gear out of the way.

Yup, it's still there...

Thankfully I'd placed the GoPro on the very outside of the bend, so the van driver was unlikely to go that deeply into the corner unless he met something coming the other way of course. The worst that could happen really would've been the camera falling over and me having to fish it out, but still, my heart was still in my mouth when that van passed me and I crossed my fingers he wouldn't run my gear over or something.

 My word, talk about a straight edge... the top line of that crop could've been drawn with a ruler.

Harvesting that lot is going to be a muddy affair given all the rain recently.

Trehane Wood on the right, and I'm actually riding back the way I'd come, but it was the best photo of the few I took here. I've seen Deer in the road along here in the past, just before they've looked up, seen the old boy on a bike coming towards them and legged it into the woods quick.

Montbretia, so the book says, in the hedge near Five Turnings.

Today, Friday, saw me hunter gathering again as I set out on the Voodoo in search of more Blackberries. Apart from giving me a bit of spinal grief, Blackberrying is a most relaxing way to spend some time, and this morning the countryside was a very refreshing, invigorating, place to be as the lively wind noisily thrashed the tree tops about, and a couple of brief, but energetic, showers blew through.

My left glove (I'm a left hander with a pen and when picking things) and also the Voodoo's left bar grip are stained a rather dramatic shade of purple, and my fingers have been stung by stinging nettles and pricked by stabby things, but by crikey the desserts have been good since the Blackberries came out. 

I've frozen a load too, so hopefully I can extend the after-the-main-course goodness for a while after the Berrying season is over. Free food is good food I say, make the most of it!

More steady rain last night, and about an hour before I set off it properly lashed it down for a few minutes.
The Voodoo is a surprisingly good bike for a £300 banger, with the wheels being the only really duff point. The paint flaking off like that on a well cared for machine is pretty poor to be honest.

The Voodoo doing what it does best at the moment - waiting patiently in the hedge while the bimbler goes berrying, an exercise that has been proving most fruitful. (sorry...)

Progress when Blackberrying is slow as I scour the hedges and stop every few yards to plunder the bushes some more. I was gone a couple of hours and pootled a paltry five and a half miles.

Not a wild fruit related stop this time, but a harvesty one all the same.

Right, that's my lot this week, I must get the Marin out again soon, it's looking nice and peachy in my living room. To me, it's a great looking bike, and I hate getting it mucky, I really do, but I also want to ride it and with this weather we're having, riding and clean bikes are incompatible, which is a bit of a beggar!

I've always joked that Summer is when the rain is warm... It's certainly proving the case this year that's for sure.

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