Late Again...

Well, good intentions regarding bloggery, photography and bimbling didn't last long - I haven't got out half as much as I'd like and when I have, I've been doing the same old things.

But, a quick look back at my records show that I'm actually very slightly ahead of last year's January efforts, both in the number of rides and the miles done on them, so January obviously just isn't my month.

I do like to keep a paper record of my rides - I'm not a Stravaerist so can't look them up online, but I have a journal instead where I write down the miles covered, average speed, the maximum speed achieved (woo yeah!), calories burned (Yeah right, utterly inaccurate but still, I may as well note them) and the odo reading for the bike at the end. I just use basic wired handlebar computers (each bike has its own) to record these details. Then I write in where I went and anything else I care to remember.

Why I do all that I'm not entirely sure! Just out of curiosity really, I suppose. It means I can look places up and see how far they are and so on, how many miles I'm doing and on which bikes and so on. It all sounds a bit sad really but who cares - it keeps me occupied!

So 2018 hasn't exactly got off to a thrilling start, but at least I do have an excuse in the weather - it has been wet and windy seemingly day in, day out for weeks now. I don't mind riding in the rain, but when that rain, or in many cases hail, feels like it's stripping the flesh off your face as it rips sideways into you propelled by an angry wind, well then I'm not so keen. "Sod that for a laugh" has been my usual summation on opening the curtains of a morning to reveal the wild weather shredding the countryside to bits.

One thing I've noticed - it's always blowing a proper hooley on general bin and recycling day - Monday in our case round here. The result is usually, once the men have been round doing their thing, a load of plastic boxes and an assortment of coloured bags flying about the place, and come the early evening, people who have been at work all day roaming the village looking for their recycling hardware, and having to pick it out of the hedges, pluck it out of the trees or from under parked cars. 

By crikey builders earn their money at this time of year. Working all day in the clawing mud, wind and rain would get old very quickly for me I must admit - I don't know how they do it.

This is the new build estate in a very prominent field on the edge of my home port, a field that every winter sports a pop up lake in the bottom left corner, and this winter, as can be seen, is no exception. Why they've piled up that soil there I don't know, it's probably going to be carted away or used for top soil in the gardens or whatever, but it is now surrounded by quite a moat. I had wondered if they plan to place any houses in this corner, but on having a butchers at the ecological survey done in 2015, I found mention of an attenuation pond, so presumably that is what is planned for this spot. I wouldn't be buying any house over on that left side of the field though, it's always water logged very quickly after rain so there must be a fair bit of groundwater near the surface in that area that flows down the hill and collects at the bottom. At the least I would think any houses built on that side will have rather wet and soggy gardens, but maybe there is some cunning plan to deal with that, we'll see.

What else? Ah yes, a photo that I first saw in the 2017 Photo Annual edition of the US magazine 'Bike.' Of all the great photos in the mag, this is the one that I spent the longest holding in the air in front of me and gawping at.

This photo, by Robb Thompson,was also recently a Photo of the Day over on Pinkbike.com, and I just love the light as a shower hit the riders near sunset. Normally, you leave space for riders to move into in the frame, but having them pointing out of the frame and on the edge gives a great feeling of speed - blink and they're gone sort of thing. The shot wouldn't be half as good without those flowers in the foreground too.

There are loads of photos that I admire both online and in print, but this one really butters my toast, and scores a maximum on the wish list:

Wish I was young again and able to ride like that.

 Wish I was there at the moment the shot was taken.

 Wish I could take shots like that!

But anyway, on to more mundane riding and the few weather beaten pootles I have managed of late.

The 14th of January, and the morning after the stroppy night before.

A quiet and still morning, with sunny periods too, but the puddles and streams of water running off the fields and into the lanes tells the story of the weather we'd had the night before. Everywhere was the sound of gushing, trickling and dripping as the countryside recovered from the lashing it had just endured.

Out on the Voodoo again, despite pledging to ride the Marin more often... Well the Marin hasn't got a rear mudguard you see, and I didn't want the mucky streak of shame up my backside... The Voodoo has got panniers so I could carry leggings/Sou'wester/water wings should it rain again...

This hill doesn't look much (they never do in photos do they!) but it's a real brake burner when going down it, being long and in places, steep as a set of stairs.

At the bottom of that hill lies the Tresillian River (above and below).

I've been after a photo of this tree between Probus and Ladock for a long time, but in the past I've always been foiled by rain, or the light being wrong, but on this day all the ducks were in a row and I bagged it. Like a lot of the trees round here, this one was showing signs of recent damage too.

That was basically that for this ride - just a ramble along the lanes in a loop taking in Probus and Ladock, with not much to report, and not many photos taken either, but it was still good to get pedaling once again.

13.54 miles done, a maximum velocity of 28 Great British miles per hour reached on a goodly plummet down a hill and 216 calories burned apparently - Fascinating stuff eh?

The 19th of January saw a quickly grabbed ride around my usual Tregassow Loop.

Another day of bright sunny periods between rampaging showers. Conditions like this give the camera metering, and more to the point, my camera skills, a hard time. Thank heavens then for RAW capture and being able to do some heavy lifting of the shadows on the computer.

The lane along the edge of Trehane Wood, always a good bit of road to keep an eye out for hairy critters as I've encountered Badgers, Rabbits, Hares, Foxes and Deer along here in the past.

Looking over the hedge on the lane from Five Turnings to Pengelly with Treveale Farm in the mid distance and Ladock Woods on the hill top.

Weather update: Peachy.

Hmmmm... lot of portrait orientation in this post...

Ditch beside the lane at Killiserth.

Weather update: Take cover! 

Just nearing my home port of Trispen my luck with the weather that morning ran out big time and I copped the hail shower from hell itself. Thankfully I was under tree cover at the time so took shelter while the trees took a very loud strafing from the hail stones. 
Once the passing shower had relieved itself enough to allow a photo or two, I bagged this photo while balancing on top of a Cornish Hedge looking into a privately owned wood.

 There's a great tree/puddle shot lurking at this location, but all the best angles are obstructed from the road by nearer trees and also the wide flooded ditch. But I did manage to get across the ditch and onto the hedge top, and while hanging onto a tree with one hand and aiming the camera in the general direction I wanted with the other, got a photo. It's not the best angle as I say, but without trespassing, or going bog snorkelling, it's the best I could get at the time.

Finally we arrive at last Monday, the 22nd of January and that just shows how tardy I am at updating this blog.

It was high time I got one of the fat tyred twins out again, Fatso or the Marin, but given my intended destination was the uppermost path in Idless Woods. I once again opted to leave the Marin in port and sacrifice Fatso to the mud and slop. The Marin will be going out very soon - I've told myself to stop being such a big Nelly and take it out on my next road ride...

Fatso in my back garden prior to the off, and still looking peachy after it's post Christmas clean.

A freshly damaged tree at Treworgan, between St Erme and Lanner Mill.

Last time I came along here there were two trees down in a field beside the road, this time I found this tree on the roadside itself had copped it in the latest storms.

Part of the felled portion of the tree, post emergency surgery by a man with a large chainsaw.

This is like a piece of art in itself, a rural sculpture if you like, and believe me, if I could lift it and fit it in a pannier, I'd have this in my back garden (we'll gloss over the question of theft... call it window shopping, or window salvaging on my part).

To someone skilled in interpreting the rings of a tree there is probably a lot of information to be gleaned from this lump of wood. The rings don't just indicate age, but also give clues to the climate during each period of growth, any insect infestations, periods of drought and even where something such as another tree has leaned against it or provided heavy shade.

Now this winter really does seem to have been an interminably wet and windy one, and to add insult to bedraggled injury, once again we missed all the dumps of snow that afflicted most of the rest of the country.  I've pretty much given up checking the weather forecast as it nearly always says 'wet and windy,' 'windy and wet,' or 'stay indoors it's going to be mank out.'

But... it's not all gloom and doom, what winter grimness lays ahead is shorter than what we've endured, we're on the home straight now and proof that Spring is just around the corner is starting to appear. 

Primroses, and generally regarded as the first flowers of a new year - Snowdrops. You beauties! What a welcome splash of colour these were amid all the gloom of a Monday morning in January. 

If the hedges and verges are half as bountiful and colourful this Spring as they were last year, then we're in for a treat.

Sartorial elegance money just can't buy...

I've always been, and always will be, a scruffy Herbert, and my riding clobber provides a fine example. Some people are born to look cool in anything (usually Italians) but I could make the finest tailored suit look shabby and mis shaped.

The weather forecast (I lied... I do still look at it) had promised a day without rain, but I still donned my baggy over trousers for this ride, for a reason that will become obvious very shortly.

I'd just taken a ride by shot of me gurning my way up the first half of this hill at Lanner Mill, and took this as I looked into Idless Woods (at what I thought at first was a stray dog as it happens) to keep the camera alive before going back down the hill for another run up for the camera. Pause too long between shots and the camera goes into hibernation and many is the time I've ridden up and down machine gunning photos only to find the camera had gone into sleep mode half an hour before and I'd captured the sum total of nothing.

Freshly downed trees on the edge of Idless Woods.

Tree nearest the camera is a fresh casualty, the one behind came down about a year ago.

Bang goes the clean bike... Any hope of retaining clean trousers too, hence those leggings.

Riding through this level of slop is good fun, with the wheels rarely in a line and steering accuracy measured in feet rather than millimetres (or fractions of an inch perhaps)as both wheels were prone to wandering about. Picking a line was less 'just pass between that root and that leaf' and more 'just keep it between the trees'.

Woo that's sloppy!

It's been a while since I last rode the uppermost path through these woods, as I knew it would be pretty gloopy, but curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see what was occurring after all the weather we've had. Puddles mostly.

One benefit of cleaning a bike is it stays clean longer, and is also easier to clean once home again, and Fatso was actually holding up well with a lot of the wet mud simply not sticking.

Find of the day this erm... levery type thing.

The woods are home to classic motorcycle trials now and again, so I did think this may be the kickstart from a 1934 Rudge Running Sore or the gear shift from a 1948 Scott Flying Testicle, or the advance and retard from a BSA Barking Backfire 650 Twin or some other old wheezing motorised bi-wheeled rattletrap. But I'm not so sure to be honest what it is. 

Whatever, I have no possible use for it, practical or ornamental, so put it back where I found it.

Wet and muddy tyres plus plentiful rootage equal bowel loosening slipping and sliding, even on fatty tyres.

Fatso leaning against the same tree. Despite suffering a spectacularly lurid front wheel slide on those roots, dignity was preserved and I avoided (somehow, it would've been more by luck than judgement) face planting the scenery and bike and pilot remained upright.

It wasn't all sideways mud plugging though and some parts of the track do drain well.

Heading back towards home along the lower path takes one alongside the stream, that was of course, running both fast and high.

Despite being quite a substantial body of water, the stream appears to be as yet, and rather bafflingly so, unnamed. 

Last shot of the day - Fatso beside the upper branches of a tree that came down in the storms back in the Autumn. If you're thinking we've had a lot of storms lately, you'd be right.

Despite some parts of the bike remaining pleasingly clean, I couldn't take Fatso back in the house with tyres covered in slop so broke out the pressure washer and gave both the Fatty and the Voodoo a quick wash, so I'm back to having all the fleet looking tickety boo again. But the Marin is going to cop it next time I head out... That's a promise!

Right now, I'm going to sign off quick 'cos there's a repeat of The Sweeney on the telly, followed by an episode of The Professionals. Lots of people loved the Professionals at the time, but watching them now some of the acting and action looks terribly camp compared to the convincingly gritty Sweeney. "Alright Tinkerbell, you're nicked..." Great stuff!

---------------