I woke from my afternoon nap to find pleasantly dry and sunny conditions making themselves obvious through the bedroom window. So I rose, quaffed a post-nap coffee and scrutinised the rainfall radar.
The weather seemed to be travelling in a NW direction, with a sort of corridor of dryness passing over NW Leics for what looked like a few hours.
Normally I take at least a day off after a ride of any substantial duration but the forecast looks a bit iffy still for the next week or so. Furthermore I’d stuffed myself at a local hostelry a couple of hours earlier, and I’d opted for a fairly gratuitously unhealthy dessert – so I took an opportunity to do a short ride. I set off intending to do at least 15, with the option to extend a bit if I decided my knees were happy enough. And they were, so I did 21.83; a medium Twycross.
Really nice out there. Blowier than yesterday but the wind was coming from the south, so I wasn’t bothered by it on the second half of the ride. Intermittently sunny and cloudy. Decently warm. I did get rained on very lightly near Sheepy, but only for a few minutes. I’d taken the Boardman anyway, just in case.
Stopped at the Gibbet post a few miles from home.
It seems to be the time of year when you often see beetles scurrying across the road in front of you while out on a bike. And here’s the odd thing: they always seem to be travelling directly across the road. They seem to take the shortest route to the other side, quite deliberately. Can you even see the other side of the road at that distance from the ground? Do they actually appreciate the danger on some level?
Quite a lot of corvids out and about at the moment, mostly magpies and either rooks or crows or both (I can’t tell them apart).
I also had an opportunity to see a goldfinch up close; the poor bugger had been squashed by a car. Actually having just had a look on the RSPB site, it might have been a hawfinch. Had orangey plumage.
https://www.strava.com/activities/2455828568
That’s 205 done this month, pleased enough with that given the weather. And I see that I’ve passed the 1500 mile mark for the year, which means half-way to target. 1562 done.