No rain today, though the roads were mostly fairly wet in places from overnight rain and waterlogged here and there. I took the Boardman out yet again, hoping to do 40 or 50. Decided to go out eastwards, in the direction of Belvoir Castle.
I wrapped up very warm but conditions weren’t as cold as I expected. I was actually quite comfortable. I’d done 21 miles when I was confronted by a flooded section of road under the bridge at Six Hills:
Shame, because I was quite enjoying myself and would have done another five or six miles before turning back. I couldn’t really think of an alternative route from this point, and the road to Barrow from there was also closed. So I turned for home.
Interestingly the three vehicles under the bridge were stationary, two with hazards on. I took the pic from behind a barrier – had they ignored it and got stuck?
Stopped at my favourite pit stop, the Greyhound Inn at Burton on the Wolds on the way back. Sat outside, to keep an eye on the bike and had my usual ham & coleslaw ciabatta with chips and a half San Miguel. Once again about a half-cupful of tomato ketchup was provided.
Once back over the border into Leicestershire, I extended my ride a bit by taking a right after Hathern through Long Whatton and Diseworth. Long Whatton was on the local news a few days ago due to flooding, but it was fine today. The only place I had to pedal through water (only about 2cm deep) was near Cotes.
Listened to 6 Music. Liz Kershaw had Pete Townshend on, talking about his new novel and Live at Leeds which was this week’s nomination for her “All Killer No Filler” feature. She asked why he thought it had gained such iconic status as a live record, and he replied that it might have something to do with the simplicity of the recording. He mixed it at his own studio apparently, using a valve compressor made by a friend to “pump it up”.
Liz played Young Man Blues, and you can definitely hear echoes of it in the live version of (my favourite band) Rush’s Working Man, I think. Especially in the bass.
I used my Garmin Foretrex 401 for a change; I don’t think it’s had a run out for more than a year. One nice thing about it is that you can just switch it off to pause a ride; I did that just before going into the pub. Switched if on again just before I resumed pedalling. My Forerunner 35 has a “pause” function but in practice it times out and saves the ride, so you have to start again to “resume”. Another good thing about the Foretrex is that it takes AAA batteries, so you can effectively “recharge” it out on a ride, again without interrupting your track. Ideal for a longer ride of course; if I ever do Wales and back or a ride of similar distance again it will come in handy.
Interestingly the firmware seems to have a feature whereby it doesn’t record a new waypoint unless you’ve gone a significant distance from the last one – so you don’t get those squiggly bits of track from walking to a farm gate at a wee stop.
Anyway .. 44.49 miles, taking me to 171 this month. Pleased enough with that with two weeks left before December kicks in.