An unexpected break in the rain for a few hours appeared late this morning and I was off out on the Tricross at about 11:20am. I’m on call at the moment and couldn’t go far, but I wasn’t expecting to get out at all so I was very happy.
However, not more than a minute after I’d set off, I had a sudden thought – had I actually remembered to bring my phone? I reached round to my back pocket. I had a slice of pizza, a small pork pie and some garlic bread in a plastic sandwich bag and a small torch, but it appeared that I didn’t have a phone.
Well, fuck. Statistically though, the probability of being called on a Sunday was low and I wasn’t going to go back for it. I pressed on. Perhaps I’d do twenty miles and come back, or maybe I’d do ten, go in for it and do another ten or fifteen.
The thought that it might have gone off at home, a harbinger of some calamity at a customer site that I would appear to be casually ignoring played on my mind as I pedalled, until I stopped for a wee break at my usual off-road spot near Twycross. I scoffed the pork pie and put its wrapper into the side pocket of my nylon outer layer. Hallelujah! The phone was in there.
So I pressed on down to Sheepy, up Burton Road to Gibbet Lane and up through Congerstone, Barton, Odstone, Swepstone. I detoured Heather Lane via Ibstock, since it was covered in mud the last time I’d been along there (in a car).
Home on 30.10 miles, a fairly typical Twycrosser. Nice and sunny for the first hour or two, really quite pleasant. The wind was fairly strong but not too annoying. Getting gloomy and colder over the last few miles, and less than five minutes after I’d put the bike away the rain started to come down. Beautiful timing.
Continued listening to the fourth Reacher audiobook, I think I’m most of the way through now. Good stuff though it could do with an editor.
https://www.strava.com/activities/4342193808
270 done this month, 5625 this year.