A lovely dry, sunny day. Not too windy. But cold. Not freezing, but certainly the first cycling day since March (or possibly April) that I could justifiably describe as cold. I left work early, determined to do 50. Since an 8mph wind was blowing from the west, I decided to make use of my beloved Flat A Road South of Derby, that runs through Willington and Hilton.
So I did that.
I didn’t take the left turn through Hatton as I usually would; I just kept going and unfortunately I ran out of road after just more than 23 miles.. I literally found myself pedalling along a road that was still being built, and came up against a barrier across the whole road. So I turned for home. I could have added a few miles with an excursion off-piste on the way back, but in the end I settled for 46.22 miles.
I’d wrapped up warm enough. Really enjoyed cycling in the dark again, on the way back. Very atmospheric with a full moon right in front of me, through wispy clouds.
I was slightly annoyed that my front light gave the low battery warning only a few minutes after I switched it on, and it switched itself off with about 7 miles to go. Very nasty if I’d been coming down a steep hill in pitch darkness, but I wasn’t. Fortunately I’d brought a head torch as a spare.
Big accident at a road junction on the way back; an articulated lorry had collided with a small van. Police vehicles were in attendance and they’d closed off the junction but I asked one of the coppers if I could turn left anyway and he was fine about it. The road surface was clear, no broken glass. I must say police officers are a lot more pleasant these days than the Hartlepool Constabulary were when I was a kid; they often seemed arrogant and bullying; throwing their weight around at every opportunity.
I listened to 5 Live Drive, then a programme for Black History Month, all about what we have to do to make sure black people are better represented in competitive cycling. Some female athlete was interviewed about it; she’d tried cycling before competing in as a sprinter. But she didn’t like cycling because there weren’t enough people who looked like her.
I must admit I did think that if being around other people who looked like her was that important, she might think of emigrating to Jamaica. And if black people aren’t taking part in certain sports because black people don’t take part in them, that’s a text-book self-perpetuating problem. Not really anybody else’s fault.
At one point the presenter (Elly Oldroyd ) did the maths for the representation of black people in cycling events vs the proportion of black people in the population. It just doesn’t add up! She complained.
Which left me wondering whether the BBC intends to run a piece on encouraging white kids to take up track & field sports. I haven’t done the maths but I doubt that adds up, either.
The BBC really needs a good sort out, it’s in the grip of some sort of identity politics left-wing psychosis at the moment.