I left work early, determined to do 40 miles. A nice afternoon, autumnal sunshine aplenty and dry, but cold. Because I’m oncall I decided I’d go up north for a few miles, come back down near base then tack on a Twycrosser.
Up to Belton through Coalville and Thringstone then across to the top of Top Brand and down through Coleorton. Then down through Packington in the usual manner.
Lovely view of the two transmitter towers to the west from Gallows Lane, dotted with red lights against the backdrop of a dark amber / orange post-sunset sky.
It was getting dark by then, so I stopped to switch on my rear light. Very annoyingly, it wouldn’t switch on. Fortunately I did have a spare (as always) but it’s a small, CR2032-powered item, and I wasn’t sure how much life there was left in it. So I decided to keep it short, and cut across homeward through Snarestone and Swepstone.
Stopped at the bench at Snarestone and had a sandwich by the light of a street lamp.
The rear light is fine, just put some new batteries in. The ones I took out were the cheap Chinese ones that came with it, suspiciously light and (I suspect) intended just to make electronic items work for a short while in the shop or after you’ve just bought them.
Forgot to resume the track on the GPS after I started up again, but I fixed the file in a GPX editor.
https://www.strava.com/activities/6203033324
26.34 miles, that’ll have to do.