Another warm day yesterday and with a stiff wind coming from the west, I thought a trip after work along the Beloved A Road was in order. I went as far as Hatton, where I acquired a pork pie and a triple Bounty bar from the petrol station – then turned for home.
Just lovely on the way back in the warm evening sunshine with a gentle tailwind. I decided to atone for my short ride on Wednesday by extending the ride a bit. I had two options – either to continue on after Swarkestone through Weston, Aston and Shardlow then come down through Donington – or to hang a left at Melbourne for Isley Walton, then come down Top Brand. I opted for the latter. The Donington option would have added at least 6 miles (at a guess, I haven’t worked it out) but I thought I’d get at least 4 from detouring through Isley Walton.
In fact it adds a bit less than 2.5 miles. Still – back on 46.15 miles, happy enough with that.
There are some enormous farm vehicles on the roads at the moment. I had one coming toward me that literally took up 2/3 of the width of a decent sized road. No way I could have got past it in a car. And I was overtaken by a speeding fire engine along Ashby Road, just a couple of miles from home. I was slightly concerned to see it take the left turn for Ravenstone ahead of me, but I couldn’t see any houses on fire in the village when I arrived there.
Astonishingly, my new Roberts personal DAB got another 4.5 hours from the same pair of Alkaline batteries – that’s nearly 20 hours out of them, and they aren’t dead yet. I wouldn’t have to think about taking spares with me on a long ride. I could even take them out and use them in a front light over the last couple of hours, especially if I took high capacity AAs and used an MP3 player for some of the ride.
Anyway that’s 348 this month. More tomorrow hopefully.