Altar Stones Lane

My cycling goals for today weren’t overly ambitious, because rain was due over this afternoon and I was keen to avoid it, if possible. Also, the conditions weren’t particularly nice – overcast and a little damp, with wet roads. With a stiff wind coming from the south, I thought I’d do 15 miles or so of the southbound route, then come back.

However – instead of turning right along Kirkby Lane after ten miles, I kept going as far as Desford. From there I found my way to Markfield, where I took this pic, along Altar Stones Lane.

I’ve only ever known Altar Stones Lane as a very quiet dead end; the location of a couple of farm houses and a cattery. There’s no through road to anywhere else. But I’ve been nerding out over old OS maps recently, here: https://maps.nls.uk/os/6inch-england-and-wales/

It turns out that before the M1 was built, this road was the main road between Markfield and Coalville. Then when the M1 was opened in the ’60s, Altar Stones Lane was connected directly to it. Traffic would have come barreling along here straight off (or toward) the motorway junction, about 200 metres from the bike in this pic. Then finally, some time in the ’80s I think (certainly before I lived in Markfield in 1989/90) a bypass was built to take the M1 traffic out of the village, and the lane became the quiet, secluded little dead end that it is today.

I suppose the folks who lived along there must have been horrified when the M1 came along, then elated when the A50 bypass was built, after which their little corner of Leicestershire became quieter even than it was 100 years ago.

Came back home from Markfield an unusual way, through Stanton under Bardon. Very annoyingly, there was only one puddle of any significance along Stanton Lane, and I was overtaken by only one motor vehicle there, a white van. You can guess what happened. I should have stopped a reasonable distance from the puddle after I saw it in my mirror, but I thought I had enough momentum to take me past the puddle by the time the van passed me. I didn’t. Of course it would have been nice if the van driver had tried to avoid the puddle, or slowed down a bit. Oh well.

As it happened a Biblical downpour was visited upon me about a mile from home, so in the end it didn’t matter. I was soaked by the time I made it to the garage. But I gave the bike a good wipe down; I think it’s cleaner than it’s been for months now!

Back on 27.42 miles.

https://www.strava.com/activities/8358707424

Derby Airfield and Wilson

This afternoon’s mission, should I choose to accept it – was to do at least 33 miles, to tip the January total into treble figures. And with a strong wind coming from the west I decided to go up over Swarkestone Bridge and west along the Beloved A Road. The “Upper Westbound Route”, as I call it.

I did that as far as Derby Airfield, then turned back. Dark by this time. I’d done about 18 miles. The headwind had been a real irritation, but it was a joy in tailwind mode. Very mild out there, as well. I do enjoy gliding along the A road in the dark.

Decided I wanted to do something a bit different on the way back down so I detoured through Wilson. Only ever done that two or three times and I didn’t know the way back but I was less than 9 miles from home after Melbourne so I wasn’t going to get seriously lost. I rolled through Breedon, then Worthington and Newbold. Hadn’t been through those latter two locations for years. Used to do them quite often five or six years ago, on my old hybrid.

Bit spooky out there in the dark between Breedon and Worthington, mostly because I didn’t really know where I was, I suppose. But I rejoined the usual route shortly after Newbold.

I used my Canmore GPS tracker, something I bought on a retail therapy whim years ago. Glad to see the internal battery’s held up nicely. It has a rubbishy little LCD screen that’s hard to read properly on the handlebars but apart from that, it works well. I also tested a new watch that I bought for night cycling. Nothing fancy, a cheap Timex, but it proved to be nicely legible in the dark thanks to its bright white dial and high contrast hands, even without using the ‘Indiglo’ electro-luminescent dial function.

It was a clear night with a very bright Moon. Definitely added to the experience. Very enjoyable run out, only slightly marred (once again) by a few idiots in oncoming cars with full beam on.

One odd thing – I put my rear light onto flashing mode, but I looked down to check it a few miles from home and it wasn’t flashing. It was stuck in “on” mode fortunately, but it didn’t respond to the power switch. Couldn’t turn it off. I had to take the batteries out for ten minutes after I got home to get it working properly again. Its little processor must have crashed!

Back on 37.87 miles.

https://www.strava.com/activities/8338637559

Lower Westbound

The last day of the Christmas hols and a dry, sunny and fairly mild one although the roads were still a bit wet from rain yesterday.

Hoped to do about 40 miles though I did think I might just stretch that to a fondo. With a light wind coming from the west I decided on the Lower Westbound Route, out through Lullington, Edingale and King’s Bromley. Quite nice out there and I seemed to have plenty of energy despite hoovering a few Scotches last night so I kept going up through Abbots Bromley to Bagot’s Wood, where I decided to turn back after 32 miles.

I took a wrong turn on the way back after Abbots Bromley but that was fine. I followed a sign to Yoxall and I knew that would take me back to the usual route eventually. Actually quite a fortuitous mistake. Hadn’t done that stretch of road between Abbots and Yoxall before. I quite liked it.

What wasn’t quite so fortuitous though was that, no doubt prompted by taking an unusual route into King’s Bromley, I missed the turn there and went some way off course, to the south. With the sun due to go down before long I resorted to Google Maps. I plotted a route to get back on track that involved a two mile stretch of A38. I wasn’t thrilled about that, but I reasoned that the Bank Holiday traffic would be light, and fortunately I didn’t get killed. I did get beeped at a couple of times. But it’s perfectly legal to ride a bike along there. It’s just not particularly sensible.

Back the usual way after that and home on 67.79 miles.

I listened to Adrian Chiles on 5 Live, then Rangers v Celtic. Then LBC.

This year’s target is 4540 miles, which would maintain my average of just over 20km per day since Jan 1st 2015.

I ticked two of the neighbouring counties boxes with this ride; Derbyshire and Staffordshire.

https://www.strava.com/activities/8327391445