Decent weather again – sunny and dry, though cold and a bit windy. The wind was coming from the west. I thought I’d go up to Isley Walton then over Swarkestone Bridge to do the Beloved A Road for a bit, but as I rolled up Top Brand, I had the idea to go up through Castle Donington and along to Shardlow. I decided to go all the way into Derby and round my old neighbourhood. Went up through Chaddesden, back down Acorn Way.
Just indulging my own sentimentality, really. Nice to be pedalling along Nottingham Road in the the rush hour. I miss Derby sometimes.
I was going to come back via Swosser Bridge and I took a turn to Aston with that in mind, but I changed my mind and looped back onto the main road to Shardlow. Back to Donington from there, and back home the usual way.
As I paused at the lights near the airport, I heard someone call “hey” to my left. A coach driver was trying to get my attention. “More lights!” he said, leaning out of his side window with a facial expression somewhere between concern and disapproval. I could see he was trying to be helpful so I gave him an appreciative thumbs up just before I pulled away at the green light, but I examined my rear light carefully and it was flashing away pretty flippin’ brightly. Odd one.
Noticed a DHL plane on the tarmac with doors open and wingtip lights on, presumably ready to take off. What a life that must be, climbing into an aircraft on a quiet, dark runway a few miles from Derby then away into the night sky, off to another country.
I charged up my old smartwatch for the first time in a couple of years. Apparently Strava doesn’t support versions of Wear OS older than 3.0, and this has 2.something. But I installed the ridewithgps app onto it so I could use it to track the ride. It did basically work but there’s precious little info on the watch face – just pause, stop and resume buttons. I used it in “phone” mode, assuming it would use the phone’s GPS but also assuming there’d be some sort of useful interface on the watch. I’ll try “watch” mode next time. But it’s not as useful for that as a Garmin anyway. Just playing really.
I also didn’t set it up properly with Strava, so it didn’t upload the route there. This is what I got from the app:
I managed to export the track as a GPX from the ridewithgps site, so I uploaded it to Strava manually.
Another 46.1 miles done, that’s the main thing.