Dry and intermittently sunny today, and very mild to boot. Would have been the perfect opportunity for the November Fondo except that it was far too windy, and I’m on call. However I was determined to do 43, which would take me over 100 for the month, a decent tally for seven days in.
No clear plan. I did the southbound route (actually a slight variation with a detour round Bagworth) as far as Kirkby Mallory then cut across to Sutton Cheney at the eastern end of Fenn Lanes. I decided that I’d do a reverse Twycross Bypasser from this point. I wasn’t keen on facing the wind head-on along Fenn Lanes but it wasn’t as brutal as I feared.
I don’t think I’d ever done a Bypasser in reverse and I did get one of the turns slightly wrong near Kisses Barn Lane. Plain sailing after that though until the junction with Gallows Lane, which was coned off with a police car in attendance, with its blue lights flashing. So I took a right to come home via Swepstone instead.
I estimated that I’d be home on about 43.5 miles if I took my intended route along Gallows Lane, but since Swepstone was a bit of a short cut I took a detour through Ibstock over the last couple of miles.
Home on 44.07 so that worked out quite nicely. Earlier on in the ride I’d estimated that I’d be short by a few miles by doing that route.
Listened to Everton / Spurs but got bored so put my Reacher audiobook on. I hadn’t listened to it for weeks so I rewound 40 minutes or so to pick up the thread properly. Very enjoyable. Earlier on I listened to a brief interview with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein on 5 Live. Debbie was asked when the last time she cooked was, and she laughed out loud at this. And yet the next but one question was “when was the last time you laughed?”
I was nearly taken out at a mini roundabout at Ellistown. A driver to my right was turning right, but he didn’t even bother with the roundabout, just did a right turn and cut it out completely. Fortunately I came to a screeching halt in time to avoid being swept up by a Vauxhall estate.
Enjoyable run out though.