Another sunny day, a little bit cooler than Friday. Still too windy for a particularly long ride, but I thought conditions were just about decent enough for a fondo. The wind was coming from the east. I thought I’d do the southbound route. I’d have a sidewind both ways, but not too much of an annoying headwind.
I did that, down to Sibbertoft Gliding Club the usual way, penetrated Northamptonshire for a few metres then came back up the “old” way via Blaby and Enderby. My original idea was to cut across to the “new” route on the way back up after Blaby to avoid the busy traffic near Desford. But I didn’t bother and in the event it wasn’t too bad.
On the way up I took the Wood Road detour which added a bit of distance. But after Ellistown I came the short way through Donington Le Heath. I wished I’d set off back up a few seconds later than I did, because I saw a huge aircraft-shaped shadow cross the road in front of me. Stopped the back and twisted my head round just in time to see a glider landing. It must have passed over the road behind me, just a few metres over my head. Would have been a spectacular sight if it had been in front of me instead.
I decided to use my Casio GPS watch to track the ride, which I haven’t done for a couple of years because the Android app that syncs to Strava had always been unreliable. I thought I’d see if matters had improved, and thankfully they have. It does seem to work decently now. On the other hand the watch itself didn’t start tracking the ride until I’d done about 1.5k. I fixed the track with a GPS editor. Annoying but I think I can put it down to not having used it for a long time. GPS devices use a dataset known as an “almanac” which is updated when they’re used. My watch would have had to download a big chunk of new data from the satellites before it could start tracking.
As I emerged from a petrol station carrying an all-day-breakfast sandwich and a cheese pasty, a kind bald gentleman passed a nice compliment on his way in. “Lovely bike!” he said. I thanked him warmly of course. That’s nice, isn’t it?
Oh and I performed a good deed. I stopped for an impromptu picnic near Amesby, at a farm gate. There was a single item of litter, a flattened coke can. So I brought it home with me to recycle.
I listened to LBC and footy on 5 Live. Fulham vs Liverpool (very entertaining) and the first half of the Manchester derby. Dull.
Beautifully sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky and I had a nice view of the Moon in the afternoon, in fact I see I’ve caught it in the pic. But I did get a headwind intermittently both ways, depending on the particular direction of travel of course.
Back on 101.95km, pleased with 241km so far this month.