A Sunny Day with a few Surprises

It is hard to ignore the world economic situation, the latest piece being reported by the BBC TV news here in the UK is that many of the County Councils, who manage local services had money deposited with various Icelandic Banks. At the time they made the investments the Banks offered slightly better interest rates and looked suitably secure and so were a reasonable place to invest money. Now it is uncertain whether Councils up and down the UK will be able to get their money out which implies tax-payers stumping up more or services degrading!


The best way to dispel gloomy thoughts is to get out in the sun. As my Longstaff is in for repair at Chris's Bikes (http://www.chrisbikes.co.uk/about-chris-bikes/) I took my Marin. This time I made sure I took a pump, spare inner tube tyre levels and patches. When I ride my Marin I tend to go off-road a little more, preparing for the conditions I will encounter on the Bangkok to Saigon ride, at least that is what I tell myself. Here is the first green road or by-way I came across today, the sun was shining, no people around and only a few clouds in the sky.

As I continued my journey the sun sparkled off the River Cam - although it was not quite as dark as implied in this picture which I deliberately under-exposed to get a silhouette effect for the long boat and the table in order to show up the swirl of light on the river.

My journey continued up the Sustrans' Route 51 towards Ely. Most of it is either along country lanes and the final stretch before Ely is a cycle/foot path by the River Great Ouse. Quite a lot of rowing takes place up here as the river is wider than the Cam down in Cambridge and less bendy.

I could not see a lot of traffic on the road into Ely and as I got closer the reason became obvious. The Fens are a fertile part of England and a lot of crops are grown in the rich soil, including potatoes. At the moment there is quite a lot of harvesting activity in the fields. In this picture two tractors are working together to get potatoes out of the ground and into a trailer.

This means there can be a lot of lorries transporting harvested crops around the roads at this time of year. The next picture shows what can happen on our country lanes. It looks as if the lorry has shed its load of potatoes when turning off the main road into the side road. The road was blocked in three directions to cars, fortunately bicycles could squeeze through.

On the way back I took another "green lane", the trick is not to get stuck in the bottom of the ruts, fortunately there were no unplanned dismounts this time. The Marin has mudguards and they tend to get clogged up with the mud which makes pedalling harder. Also the tyres are not the chunky sort of tyre you see on mountain bikes and you get quite a lot of wheel spin. On one bump my speedometer almost bounced out of its socket. (The speedo is how I keep track of my cycling it shows speed, time, distance etc for the journey

As I was heading back through Wicken Fen I could not resist this shot of the hazy sky above the trees, again exposed for the sky to give a silhouette effect for the trees.

The excitement hadn't finished though (look I don't normally see anything much when cycling), I could see a thick plume of smoke rising in the distance. It looked as if someone was burning a pile of tyres, which is not allowed here in the UK. As I got closer the flames looked huge and there seemed to be a large umber of onlookers driving up the country lane to get a better look. A short time later came the noise of sirens as two Fire Engines and a Fire Car came tearing through.

After passing all the excitement I came to this sight of the sun on the Autumnal (Fall) trees alongside a Lode (Fens' name for a small river) along another country lane - back to tranquility and another 64Km/40miles of "training" complete.