Sunday was not a bad day for a bit of rough-ish-track cycling, it was reasonably sunny and not windy compared with Saturday. I went out on my hybrid rather than my MTB and so was looking for reasonable tracks rather than a challenge.. Not that you get too much that is really challenging, although Thetford Forest is good for a range of cycling levels. This track runs alongside the A11, where it splits from the A14 towards Six Mile Bottom. I would embed a map, but Zoundry Raven seems to have problems with "iframe"s. (How the editor inserts the code to display the Google Maps link so that it displays properly on the Blog page. I think I might get my self a book on XHTML coding to see if I can work out an alternate way of doing it.)
Here is a link to the Google Map view.
Normally I rarely see many people on these paths, although they look fairly well used, with evidence of cyclists and horses. Today I saw a cyclist who was also carrying around a camera and taking pictures. I think he was a little suspicious of me - wondering why I was taking his picture.
The track I took heads towards Great Wilbraham, where there is a "junction" this path is a permitted path, I must check what is allowed along it - it leads back to a road so could be an interesting detour.
From the same vantage point, but taken with a "wide angle" , the "junction" with blue skies and white puffy clouds. Although we had some rain the night before the ground is so dry it seems to have vanished without a trace.
After Great Wilbraham I headed to Fulbourn by road and then took a "no through road" called the Babraham Road. I certainly heads in the general direction of Babraham, but does not provide a route for motorists. I used it to reach the Roman Road which it intersects and then headed back towards Cambridge. Once again I saw cyclists on the path - here they are. It was so dry that the path had turned very dusty which in places was deep enough to cause a few moments on my thin tyres. (compared with an MTB)
The Roman Road ended when it met Wort's Causeway, where a male car driver whizzed by me with inches to spare. I was sufficiently shaken by the close encounter that I felt the need to shake my fist at him as he shot off into the distance. He must have been doing 60MPH to my 30MPH but was at least paying attention to his rear view mirror 'cos he stopped further down the hill. Now I refused to be intimidated and carried on down where I slowed as I passed him and calmly pointed out that he was way to close to me when he overtook. He nodded and wound his window back up. At this point he was now behind me and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled a little bit. Would my encounter cause road rage? It is now fun being hit by a car - I know. To the guy's credit he overtook me with a reasonable distance between us. Let's hope that encounter has saved him and some poor cyclist from some future pain.
The last and next pictures are of the Cambridge Busway taken from a bridge on Long Road. It has still to be finished. The first picture show it heading off towards Addenbrooke's Hospital while the second show it heading back towards Cambridge and the Railway Station. You can see the railway tracks to the right.. To the right (1st picture) and left 2nd picture you can see a rough track to the side which I believe is going to be the shared cycle/walking path. I am not sure if this is going to be tarmac'd and it must head towards another bridge before it rejoins the Busway.
The pleasant weather continued - here is an old railway track with a few walkers in the distance - no sign of the overnight rain though.
This type of track would actually be a reasonable compromise in terms of quality of surface for a moderate commute - the benefits of being away from cars outweigh the extra effort required to cycle.
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