My Marin, which does duty as my main winter bike was nice and clean this morning - the first time in a while, as I had hosed it down last night. The reason was that there were a few things that needed fettling on it. (Speedometer, mudguards, brakes - nothing too important!). Unfortunately I woke with a headache this morning, which is unusual for me and lowers my determination to tackle chores. I ended up spending the morning reading the Sunday papers and by lunchtime feeling quite guilty as the sun was shining and it was almost warm - around 5C.
So I took a couple of paracetamol and wondered what the minimum amount of fettling I could get away with was before setting of into the winter sun. Yesterday I had broken my speedometer - there is a magnet attached to a spoke on the front wheel along with a sensor on the fork which then sends a pulse up to the speedometer on the handlebars for each rotation of the wheel. However the sensor had become dislodged by the huge amounts of gloopy mud I had cycled through and in my determination I had snapped one of the clips on the sensor so that it dangled down into the wheel. Fortunately there was room for a zip-tie to fix it back onto the fork mounting and stop any dangerous dangling. It occurred to me that the broken rear mudguard - its attachment to the rear set stay bridge had finally snapped - could also be secured with a similar zip-tie. After that burst of maintenance I figured the brakes were not too bad for the flatlands and set of up a hill!
I like to be able to keep things going with a bit of fettling in order to extract the maximum benefit before resorting to replacement.
The sun was shining and the sky was blue with one of two interesting clouds in the sky so I decided to head for the nearest - well quite near hill in order to be able to look back down towards Cambridge. I am not sure what the hill is called - the nearest name on the 1:50000 OS map is Allington hill - but it is where the A1305 crosses the A14. You can follow a Bridleway that heads on down to Six Mile Bottom and various directions from there. After yesterday I did not really want any more mud so after stopping to take some pictures I stuck to the road. The sign in the photograph is pointing out the Bridleway. The clouds really did look like that - this picture has been generated from seven pictures and has a soft look, probably because I could not hold the camera still between the pictures being taken.
The same clouds taken from the Swaffham Heath road - on the map this footpath appears to head back over the A14 just after the A14 and A11 combine. I must check it out sometime, I wonder whether they expect walkers to run across the dual carriageway or if there is a tunnel?
A bit further on the Swaffham Heath road at another bridleway, you can see the pylons marching across to the south of Cambridge to an electricity sub-station and Stocking Pelham.
My route took me up where it gets flatter to Upware - near a map contour or 0m - as you can imagine it is easily flooded. I've not taken this picture before, but the sun was so golden that I stopped. The reason I have not taken the shot is because of the telegraph poles crossing the floodwater. This time I made it part of the picture.
When I used Photomatix to combine the seven pictures it complained that not all the pictures had the correct sequence of exposure. I have not gotten to the bottom of the problem yet. But it might be because the sun was so bright that the camera could not take sufficiently fast pictures. As pictures taken afterwards did not cause the same problems. I must try the technique using only three exposures - it would be quicker to process and save storage space. I find that taking pictures is eating up disk space at the moment. A few pictures can easily eat up 1Gb of disk. My picture storage now takes up 170Gb and I am shortly going to scan old pictures and put them on my system which will eat up a whole bunch more space.
I had to take a picture of Baker's Fen alongside Wicken Fen on my way through. Being a Sunday, despite it being quite dark there were quite a few families out walking with dogs and prams and children. A bit more care is required when cycling and I did think that my brakes really were getting a bit weak when a dog jumped out in front and then a youngster - no contact was made though. What I like about this picture is the soft pink - when I had gotten here the sun had set.
I stopped to take a picture on the new bridge crossing Swaffham Bulbeck Lode - by this time it was quite dark and I had both front lights and a rear light on. I rested the camera on the bridge to hold it stable when taking the pictures. The longest exposure was for 3.2seconds. The resulting picture does have the right feel - although it appears lighter than it really was.
By the time I got home it was quite dark - but my headache had gone and the bike had held up - I really must replace the brakes blocks though.
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