Taking two bikes out in one go on a Gloomy Day

Yet another gloomy day, with a damp feel to it - but not really windy and certainly not as cold as it has been. As yesterday's cycle ride with my son was cut short because one of his skinny tyres punctured after about 10miles I lent him one of my bikes - with Schwalbe Marathon Plus (I think) tyres. Actually he had a choice between my Longstaff with the afore mentioned tyres or my old MTB (Diamondback) with fat and knobbly tyres of some make. In the end he chose the Longstaff as it has a bigger frame. It was built for me and so fits me perfectly, he is a couple of inches taller than me though and found the Longstaff tolerable. We could have fiddled around and made it fit better, but it would have probably been easier fixing his punctured tyre. Mind you the Longstaff is a touring bike and so more capable of dealing with the rutted country roads and farm tracks than his Trek racing bike.

What this did mean though is that I went out with two of my bikes, the Longstaff and I used my Marin hybrid. We went out to Wicken Fen the longish way through White Fen, but no puncture this time and then along Headlake Drove. We ended up on a byway junction near the village of Wicken Fen on the Soham side. I wanted to take a picture of Ely Cathedral, but it was too gloomy and even at maximum zoom I could not see the Cathedral. Here is Ben checking his txts whilst I take pictures.

This picture is similar to others I have taken in this area before, although not identical. Even combining several exposures has not really lifted the picture - it still intrigues me that it is quite common to see bits of farming equipment, abandoned to rust in sheds in corners of fields.

It was dark on the way home, the surprising thing is that despite Cambridge being a very congested place, on a bike it is not too difficult to avoid the noisy congested areas, if you have the time to take a detour. We managed around 30miles/50Km with only one stop to clear mud out from the mudguards and this was mud picked up from the roads where farm traffic was working. I did notice that my rear light on the Longstaff was in need of a bit of cleaning - it flickered more than it was supposed to.