After my cycle up to St Ives and back on the route of the Cambridge Guided Busway (CGB) I felt absolutely knackered - admittedly I have had 9 days of from cycling, but I did go out walking most of the non-cycling days. As I set off late i also maintained a reasonable pace, for me, both into the wind and with the wind behind me as I had set off late and did not want to be out for too long. I felt so tired that I thought I might be sickening and rested on Friday, after a slightly uncomfortable night. Fortunately rest was all I needed, on Saturday I felt fine and although I went for my routine cycle ride around Wicken Fen my cycling pace was good and I also did a fair amount of cycling up and down dead-ends just for the fun of it. Mind you it was probably helped by the weather - it was a lovely still day and the temperature was up to around 10/11C. As it gets warmed you need to wear fewer layers of clothing - when I returned from my CGB run my t-shirt was soaked with sweat and in hindsight I probably suffered a little from forced dehydration. This time around I wore less and thinner clothing and did not have any over-heating problems.
The onset of Spring seems to have slowed down a little as the weather had changed from unseasonably warm to unseasonably cold. I'll be great to see the leaves back on the trees. Closer to Cambridge the trees and hedges have more green tinging them but out in the Fens I guess as it is a little less sheltered the temperature is a little lower. There are lots of daffodils around though in the villages.
When you know an area you tend to take it for granted, however when my Mum was staying she was surprised how little litter there was around the villages and how many thatched cottages there still are - and there are. I am not sure I would ever want a house with a thatched roof but they do look picturesque. As I cycled through Lode adjacent to the National Trust anglesey Abbey estate you don't just see one or two you see clusters of them. Actually it should not really be a surprise - you expect to see older buildings constructed from local materials and in the Fens Sedge is pretty common. Here are some of the Lode Thatched cottages.
These all seem to have a protective covering of wire mesh - presumably to stop birds nesting in it? Although I do not have a picture, there is a similar cottage on the Wicken Fen estate with information describing how such cottages were constructed.
Another Thatched Cottage in Lode - this one is opposite the church with a yellow wash to match the daffodils growing in the grass in front.
This drainage ditch does not have a name, but is adjacent to Swaffham Poor's Fen and is at the end of White Fen Droveway. Normally I would have turned off to cycle along the "new" route through White Fen (part of the Lodes Way Sustrans/NT Connect2 route). You can see Spring is on its way from the green in this clump of trees and bushes.
I did pop up to see whether there was any more progress on the new Lodes Way bridge across Reach Lode. For a no through road this route (Split Drove) gets a fair bit of traffic at the moment. What with construction traffic and farm traffic at a busy time of year. The field on the left is full of leaks.
The leak locusts have been busy - it is a bit like brining the factory to the field. Probably quite a tough and monotonous job though
Most of the fields around here are on to the next stage of cultivation and having "plastic" sheeting to warm the soil in order to accelerate the growth of whatever has been sown. This particular piece of farm machinery has been busy - it was on the other side of the road the last time I saw it.
In fact the last fields that I saw the red "plough" on were these - now they have been covered in strips of material which apparently warms the soil but is biodegradable and degrades as the crops start to come through.
No pictures of Wicken Fen, I am trying to look afresh at other aspects of my route. Here is Burwell Baptist Chapel, now a listed building, Grade II, it was built after 1842.
I could not resist taking a few more pictures of Swan lake Grain Store on the outskirts of Reach. I am intrigued as to how it got the name - do Swan's roost nearby? A quick search on the web only highlighted concern about young people "burning rubber" on the site.
Looking back up towards Barston Bridge I liked the juxtaposition of this Warning Sign and the Plough/Seed Drilling machine just of the road. The warning actually applies to a bit of the road in Reach where it runs through ninety degrees in between two cottages.
No leaves on the trees along Swaffham Bulbeck Lode on the edge of White Fen.
A remnant of the disused Cambridge to Mildenhall railway in a field just down the road from the old Bottisham and Lode Railway Station. It is not that unusual to see old carriages like this around old railway lines - did they just get abandoned - I guess so many lines were closed down that there was a surfeit of rolling stock and it was not worth collecting them all up.
A footpath joins this track which is marked as Lodemoor Drove (track) on the map. The lode in front is Bottisham Lode.
This is a more natural form of traffic calming - a wibbly and bumpy road alongside a wibbly lode - cars tend not to speed along here.
That cycle ride was quite a relief - it was quite fast, certainly faster than the CGB ride the day before, the day before (intentional repeat there) and I felt OK at the end of it - looks like I am not sickening - just unfit!
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