I am behind on my Posts, again. I have only just completed the Post (in three parts) of last Saturday's ride and here it is Saturday morning already and I have three drafts waiting for some words from rides during the week. When I go out cycling I always try to take a camera with me and then when I get back I put the pictures onto my computer along with a note of my distance/time/speed. At the same time I transfer the GPS data from my garmin and in a Windows Journal I jot down any odd things that happened during the ride.
Later, when I have some time, where there are HDR pictures (multiple exposures) I process them using Photomatix Pro 3.2. The processing can take a bit of time so if I have taken lots of (multiple exposure) pictures I generally do it as a background activity while doing something else. At this stage I also check the resulting "HDR" picture and try again if there are problems with any picture. (Sometimes if I have not held the camera steady enough there will be ghost images - when this happens I try again but instead of using 7 images I will use 3.) Next I use Adobe Photoshop Elements to stitch together any panoramic scenes, where I have taken a picture of part of a scene and then moved round to take the next bit of the scene and so on. This is useful for conveying a sense of how wide the skies of the flatllands of East Anglia really are.
I then use Picasa to look through the pictures and do a bit of tweaking of contrast and brightness, cropping and sharpening and then I review the edited pictures and select a sequence which then get exported to a new directory. The "exporting" forces the edit changes so I end up with a copy of the edited pictures should I wish to refer to them. Picasa does not normally writeback edit changes to pictures. I then load the pictures into a draft Post window using Zoundry Raven and publish it as a draft. (At this stage I choose a name for the Post and the theme.) This then downloads the pictures onto my Picasaweb account and depending upon the number of pictures can also take quite a long time - at 5 mins or so a picture it can take around an hour. Again I do this whilst doing other things - so I can keep an eye on it.
Then when I have a spare minute I open the draft Post for editing - along with the Journal window where I keep any notes on what happened on the ride. I use Windows Journal because it allows me to hand-write notes and diagrams using my Graphics Pad. Which makes it quicker and so easier to keep notes - otherwise my brain would forget the rides.
Being a Sunday after a long ride I popped out into the Fens, but this time I took my Longstaff Touring Bike because my Hybrid Marin was in need of some TLC. During yesterday's ride (Saturday) a few bolts fell out, bolts that hold the front sprockets (Cogs) together. The Marin has an upright ride position with flatter bars, whilst the Longstaff has drop handlebars and a more lean-forward position. The Longstaff is designed to be a comfortable mile-muncher and it certainly felt faster as I set off. Mind you I also noticed the differences in riding position - more weight falls on the arms and the steering was quicker on the Longstaff. The bike would change direction with less input on the handlebars, but it was precise and felt solid. The bike also had all its gears working - although there was a bit of clicking coming from around the pedal area. The Longstaff is quite capable of cycling along tracks although with the lean-forward position and faster steering it is not quite so comfortable to bounce along deeply rutted tracks so I stuck to the roads for my Sunday jaunt.
I set off out of Cambridge along Sustrans 51 then a detour around the back of Swaffham Bulbeck past the Old Abbey (on Abbey Lane) and onto White Droveway. As I cycled up to the bend at Cow Bridge I noticed a field full of Linseed - it seems to be one of the more popular crops to grow this year compared with the past few years. In fact I cannot remember ever seeing as many fields with Linseed growing in them.
Then as I cycled along to White Fen after passing through Lode I realised that the verges, which were full of summer flowers and grasses the last time I passed by, had been shorn This road does not really go anywhere, the verges are wide and there are very few vehicles it does not seem that important to maintain sight-lines. So I would imagine that the local Farmers have cut the verges, perhaps to minimise the spread of wild grass and flower seeds? A quick look on the Web and Lincolnshire County Council have some information on grass-cutting - none of it really mentions trying to avoid weed-seed dispersal. It does mention farmers cutting verges as a matter of civic pride. Indeed it is also possible that this approach helps maintain more diversity?
A few poppies were growing along the road out of White Fen just past Slade Farm. I assume that this has been seeded from the nearby Farm garden. Looking at the various pictures on the Wikipedia website it looks like an Opium Poppy (papaver somniferum) - in fact the article seems to suggest that most ornamental poppies are in fact Opium poppies with varying amounts of opiate in them. However it is not the growing but the extracting that is illegal in the UK. It also turns out that even though the seeds contain very low levels of opiates 4 poppy-seed bagels could cause the consumer to exceed the legal levels as indicated by urine analysis and this caused the limit for the legal levels to be increased (in the US).
As suggested by MikeC in a comment I then cycled along a road I have been past many times but never cycled along - Lord's Ground Drove. I had assumed that this was a farm drive (to Lord's Ground Farm) but it turned out to be longer and stops up at the River Cam having passed a few farms. This is a low-level view looking back down the Drove (looking South). I was lying on the ground with the zoom cranked up to give the tunnel perspective.
This picture was taken where the Drove crossed Commisioners' Drain. These Drains provide a useful and ready source of water for irrigation and the Farmers used big reels of hosepipe to "connect" the Drain to the fields.
This was growing down alongside the drain - it was the bluey-purple colour that stood out - it looks a bit like a Lupin - but is not. This time I used the UKWildflowers website to scan a bunch of pictures and then selected the couple that looked similar and hey presto - the flower is Vicia cracca - Tufted Vetch. Now vetch is something that grew in Somerset (where I grew up) - but not quite like this
A view I had not seen before - well not standing on this precise bit of road. As I cycled up the road seeing the countryside in a new way it made me smile. It even felt a bit weird, here was an area I knew well, I've cycled all around the outskirts of this small area - without quite realising how big it was.
After returning to my usual route, it was well, usual so I stopped taking so many pictures. Until I came to this strip of flowers growing on the outskirts of Wicken Village. I think they are Sweet Williams (Stinking Billys) or Dianthus barbatus. If you want to know why then follow the link. I am not sure why they grow small strips of Sweet Williams here - for flowers or for seed? Last year there were strips of flowers growing in the field on the other side of the road and included Sunflowers.
On the way back from Burwell through to Reach on Sustrans 51 (Weirs Drove) the grass cutting and grass turning had become baling. Although in my day we used to make smaller bales. I say we, actually the farmer in his baler, we lads used to sometimes help lug the bales around in the field and load the trailer. We would sometimes get to ride on top of the stack of bales on the trailer as it was towed out of the field. Not the sort of thing that would be allowed under today's Health and Safety regime. Of course there is no way we could have lifted round bales of the size in the picture - they would not have stacked so easily either..
After Reach I carried on round the back of the village to Little Fen Drove and at the Headlake Crossroads (I made up that name, the road is called Had lake Drove and crosses Little Fen Drove) I turned right and then headed down Split Drove to see how the Reach Lode Bridge was doing. Apart from the fact is has barriers and I believe there will also be some "fencing" on each side of the ramp it looks pretty complete - you can just see the tarmacked surface where the track goes over the Lode.
Alright here is a closeup. The scaffolding will be replaced with something more permanent. The actually curve of the bridge looks quite steep from this angle. You can see that there are what look like tyre tracks already on the earth ramp bit of the track. Just out of shot there was a small metal hut that appeared to have a Security guard inside - what a secluded job. I have never seen the guard out of the hut in other visits - he seems to sit inside.
Heading back along Split Drove it appears that some of the bigger ruts in the road have been filled with Tarmac.
On my way back through White Fen a cyclist had stopped at the picnic tables and was having a snack - it is good to see the picnic tables get a bit of use.
Also on my way back through Lode it was good to see that the water leak had been fixed. I reckon that a fair amount of water had been gushing out (think small gush) for about a week. It would also appear that the leak might have been on the householder's side of the meter. Mind you it is also possible that the meter was replaced because it had sprung a leak. The good thing is that it is fixed.
It was a pleasant spin - back to t-shirt and shorts compared with the previous day's drizzle and cold wind. I did find that my right shoulder twinged a bit from the less upright position on my drop-handled Touring bike. I am surprised that I still get twinges almost one and a half years from the time that my collar bone was broken. I think that you adapt to different positions and as I have ridden a few thousand miles pretty much on my Marin I was not adapting to the Longstaff quite so well.
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