Oops!

Tuesday October 5: Work stuff got in the way of cycling yesterday. Although I work from home, which straightaway saves on commuting time it can sometimes be hard to translate that into cycling time. In fact when I had to travel to work it was almost easier to get some cycling in as it was a journey that had to happen and given that the drive and ride were not too dissimilar in length not a real challenge. Although on one journey home my Boss was wondering what on earth I was doing - when I answered his call - there was a lot of heavy breathing apparently. Nowadays I let my calls go through to voice-mail and then answer them when I have a rest.

The other good thing was that it was a regular two rides a day. The downside was that it was the same start point and destination and although I used to vary the route and the varying seasons helped it got a little boring. On a good day I would add an extra 32Km/20 miles to the journey in, but I usually headed straight home. We had showers and it was actually very refreshing to get an hours exercise in the early morning, shower and then be at my desk ready for whatever the day brought. The other challenge was if I did it regularly it was easy, if I stopped for a few days then it got harder to re-start.

I mentioned seeing a couple of Chinook helicopters being carried on Flatbed trucks when taking my son of to University last Friday. I also did not have a photograph to hand to illustrate the Post with. Well it turns out that unlike punctures which stay in my memory for too long I had completely forgotten taking this picture of a Chinook in March 2010 whilst riding along the Cambridge Guided Busway (CGB). I know it is not the best of pictures - but it is one of mine.

In what seems like hardly any time at all October has started and it seems I have forgotten all about my plan to take part in the Oxford to Cambridge cycle ride - unlike "over 1,000 hardy cyclists". It was on Sunday and the wind would have been favourable - never mind there is always next year! So for pictures here is me at the finish of ride I did earlier - 22nd June 2003 to be precise. Me at the end of cycling from Land's End to John O' Groats and yes that is what the sign in the background says. Flip I was a bit thinner then and my hair was blacker. The picture was taken on my mobile, which is why it is a bit blurry, I was not such a compulsive camera carrier in those days. That is my Longstaff - less than two months old at the time - now it has around 70,000Km/40,000 miles on the clock. If you ever get the chance to do LeJoG take it is is a wonderful way to travel the country - one of the best holiday experiences I have had. Every day I sent an email update to my family so they could see where I had gotten to. (That got replaced with a Blog for later cycle rides.)

Whilst on a nostalgia trip here is a more recent photograph - the start of one of the Norwich 100s I took part in. This was around June 2008. The great thing about digital photography is that all of these "memories" are to hand. I am going to have to get better at cataloguing my pictures though. In the end I searched my Outlook calendar to find out when each of these events took place and then went to the pictures taken around those dates.

Whilst on good news - the recent Cambridge Police open day returned stolen bikes to their owners, well six during the day anyway. It also seems that there are going to be fewer lorries in villages such as Sutton, Haddenham and Wilburton which is both a good thing for people living in those villages and for cyclists, assuming they don't then end up on other country lanes. (The lorries not the cyclists.) The picture is of the Church in the village of Sutton - taken in the Summer.

There were also a couple of pieces about the River Cam with concerns about scruffy boats to moor for free and a plan to get rid of nuisance quad bikers. The boats don't seem too bad to me compared with some along the Kennet and Avon canal although perhaps the real issue is fee avoidance or rather as it is unclear who owns the bit of mooring who should actually charge mooring fees. Actually I am not sure it isn't about "scruffiness" with complaints about noisy generators and wood-smoke. On the matter of Quad bikes - I have not actually seen any on the Cam tow-path but do see various motor-bikes being ridden (sometimes without a helmet) on various paths and byways from time to time. Here is a quiet and peaceful River Cam.

And finally the "Final beam is laid on guided busway" that is the only bit of good news in the article though. Apparently the total damages for late delivery has now reached £8m and there are a number of unresolved issues on the Southern Stretch as well as the six known issues on the Northern bit. This is a bit of the Southern bit taken a while ago - definitely not finished then.