Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The pedal pushing continues - Bath

Although the weather is very changeable I have been taking every opportunity to nip out on the bicycle for at least an hour or so. As I have said before riding in the cold for too long (actually 2.5hours) and my feet turn to ice. I have been able to get longer rides as well on the warmer days though. I have also been using my Longstaff touring bike since its return from "Chris's Bikes" for fettling.

I have been down to Bath for meetings for a couple of days last week and of course taken my bike down as well in the car :-( If I choose to go by trainthen it means trying to book my bike a slot on the London to Bath train or taking my Brompton either way carting the stuff I need for the meetings on the bike is a pain.) On arrival at the hotel (Queensbury) they offer valet parking, which means there is nowhere to park and they take the car off to some side street "nearby". So I nipped in changed and then set off on my bike whilst they took my car off to be parked
For the ride I popped over to Bristol. This was the third time on the route, I chose it because it is pretty flat, except for where it goes over the hills into Bristol (and up to the hotel in Bath!). As mentioned before I ride along the Bristol Bath (http://www.bristolbathrailwaypath.org.uk/home.shtml). It is traffic free pretty much all of the way and fairly picturesque. As the weather was not too good with rain forecast, the route itself was not as busy as the last time I cycled along it. The route also seemed to have been swept since the last time as there were few slippery leaves left on the path. In fact the only problems I had were dog related. Actually they were related to dog owners rather than the dogs. One chap had his dog on a lead and the path was wide with a white line to segregate the pedestrians from the cyclists, but for some reason he though it was a good idea to let his dog lunge right across the path towards me.

At another point a family out walking started getting a bit frantic just as their dog, not on a lead this time, popped out in front of me, nothing a quick swerve couldn't fix, but it was close as it was a big dog. When I returned to the hotel as my car was apparently some way off in some random Bath street they also valet parked my bicycle. In fact it ended up in their wine cellar. It's the first time I have had a bicycle valet parked. Both "vehicles" got returned safely when I checked out the next day.

I have also cycled up to Kings Lynn for my longest cycle run of the year (112kms/70miles), On the way through the Fens, White Fen actually, I passed 6 deer running across the path, too quick for me to stop and take a photograph. I also passed a Heron which I often see on the bank of one of the ditches, normally it flies off straight away. This time it didn't so I turned round to take a photograph, when of course it flew off.

Here is the Great river Ouse just the other side of the Ely railway station.

Later on I took this picture of the night sky at Wicken Fen. The exposure time was 2 seconds, I used a fence post and the timer on the camera to keep it steady.

I have also been exploring parts of the Sustrans routes that I have not cycled along. I have been trying out parts of the Sustrans 30 route, in this case the off-road route bit near Southery. I did wear my helmet as the tracks can be quite tricky as in this part of the world they are often paths alongside fields and used by the tractors to move from field to field and can be quite churned up.

In Cambridge the Sustrans' routes are generally very well signposted in other parts that signing is much patchier, and when a route goes off-road it can be almost impossible to find. I was planning on downloading the route to my Edge GPS but in the end decided to rely on a quick study of the map and then to follow my nose. First there was the 48Km/30mile cycle to get there . Where Sustrans routes go off-road there are normally alternate routes on the road as well. In this case the OS map indication was out of date, but the actual route was signed and was near by the place I had expected it to be. I used a website called http://www.bikehike.co.uk/mapview.php which shows a google map in one pane and an OS map in another pane, allowing routes to be created from either the OS map and/or satellite views.

I did not manage to stick to all of the off-road route but managed a reasonable portion of it. It was quite late and a reasonable distance to cycle back home again so I did not want to spend too much time exploring dead ends in muddy fields. As you can see in the composite picture some of the tractor tracks were quite reasonable even after the recent rain here. Although the track did follow a thinner path at one point with quite a few large ruts almost blocking the path in places. It all adds to the fun but does require concentration (and makes wearing a helmet very sensible). The photograph is made up of four pictures and is where the path turns at right angles, it was very bright and not too windy and of course traffic free - well actually not quite there were two lads out on small motorbieks and one other cyclist.

The path then rejoined the road before once again offering an off-road alternative, although there did not appear to be a signpost for this bit of the route the map on my GPS device did indicate it was heading in the right direction. This path was actually made up of concrete slabs, but because the soil suffers from shrinkage around here there were quite a few gaps between the slabs. There were even passing places laid out on the path, not that I saw any other traffic around on this section.

The route then took me back past three military installations, Feltwell with its large golfballs and two airbases; Lakenheath and Mildenhall. Nothing was flying on Sunday though, I have been past when 6 or so F16 (I think) fighters took off - the noise is incredibly loud, much louder than seeing a passenger jet take off.

Although it is a route I use quite often to get to Thetford it looks quite different going the other way and I did get a little lost and had to resort to checking the map on the GPS screen.

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