Fly-tipping on the Sustrans 51 Route

At the weekend I was out on my Mountain bike, although I probably ought to call it my By-way bike since that is where I end up on it - no mountains in the Flatlands of East Anglia - there are one or two hills but when I find whenever I visit a hillier part of the country I realise that even our hills aren't that hilly. When using my GPS it is not unusual to see the 0 metre contours on the display.

There is a interesting by-way that runs alongside the A11 and then joins up with the Sustrans 51 Route between Burwell and Exning. It is rather noisy because of the A11 but I never see a soul on the By-way and do not have to suffer boy racers who seem to think it is perfectly reasonable to whizz past a cyclist with inches (centimetres) to spare. I keep thinking about getting a helmet-cam - but my kids think that would be way too geeky, it would make for interesting evidence if I get knocked off again. Mind you what should I go for forward-facing or backward-facing - perhaps both!

One of the more pleasant aspects of Sustrans routes is that they are on quieter roads, the downside is that these country lanes are the sort of lanes that stupid lazy plonkers use to tip their rubbish. Here some idiot kindly tipped their rubbish on the exit of the By-way, you can just about see the sign to the right of the picture. Perhaps they wanted to add an interesting obstacle to make up for the lack of hills.

You can see that the laziness means that the rubbish is barely off the road.

In fact within a short distance there was some more. I am not sure whether it was tipped by the same idiot or not, but again it is pretty close to the road.

In fact within 800 metre/ 1/2 mile there were three piles of rubbish. Here is the third pile. This time the fly-tipper has managed to get it further from the road, in fact it looks as if they reversed in and hoiked it of the back of their vehicle. Whilst this is annoying for road-users the farmers end up having to pay to get rid of the rubbish because it becomes their responsibility and they have to pay landfill tax.

The unpleasantness aside the weather was gorgeous - Sunny blue skies not much wind and set to last for a few days. I am having to put sun-tan lotion on to protect my skin at the moment. Here is a picture of one of the Windmills at Wicken Fen - this is inside the National Trust property. It would have been used to pump water to drain the fens, one of the reasons I can cycle at 0 metres, there are electric pumping stations now though.

To finish on the subject of fly-tipping (illegal rubbish dumping) a lot of the places that have had rubbish dumped had had signs put up warning that offenders will be prosecuted and that they might use cameras to gather evidence. It seems to be working, in that I have not seen rubbish tipped where there are signs. Perhaps that is why this short stretch of road has suffered - no warning signs.