back on the bike

after a bit of a hazy time what with work and mystery illness i lag far too long off the bike. i do get the rohloff winter/touring machine together but the bodging means a downhill tyre on the back which is just stupid and that's before the dodginess of the rohloff. the theory is good but the practicality cycles like a tractor.

but aside from all of that, whisper it, i've kind of gone off the mountain bike. maybe it's because i haven't bothered with the likes of the three tens or such like so far this year (who needs to cycle round the same old forest again and again) or maybe it's just because i'm enjoying my new bikes - the trek was instantly splendid, the bmc is becoming so. whatever this year the road is king.

so today i decide i'll go out in the afternoon for a cheeky wee fifty around all the steepest hills i know. and while i don't have to take the van to necessarily mountain bike the road bike provides a myriad of top routes straight from the door. i could wangle a bit of a sixty i think without having to compromise too much on main roads but beyond that for an afternoon trundle i'm not prepared to go.

i think i saw two cars off the main drag! and while there was little in the way of wildlife - a sea eagle and that was about it - the plantlife more than made up for it. it's wild raspberry season where i live so as soon as t came back from work we were straight back out again to harvest the fruits of my scouting mission. no-one here appears to eat them, preferring to spend a fortune on the frankly inferior product down the supermarket (i do have raspberries growing in the garden but the wild ones are better). we've had a bit of a gorge on these lately so t now has us putting them all away in the freezer so that come the long nights we can crack out some of the summer sun!

now we're just waiting for the blue berries, the brambles and the hips!