Riding for Ruhanga

Last night's blog didn't get published. Here it is.

Bank Holiday Monday; Emberton, Bucks
Started from Ickleton near Cambridge at 9.00 with notes as to the first part of the route, gleaned from a real paper map.. Should be 42 miles. Gigi is asked to join the game and suggests starting with a right turn out of the front door. Our hosts ask: "how, then, will you get across the M11?" Gigi remains mute. Never explain, never apologise, seems to be her motto. We start to the left. From Cambridgeshire we quickly find ourselves in Bedfordshire. There isn't much to say about Bedfordshire except that its A roads have little token spaces at the edge called cycle lanes. Not very fun. Sometimes even those fade out, leaving one trying to cycle on the white line to leave room for the other traffic. Luckily lorries have a day off. Starting at nine and with only 42 miles ahead, I express the view that we might reach our destination in time for lunch. We actually arrive at 5.00pm.

Some of you will want to know about the wildlife. It has been disappointing. Maybe twenty species of bird in a week, nothing extraordinary unless you count Parakeets.Mammals include hares, falloow and roe deer, hedgehogs, squirrel and rabbit, most of them dead on the road. Only seven species of butterfly. When we found our route took us past the RSPB headquarters at Sandy, Beds, I thought I might do better but nothing added there, despite reports of hobbies and a raven which did not show for me.

Talking of stuff dead on the road reminds me of a sign we saw one day: GO SLOW; TAKE CARE; STAY ALIVE. We've had some success with the last of those so far. Not sure about the others.

Another story from a few days back. We passed a sign saying: ROAD CLOSED. We rode on. Half a mile later another notice ROAD CLOSED AHEAD. We continued. Another half a mile and a sign stated ROAD CLOSED DUE TO WALL REBUILDING. Clearly they could not seriously close the entire road just for a wall, so on we went. Finally a hand-written notice "YES IT REALLY IS CLOSED" by which time we could see an enormous crane taking up every inch (the word "literally" comes to mind) of the road. Our faces fell but luckily there was a set of stairs over a bridge for pedestrians and we managed to struggle the laden bikes over rather than face a round trip of several extra miles. Not sure what the moral of the story is.

Oh, by the way, the journey was 46.61 miles, a mere 4 miles over the estimate.