so its a late post - again!

Yep, this week is all out of kilter still, the forecasters seem to be struggling a bit so I've changed plans perhaps needlessly twice this week so far. Its an advantage, or perhaps not to not working a nine to five, I can easily adjust what I'm doing if the weather looks dodgy or something else crops up. On the other hand, when you are restricted by work you tend to force yourself out when its maybe not ideal, either that or miss out. I suppose you could argue that its a bit soft, missing the cold and wet days but let me tell you, I've done more than my fair share of riding in those conditions, its not fun and its not like I never get caught out by the weather - Sundays snow for example!

So what have I been up to so far this week? Well Monday was a bit of a catch up day, chores, a short walk then a few hours of writing. It wasn't as much as I'd hoped but I did stop early to make a Vindaloo for me an' Bev - it was okay but not as blistering hot as you get in restaurants.

Tuesday should and could've been a bike day but the forecast was for wet through the day so I literally took 'a rain cheque'. Having nixed a bike ride I ended up on a longer walk then it was back to the KB to finish another Gaby chapter before calling it a day - well I thought Tuesday was appropriate.

And so to today. The forecasters reckoned it would be grey with a westerly wind so I picked a route to make use of that feature - yep, down to Weston SM again and a different variant for the return. By the time I reached the coast the forecasters were made liars again, the sun was out and it was quite pleasant eating my sandwiches on the prom. A 2D map suggests several west-east routes from WSM to the Avon valley, what is not immediately obvious is that each of them involve some often 'testing' hill climbing, not necessarily rising a lot but little stinkers nevertheless. The easiest is the most northerly, up over the airport but I did that last week and I used the middle route along the WSM - Bath road the time before so I decided on the 'Mendip' route.

This bobbles along the southern edge of the line of hills that stretch from the Mendip proper to Brean Head just south of WSM, before climbing in a series of draggy climbs up onto the Mendip Massif, that lump of limestone that runs from Cheddar in the west to Midsommer Norton in the east. even with some wind assistance its not an easy ride, a climb of several miles in total which gains @ 250m by the nominal top. Its not flat when you get to the 'top', all the roads bouncing across the landscape, again, not steeply but sometimes a bit more steeply than it looks.

I didn't go all the way to Midsommer but instead followed the A39 Bath road on its lumpy route towards the Avon. It stayed bright all afternoon and, if not warm, it was at least in positive degrees c even on my arrival at base. 135km, 1144m of ascent, not an easy ride by any standard but a day when it would've been easy to get sucked into extra km's, indeed, whilst tired I could have coped with another hour - as long as there wasn't too much climbing!

The Haircut Incident, chapter 12 of The Visitors, is todays Gaby offering - the title gives a bit of a clue to the content, but there's more to keep you amused.

Well that's about it for today, next post on Sunday.
Tschuss,
Madeline Anafrid

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