fingers crossed, here goes!

A slightly more chilled week so far.

Monday was, if not perfect, at least mostly dry which encouraged me to a longer than usual route home from the supermarket. Sunday's walk had been a bit of a washout so I was glad of the extra exercise.

The forecast for Tuesday was bright with afternoon showers which seemed fair for a decent ride, what I've missed is the stiff wind and barely double figure temperature! I had a rough idea on the destination, Stroud, but departed without much idea of which way to go to get there so I found myself doing a bit of laneing for the first hour or so of the ride before settling on a less used singletrack lane to climb, quite steeply, up the Cotswold scarp. From there it was a sort of tailwind assist northwards before a bit of a loop through Avening and up to Minchinhampton where i decided to stop for my sandwiches.

I'd not been here before, its a pleasant little town but all is not quite as it first appears, the picturesque market hall is actually only a hundred years old and most of the surrounding housing etc dates from the 18/19th centuries. Food eaten, I set off for the return journey, first over the common then dropping steeply into the Frome (yes another one) valley to Stroud, following the valley west out to the Severn Vale. The persistent wind was now harborouring a few droplets of H2O and the first squall blew through as I transited Berkeley.

I decided on a fairly direct route back, no sense tempting fate, it stayed mostly dry back into Brunelville where a more determined shower wet me well for the last couple of K's. A little over 120km, almost 1000m climbing - not a bad day despite the damp.

Today's Gaby chapter is Ayacon!, Drew wins another race, there's fall out from the Hallowe'en dance, our hero gets some male cosplay characters and eats his Weetabix! Go on, have a read, you know you want to.

After lunch I'll go for a bit of a walk and hope the rain holds off - at least the washing is dry!

see you at the weekend,
bfn,
Madeline Anafrid

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