The Bike of Bodmin

I haven't ridden long distance before and I am keen to try and do some bike packing at some point, so locked in an explore around Bodmin, the region my ancestors came from before heading off to NZ. I did a lot of up hill walking, but to be honest, Im not ashamed of it, and I don't think it undermined the nature of the trip - I definitely went further than I can do on foot, and it was good to meander through a part of the world that is still pretty sparsely occupied.

I saw a lot of squirrels and at one point swallowed a moth. It was about 55km (on top of a 5km ride to the train station), and I found the wind was more trouble than the hills were. I reckon I can do something like this again, which is nice to know. 
















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to Cornwall

Image
 My very kind housemate took me to Tintagel today - where we were able to meet her parents and go for a walk.  I was post night shifts so half in a fug and not going anywhere in a hurry - but the track seemed made for that pace, ambling up and over ridges and gullies with the ocean horizon stretching wide from the GCHQ spy satellite outcrop in the north (Near Bude), past a wee island with puffins on (Lundy), and out to the vastness west from there.  (It was strange knowing that Ireland is somewhere "out there" *Waves arm*).  It was about an hours drive west from Exeter, a real treat to get out and explore without much brain power required on my part (but lots of careful planning from the master picnickers, Rebecca and her folks). Tintagel is a lovely wee tourist town that is pretty empty at the moment, awaiting the formal lifting of lockdown that will allow people to wander inside the sweet and craft shops, to buy crystals or pay for a photo of your aura (!). Tintage...
Read more

Attempts at Surfing in Newquay

Image
 Once again I was hosted by my housemates parents, incredibly kind people who used to run their house as a B&B and went all out to spoil us - with food and accommodation and kindness and insistence that we stay out of the kitchen and not worry about the sand that somehow would still flitter everywhere despite dusting everything off before we left the beach or entered the house. I felt like a teenager and ate like it too... We were booked into a two day surfing lesson with  Women + Waves , a company I can definitely recommend. I appreciated that on the second day when I was pretty much tapped out (I couldn't lift my body off the board anymore without pain), the coach was still encouraging but also didn't put pressure on. She had a good sense of humour and was really skilled, some of the folk were up out the back on green waves by the second day. It was just really nice to be in the water, seeing the sun strike through the waves, casting shadows and light on the sand below. ...
Read more

Otter (but actually beaver) town

Image
I feel very lucky to have housemates that are so keen on the outdoors. On another post-nights adventure, I got taken to Otterton, near east Budleigh where Eurasian Beavers have been re-introduced to Devon.   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_beaver https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/06/englands-first-wild-beavers-for-400-years-allowed-to-live-on-river-otter https://www.devonwildlifetrust.org/what-we-do/our-projects/river-otter-beaver-trial Even without the beaver-chewed trees, dams and promise of the large rodents; it was an incredible dusk to be out in. The sun set over the hills past some dairy farms, there were pheasants in the fields. Crows were gathering in the sky above a stand of huge trees full of nests and a cormorant came into land on the perfectly smooth water of the river that reflected the banks’ red dirt and white flowering bushes. People were walking down the wide dirt path, some clearly just doing their usual daily walk, others were ...
Read more