I’ve put my wildlife camera back out a few times after it started working again. No return of the badgers yet, but plenty of foxes, including this one who wandered onto the patio one morning after it had got light, apparently to investigate the camera.
Wednesday was another dual Run for Coffee/Run for Beer day, with the latter being in Holbrook for Alec’s birthday (and a slightly lazy four miles). We went to the Swan, which doesn’t do food but was happy for us to bring our own pizza.
Run for CoffeeRun for Beer
On Friday I went to a bonfire party in Anders’s field. There were a few people from work there, plus loads of people I don’t know. In my usual style, I didn’t speak to many strangers, but made friends with the neighbours’ cat.
On Sunday I got dragged out for another long bike ride, this time to the beer festival at the Lindsey Rose (plus brief visits to smaller beer festivals at the White Horse in Edwardstone and the Duke of Marlborough in Somersham. Slightly shorter than last week, at 40 miles, and lots of fun including sumo wrestling and some impromptu racing round a cycle speedway track.
White HorseRoseRobin thrashing me at sumoRob and Dave reliving their cycle speedway days
Along with a few friends I’d got tickets a few weeks ago for a double bill of Terminator and Robocop at the local independent cinema on Friday (despite having watched both of them at home quite recently). Unfortunately I’d failed to register that it was no longer a few weeks ago, or in fact any weeks ago, and only twigged that I’d forgotten to go at around the time the first film was finishing. I did at least manage to leap on my bike and get into town in time for the start of Robocop (actually in plenty of time for the interminable adverts for mobile phones, broadband and joining the army). It’s still an entertaining film, and I’m increasingly of the opinion that it should correctly be classified as a comedy.
After a slow parkrun on Saturday we had the return of the friendly FRR vs Framlingham Flyers track challenge. It was split into three races based on estimated time, and I opted for the sub-21-minute race, despite not having actually run 5k inside 21 minutes for a while. Sadly the expected benefit of a running track didn’t materialise, and I felt pretty awful for most of it, coming in at around 21:30 – barely any quicker than last week’s parkrun. Still, most of us decamped to the pub afterwards, which was much more enjoyable. It turned out that we’d tied on points, but they gave it to us on the basis of having won all three races.
Where’s everybody gone?
On Sunday I’d somehow been talked into a 50 mile bike ride, starting with a large breakfast and a pint (!) at the Cricketers, then out to the pub in Laxfield that we’d been to on the Camra pub crawl, via the Railway in Framlingham. It was a nice day and actually didn’t feel too strenuous, despite me being on my fixed-gear gravel bike and everyone else on their fancy road machines.
Glen, Jo, Dave, Rob, JJ, me & Ade, somewhere near Clopton
Funnily enough, as I braked to a stop outside my garage I looked down at my watch and saw it tick over from 49.99 to 50.00 miles (although Strava decided to trim it back down to 49.99, which will at least annoy the rounder-uppers). That might be my longest ride since that time in 1990 when I decided to ride my mountain bike home from Birmingham to Totton (132 miles), straight down the A34.
I can’t remember much of interest happening in the early part of the week, but this weekend I actually went away for the first time in quite a while – back home to Totton (between Southampton and the New Forest) for Tim’s 50th birthday hog roast. The weekend itself was excellent, but the journey there not so much.
I’d decided to drive rather than getting the train, and set off after filling up with petrol at around 11am, hoping to miss the rush hour traffic. Things didn’t start too well, with a queue just to get off the A14 onto the A12 at Copdock, then there were a couple of sections of roadworks on the A12. Then more hold-ups on the M25 (no surprise there) and M3. That’s where it started to go seriously wrong though, with messages about part of the M27 being closed starting to appear on the matrix signs (it turned out later that there had been a serious accident). Google Maps offered to take me on a couple of alternative routes that it said would save three or four minutes, but for that small a difference it didn’t seem worth it, especially as there were big queues to turn off. Eventually I did leave the motorway somewhere around Eastleigh, and followed the satnav directions towards Romsey. This ended up with me sitting in completely gridlocked traffic for about an hour and a half to get into the town (the kind of jam where you switch your engine off, wait a few minutes, switch it back on and move a couple of car lengths, then repeat). I did vaguely consider parking and walking to the train station, but there were warnings of strike disruption and the train didn’t really go where I wanted to be anyway (the fact that I had time to look this stuff up during stationary periods says a lot). Eventually I made it out the other side, where things started moving again, but with about five miles to go, and for some reason best known to itself, Google told me to turn off onto a B road, which narrowed to almost single track just in time for me to encounter more stationary traffic. After waiting quite a while with no movement (and briefly abandoning the car to nip into a hedgerow as I hadn’t stopped at the services and at this point I’d been in the car for nearly seven hours!) someone who’d walked up the queue a bit said they’d spoken to a driver who’d been there for two hours. By then if there had been anywhere to leave the car I’d have happily abandoned it and run the last bit. By a stroke of luck I was stopped just in front of a field entrance, and was able to reverse in, turn round and squeeze past the queue, with two wheels bashing along on the verge, desperately trying to avoid them falling into the ditch. Once back on the main road again it turned out there was only a short delay at the roundabout, then I was pretty much there, arriving at Phil’s at around 6.30.
After a coffee and a walk to the chip shop for some tea, we cycled over to Tim & Michelle’s for a few Friday beers, then got up early on Saturday to walk to Bartley Park parkrun, which is handily only about a mile from Phil’s place. Phil had agreed to join me, despite only running about once a year (mostly when I’ve dragged him along to events when one of us has visited the other). Jeremy and another Phil, who are both more frequent runners, also came along, and we enjoyed a blast round quite a nice two lap route making good use of a fairly small park. The only downside was a couple of out-and-back hairpins round cones that you obviously have to do twice each, but while not exactly flat it’s definitely flatter than Ipswich, and I managed to finish in 10th place with 21:38.
Phil’s cat, Nipper, lounging in the Land Rover
The rest of the day was spent pottering around helping Simon collect some second-hand scaffold poles and Phil dismantle his Land Rover carb to confirm that it was flooding because of a leak in the float, then it was back to Tim & Michelle’s for an evening of Ringwood beer, roast hog and chatting with lots of people I’ve known for 30 or 40 years and see far too rarely. I successfully avoided crashing Phil’s fancy gravel bike as we wended our way back along the wiggly cycle path afterwards (through the same park we’d run round earlier)./
On Sunday I stopped off in Southampton to take my dad (who I also don’t see often enough) out for a pub lunch, before embarking on the journey home. That started poorly, taking two hours to cover the first 40 miles to Fleet services thanks to accidents on the M3. There were a few delays on the M25 too, plus on the A12 which was closed for roadworks at Marks Tey, and it ended up taking over five hours to get home (which didn’t seem so bad after Friday). It’s no wonder I never go anywhere!
At least the car mostly behaved itself on its longest journey yet. The only issue was that the fancy electric panoramic sunroof started making ominous stripped gear type noises, then refusing to fully close (it seems like it’s sensing imaginary obstructions and backing off for safety reasons). I’ve managed to get it as far as both panels being slightly ajar in tilt mode – I think if I can somehow cajole it the rest of the way I might have to just take the fuse out and put up with only opening the windows. They seem to be mildly notorious for failing, even in relatively new cars.
Into August now, but no-one seems to have told the weather, although to be fair today’s been OK. I’m happy with the cooler temperatures, but could do without the torrential rain. Even Ninja cat, who normally lives in the garden in the summer, has taken to staying indoors for extended periods.
On Wednesday we had the annual-ish club “Run-Bike-Run” event, which thanks to a combination of bad timing and a pandemic break I’ve never actually done before. It basically involves a 6.2 mile bike ride sandwiched between two runs of around 1.5 and 2.4 miles, followed by some food and drink. The twist is that there’s a set finish time, and the “winner” is the last person to set off and still make it back before the cut-off. I decided to ride to Felixstowe, which added 11 or so miles beforehand, and arrived soaked to the skin. Fortunately the rain eased off for the event itself, and despite thinking I’d started a bit too late I was a couple of minutes inside the cutoff (but so were plenty of people who’d started later!)
At some point I managed to pick up a slow puncture, and after finishing the run realised that my back tyre was flat. I couldn’t locate either the puncture or anything sticking through the tyre, so fitted a spare tube and attempted to pump it up, only to realise that the brand new tube had a hole in it ?. Fortunately I managed to scrounge a lift home with my bike in the back of Nicola’s car.
On Friday night a few of us went to see Band of Mold, a local covers band, based on Robin and Jo vaguely knowing the guitarist. They were entertaining enough, although there was hardly anyone there, and we had enough beer to make getting up for parkrun more of a chore than usual.
No racing this weekend, so a chance for a proper long slow run (well, not that long) on Sunday. This time I met up with Holly, which made it much less boring than running alone for a couple of hours. I ended up giving myself the short straw by planning a route that came back into her side of town, leaving me around three miles to plod home on my own, for a total of 15 miles.
