I finally found the long way up there via the villages. My technique was to remember the next three place names that I needed to head for and eventually the GPS worked out where I was going. Missed turnings provide opportunity for U-turn anxieties.
I fingered some items at the BMW showroom but left without succumbing to temptation. I’ve decided, though, that the new liquid cooled GS has one advantage over the Adventures in the showroom – it is not such an intimidating lump.
biking
Ride to Brandon Forest for tea and scones
Today was a lovely day, up to 20 degrees C and sunny. For once I didn’t take the wrong fork at Swafham Prior. Lots of bikes out today. Lovely scone though middle aged cyclists sitting close to me at the visitor centre in Brandon Forest seemed to be comparing illnesses and the medication they were on.
Milton, Haddenham and slow speed work
For this trip I remembered how to turn on my helmet cam, however I mounted it the wrong way up so all the footage was upside down.
Getting lost in Bedfordshire
On the warmest day probably of the year so far (about 20 C) I scrawled down some simple directions for this trip on a scrap of paper: out on the Barton road towards Sandy, turn right into Potton, which has its own brewery, then back via the Gransdens, across the Old North Road and back through Comberton. Of course it all went awry and I forgot to take the bluetooth for the GPS. Looking at the track, I can see if I had just gone another couple of hundred yards at Wrestlingworth I would have found the route back.
Lots of bikes were out today unsurprisingly and luckily only one behind me to zoom past.
Ride to Little Gidding
Wretched GPS never takes my routes seriously and has a strange love of the A14, so every ride seems to involve some miles on this nasty trunk road. Nevertheless, I had some nice riding to the church at Little Gidding, which inspired one of T S Eliot’s Four Quartets. The church itself was closed. Very low key down the end of a track.
I didn’t know that the Giddings are not that far away from Fotheringay, not just the name of a folk rock band but the place where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned and executed. Charles the first sought refuge at Little Gidding, so being a monarch was not easy in the 17th century.
On the way home I chose the A660 which is, I found out, a high accident rate road for motorcycles, with lots of warning signs and a police bike cop talking earnestly to two riders wearing one piece leathers. They all had their helmets off so it was obviously an in depth discussion.
I rode through Kimbolton, one of those old English market towns that clearly at one time had far more importance and wealth than they do now, though the Kimbolton School, housed in the impressive castle means that there is still some wealth there. St Neots, another of those pretty but strange towns near to nowhere (once an important staging place on the road north from London I imagine), was bustling, the warm weather obviously bringing people out, including the rider of the brand new water cooled BMW 1200gs just out.
This was the first weather this year suitable for enjoyable motorcycle riding.