Jon George
Mamil and couldn't care less
- Location
- Suffolk an' Good
I have developed an increased aversion to alarm clocks. So because I set mine for 5 o'clock when I went to bed, I consequently remained awake until gone midnight and awoke at 4.30. All done in the name of getting a good start on a training ride to assure myself I can do 100 miles before I complete a charity event. And yet I still got up.
Knowing that the weather forecast was for sunny and possible Spring temperatures later in the day, I decided to use my experience of cycling throughout the winter and tough out the early part just after sunrise with minor thermals. This was the first mistake of the day. I was to make a number of others.
My intended route (a hint of forthcoming revelations about the other errors), was to take in the area south and southwest of Ipswich, then complete a more direct route to Aldeburgh and back. As the initial hour-and-a-half slipped by with self-recrimination for not wearing my warmer gloves and amazement as to how many people were about and about that early, things became a bit vague. This was not because I had a hypoglycaemic attack brought on not regulating my intake of food and water, but because the mist became thicker. And colder.
Ask anyone who wears glasses the opaque view they have on the world when everyone else’s vision has already been reduced by fog and they will tell you it’s a constant, seemingly futile exercise to keep their spectacles clean. So from East Bergholt to Flowton – a little hamlet just north of Hadleigh – I saw a lot of cloud. Mostly all around me. There were less people about now and I began to suspect they knew something I didn’t. I seriously though about going home.
And then I saw the light.
And remembered why I have rediscovered cycling.
I had a race with a cock pheasant down a lane as it tried to decide whether to carry on running beside me or fly. (I saw dozens this morning, but this one’s feathers were particularly iridescent. I just hope it made it through the day without becoming a victim of the numerous people with shotguns I heard out and about, or got hit by a vehicle to join his many relatives I passed splayed on the tarmac.)
I had muntjac dart across the road in front of me.
I saw a hare race up a dirt track, the earth being thrown up behind it like some Mel Blanc cartoon.
I had a pair of Canada geese swoop over me, so low that they would have been within hands reach if I’d known they were coming.
I saw primroses festooning the hedgerows.
I saw fields wrapped in plastic.
I was born in Suffolk and I will always retain a tribal link to the county and what it has to offer away from the towns. Even the Clingfilm fields. It is my link to the natural world. It is a kind of bliss.
And in this state of nirvana, I got lost on the second section.
We’ve all done it. We listen to our internal SatNav, rather than trust the road signs or memory. I did not make it to Aldeburgh. I got within three or four miles, but the extra distance I had already added in getting back on my intended track meant I would have been pushing the boundaries of my supply of food and drink. (At this point, I didn’t trust myself to find a shop, let alone remember where Ipswich is on the map.)
I headed home.
A little over a mile away from it my computer ticked over that senseless, but magical figure of 100 miles. And then I was nearly knocked off my bike. It appears I still retain some semblance of instinct. And reactions.
I wish I could say the same about alarm clocks ...
