Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:05 am
Saturday 24 June 2006
The last fortnight promised some good biking: loads of interesting rides or events on the calendar. As so often happens though, things didn’t quite work out as planned: several were cancelled or curtailed. Nevertheless, there's been a lot to enjoy.
A week last Friday one of the Stevenage club members, (a CBR600 rider, owner of four dogs, several hens and more rabbits than I could count) was having a barbecue at his home. He lives in a village about fifteen miles north of my home town of Hitchin. The barbecue was due to start at 5.00pm. I didn’t manage to get there till 8.00pm (Why am I always late for things? I’ve given this much thought and self-examination over the years and I still don’t understand it.) I like riding the back roads north of here. They really are very rural: single track roads with wiggly verges and some great twisty bits. You have to keep very focused if you take them at any speed. Although I ride them from tme to time, I don't know them that well, so a lot of good judgement is called for. I’m getting a lot more confident cornering on the bike these days and that makes riding these roads a lot of fun.
It’s a strange thing, though, there's a downside to getting more confident and relaxed on the bike. Although I'm enjoying my increased ablity to handle the bike well, and that gives me a sense of power and control, I don't get quite the same buzz as I used to. When I first came back to riding, I’d lost some of my nerve, and it has taken me a couple of years to get it back properly. During the first year I spent a lot of time riding and feeling scared sh1tless. This wasn’t the bad type of aargh!-I-can’t-do-this-any-more sh1tlesness, but the wow!-wooohooo!-that-was-scary-let’s-do-that-again’ type. It's the same sort of buzz you get from going to horror films. I miss that regular (very regular) adrenalin zing when you scare the dayights out of yourself on a corner. Riding has become a bit more – dare I say it – ordinary recently. Just a bit ordinary- it will never be wholly like that, of course (well, at least I hope not) but… Maybe I’m just turning into a sensation junkie.
Part of my early enjoyment also came from reinventing myself as a biker and rediscovering the camaraderie that came with it. I guess I was a typical returner: off on his bike for hours every day if I could manage it, neglecting everything for the smell of petrol and the feel of the bike beneath me. Now I take my need to have a bike for granted, as do the people around me.
It wasn’t easy to get back on a bike after such a long time without one. I knew I wanted to, but it took me nearly a year to finally commit. Even then I had to trick myself into buying the bike. Before I'd even talked to a dealer about a machine, I went out and bought myself a very expensive Arai helmet in the belief that once I’d splashed out the cash on that, I’d just have to go ahead and get the bike. It worked!
So here I was, sitting in a garden in the village of Barley with a group of friends from the club eating barbecued sausages. Not a lot of people from the club were there – just a few - most people were unknown to me. It was a good night though. I collected some more sponsorship money. I was able to slob out for most of the time and have my first go on a mini-moto in the field behind the back of the house. I had one small crash, but nothing was damaged apart from a little bit of ego. It was fun, but I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy one. The rest of the evening was spent turning the sausages on the barbecue, talking to people, and popping balloons under the manic instructions of one excessively energetic small boy. I think I dropped off to sleep for a while as the evening wore on. I have a reputation for doing this. I can fall asleep anywhere. It is now part of club ritual to take photos of me dozing off in all kinds of positions whenever we go out anywhere together. They now have enough to fill an album. There's a couple on their website.
ON the way home along the Bedford road, I saw a couple of muntjak grazing in the hedge. You don't normally see them out here.
Sunday came, and I rode down to Bike Stop for the rideout (I was ten minutes late, of course) got off my bike and walked into the familiar discussion about where we were going to go. It’s amazing how much half-hearted indecision can be generated when six people get together to discuss where they want to go. That’s how many turned up. Not a lot. A select few. Six people on four bikes – Dan and Sarah came, riding two up on their Buell Thunderbolt, Dave and Theresa on their Trophy, Roger came solo on his old BMW and then there was me on the SV.
The original plan, cooked up several weeks before, was that I would find an interesting route and lead the group out towards Cambridge where we would visit Haywards, a Royal Enfield and Moto Guzzi dealer. I think the idea was to encourage me to go and buy the bloody Enfield and stop messing around. But Haywards was closed on a Sunday, so that was out. Dave (Trophy) had suggested Stratford-upon-Avon and that was what was posted on the website. Dave likes Stratford and goes there quite a lot. It's a good ride. But it is also a long one. As there was another long mid-week ride planned, no-one seemed that interested. Harrold Park was suggested. There’s a good café at Harrold Park next to the lake and it’s an attractive ride through some stunningly beautiful little villages full of thatched cottages. Part of the park is a nature reserve, but it’s the ride, not pootling around among nature that most of the club go for – so we tend to stick close to the café. Eventually, Dan suggested that we go to Thorpeness. Faces, gradually lit up and it was agreed.
This just demonstrates how irrational our collective decision-making processes are. (Don’t know about you but, actually, I don’t think human beings are very rational most of the time, anyway.) Thorpeness is in Suffolk, way out on that bit of the North Sea coast that faces The Netherlands. It’s a way longer journey than Stratford, but suddenly everyone was excited by the idea and wanted to go. Maybe, it was just the thought of going to the coast. That’s what bikers do isn’t it? They go to the coast and… Well, anyway, they go to the coast. What the hell! It was a lovely morning.
The next question we faced was, where exactly on the East Coast is Thorpeness. A quick look at the map showed that it was close to Aldborough and Snape, which is a beautiful area, but just south of Sizewell B, one of the UKs aging nuclear reactors. Can’t have everything, I suppose!
There are lots of good roads out that way. Dan was going to lead on the Buell, which meant there would be no high speed antics (more to do with the Buel's power than Dan's riding.) He chose a route which avoided motorways and dual-carriageways and took us out through rural Essex and Suffolk. It was a good plan. Dan and Sarah, and Dave and Theresa seemed enthusiastic. I was enthusiastic. But Roger wasn’t. He wasn’t up for a long ride and decided not to come. I felt a bit bad about that, but he seemed perfectly happy to go back home and get on with whatever he needed to do there, and he is normally straight about what he thinks.
We set off, with Dan in front, me in the middle and David bringing up the rear. That’s the way we stayed for the whole trip, and though we frequently lost sight of each other for long periods, nobody got lost - even temporarily (that has to be a record for the S&DMCC). BTW, the club always abbreviates its name with an ampersand, ‘&’. I’ve just realised why. We rode down some wonderful minor roads out through Essex and Suffolk. It’s just a pity about the level of traffic on some of them.
It was a lovely day but in leathers, which most of us were wearing, it was HOT. Hot and sweaty, and clammy and airless. Not fun in a full face helmet despite the wind blast. At one point I was struggling for breath. And on these country roads we just could not find anywhere to stop for a drink. We rode for nearly two hours before we found somewhere, and by that time we were all feeling dehydrated and very uncomfortable. It was in a Tesco’s supermarket. Tesco's cafe's are cheap and cheerful, and dependable, but not very exciting.
On some country lanes close to the coast we were overtaken by a Kawasaki going hell for leather. It left us all fairly stunned. The road here was very twisty – very. The guy must have been a local with very intimate knowledge of these roads to have taken corners like that and survived.
At Thorpeness, we had some lunch, took a cursory look at the beach and then decided to hire some rowboats on a nearby lake. At least, Dan and I did. Dave decided to sit it out. Sarah reluctantly agreed to go with Dan and then sat out the next hour in the back of his boat with folded arms pointedly indicating her disapproval. After a long period of indecision, and a pep talk by the boatkeeper who pointed out that nowhere in the lake was deeper than three feet, Theresa agreed to come with me.
I haven’t been in a row boat for years, and was pleasantly surprised that my level of fitness hadn’t completely collapsed over the last year. We rowed across the lake and found some narrow channels on the other side. Moving gently along between the green, banks lined with droops of willow, was so relaxing. A total change of pace from the bikes. It did remind me, though, of the time we took Di out to Hartford Lock last year, and I got a bit upset for a while. I never know when something is going to set me off.
Having been Di's carer for over a year, it’s taken me quite a few months to relax back into a more ordinary way of being. I’m gradually beginning to rediscover what it is like to have a life of my own again and to remember a time before she got ill. And with that rediscovery and rememberance, I’ve really begun to miss her. While I rowed, Theresa and I talked personally about our experiences of death - I with Di and she with her mother.
Theresa did have a go with the oars for a few minutes, but let's just say she'll never get anywhere very fast in a rowboat.
Thorpeness is a pleasant town. Some of these Essex coastal towns are attractive and well-maintained, not like your average sea-side resorts which are usually quite tatty, if cheerful. The buildings here are mostly clapboard. You find that a lot in this part of Suffolk, but it’s quite unusual for the country as a whole. The town also has some unusual features: a huge windmill in a good state of preservation; the 'House in the Clouds,' a house which appears to be built on the top of a watertower and looks out across the treetops' and cafes which uniformly refuse to serve cooked food after two o’clock. I came home feeling pretty hungry.
Getting back was more straightforward. We took the major roads and put some speed on. 'Major roads' in rural Suffolk, however are pretty narrow and busy, and we had to ride some twenty miles before we hit dual-carriageway and a decent traffic flow. But the landscape in Suffolk is beautiful: miles of greenery and not a town to be seen.
The midweek event didn’t happen. On Tuesday evening a bunch of us were planning to ride down to Stonehenge. The idea was to stay overnight to witness the Druids celebrating the summer solstice. Thousands of people turn up every year to see the midsummer sun rising between the two central standing stones and casting its rays in a narrow band over the Helestone. The club goes down there every year. The event is sometimes relayed on TV but I’ve never seen it myself.
I don’t know anything about the Druids or what they believe, but I like the idea that someone is ritually marking such events as the solstice. I always think that though science has altered and reorganised our dependence on the natural world, it hasn’t overcome it; just obscured it a little. The cycle of the seasons still controls most farming activities. Even in a small market town like Hitchin, it is easy to forget that dependence. In the village where I grew up, you were always acutely aware of the changing seasons. You could see it in the fields and hedgerows every day.
I have no religious beliefs about such events, but I like to feel something that keeps me onnected to the natural world. That connection keeps me feeling grounded and prevents me getting too caught up in all the obsessive and artificial concerns of our hermetically sealed lifestyle. It puts me in touch with something more simple and phsical.
Unfortunately, towards evening on Tuesday the weather became wet, very windy and overcast. I foresaw an uncomfortable ride down in high winds, a wet night and no sight of the sun the next morning, so I decided not to go. It seems everyone else had the same idea.
Wednesday evening was the Meldreth Manor bike show. The show is organised by the Royston and District Motorcycle Club, a local rival to the S&DMCC. It’s very small, but on this occasion very well attended. There were some lovely old bikes in the barn, incuding a Douglas (I love Douglas’s). Haywards were there, so I went to have yet another look at the Enfields. BMW were also there. They’ve now taken delivery of the F800ST, which is the touring version of the new model. I went and ogled for ten minutes. I still love the bike, and I’ve got my name down for a test ride from the Hertford BMW dealers in the next couple of weeks. But as I looked at it, a thought occurred to me. It’s belt driven. I then remembered that someone once told me that belt driven bikes are liable to get stones lodged under the belt which can screw things up big time. Some of the roads I would encounter round the Baltic are rough surfaced, especially in Poland. A belt drive might not be a good idea. I would have to look into that further.
Tomorrow, I am planning to go down to the Beaulieu show with Ron. I've never been before and it sounds like a very good day out. It's a long ride, but it's down South, so we'll be riding through some of my favourite country. Watch this space.
The last fortnight promised some good biking: loads of interesting rides or events on the calendar. As so often happens though, things didn’t quite work out as planned: several were cancelled or curtailed. Nevertheless, there's been a lot to enjoy.
A week last Friday one of the Stevenage club members, (a CBR600 rider, owner of four dogs, several hens and more rabbits than I could count) was having a barbecue at his home. He lives in a village about fifteen miles north of my home town of Hitchin. The barbecue was due to start at 5.00pm. I didn’t manage to get there till 8.00pm (Why am I always late for things? I’ve given this much thought and self-examination over the years and I still don’t understand it.) I like riding the back roads north of here. They really are very rural: single track roads with wiggly verges and some great twisty bits. You have to keep very focused if you take them at any speed. Although I ride them from tme to time, I don't know them that well, so a lot of good judgement is called for. I’m getting a lot more confident cornering on the bike these days and that makes riding these roads a lot of fun.
It’s a strange thing, though, there's a downside to getting more confident and relaxed on the bike. Although I'm enjoying my increased ablity to handle the bike well, and that gives me a sense of power and control, I don't get quite the same buzz as I used to. When I first came back to riding, I’d lost some of my nerve, and it has taken me a couple of years to get it back properly. During the first year I spent a lot of time riding and feeling scared sh1tless. This wasn’t the bad type of aargh!-I-can’t-do-this-any-more sh1tlesness, but the wow!-wooohooo!-that-was-scary-let’s-do-that-again’ type. It's the same sort of buzz you get from going to horror films. I miss that regular (very regular) adrenalin zing when you scare the dayights out of yourself on a corner. Riding has become a bit more – dare I say it – ordinary recently. Just a bit ordinary- it will never be wholly like that, of course (well, at least I hope not) but… Maybe I’m just turning into a sensation junkie.
Part of my early enjoyment also came from reinventing myself as a biker and rediscovering the camaraderie that came with it. I guess I was a typical returner: off on his bike for hours every day if I could manage it, neglecting everything for the smell of petrol and the feel of the bike beneath me. Now I take my need to have a bike for granted, as do the people around me.
It wasn’t easy to get back on a bike after such a long time without one. I knew I wanted to, but it took me nearly a year to finally commit. Even then I had to trick myself into buying the bike. Before I'd even talked to a dealer about a machine, I went out and bought myself a very expensive Arai helmet in the belief that once I’d splashed out the cash on that, I’d just have to go ahead and get the bike. It worked!
So here I was, sitting in a garden in the village of Barley with a group of friends from the club eating barbecued sausages. Not a lot of people from the club were there – just a few - most people were unknown to me. It was a good night though. I collected some more sponsorship money. I was able to slob out for most of the time and have my first go on a mini-moto in the field behind the back of the house. I had one small crash, but nothing was damaged apart from a little bit of ego. It was fun, but I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy one. The rest of the evening was spent turning the sausages on the barbecue, talking to people, and popping balloons under the manic instructions of one excessively energetic small boy. I think I dropped off to sleep for a while as the evening wore on. I have a reputation for doing this. I can fall asleep anywhere. It is now part of club ritual to take photos of me dozing off in all kinds of positions whenever we go out anywhere together. They now have enough to fill an album. There's a couple on their website.
ON the way home along the Bedford road, I saw a couple of muntjak grazing in the hedge. You don't normally see them out here.
Sunday came, and I rode down to Bike Stop for the rideout (I was ten minutes late, of course) got off my bike and walked into the familiar discussion about where we were going to go. It’s amazing how much half-hearted indecision can be generated when six people get together to discuss where they want to go. That’s how many turned up. Not a lot. A select few. Six people on four bikes – Dan and Sarah came, riding two up on their Buell Thunderbolt, Dave and Theresa on their Trophy, Roger came solo on his old BMW and then there was me on the SV.
The original plan, cooked up several weeks before, was that I would find an interesting route and lead the group out towards Cambridge where we would visit Haywards, a Royal Enfield and Moto Guzzi dealer. I think the idea was to encourage me to go and buy the bloody Enfield and stop messing around. But Haywards was closed on a Sunday, so that was out. Dave (Trophy) had suggested Stratford-upon-Avon and that was what was posted on the website. Dave likes Stratford and goes there quite a lot. It's a good ride. But it is also a long one. As there was another long mid-week ride planned, no-one seemed that interested. Harrold Park was suggested. There’s a good café at Harrold Park next to the lake and it’s an attractive ride through some stunningly beautiful little villages full of thatched cottages. Part of the park is a nature reserve, but it’s the ride, not pootling around among nature that most of the club go for – so we tend to stick close to the café. Eventually, Dan suggested that we go to Thorpeness. Faces, gradually lit up and it was agreed.
This just demonstrates how irrational our collective decision-making processes are. (Don’t know about you but, actually, I don’t think human beings are very rational most of the time, anyway.) Thorpeness is in Suffolk, way out on that bit of the North Sea coast that faces The Netherlands. It’s a way longer journey than Stratford, but suddenly everyone was excited by the idea and wanted to go. Maybe, it was just the thought of going to the coast. That’s what bikers do isn’t it? They go to the coast and… Well, anyway, they go to the coast. What the hell! It was a lovely morning.
The next question we faced was, where exactly on the East Coast is Thorpeness. A quick look at the map showed that it was close to Aldborough and Snape, which is a beautiful area, but just south of Sizewell B, one of the UKs aging nuclear reactors. Can’t have everything, I suppose!
There are lots of good roads out that way. Dan was going to lead on the Buell, which meant there would be no high speed antics (more to do with the Buel's power than Dan's riding.) He chose a route which avoided motorways and dual-carriageways and took us out through rural Essex and Suffolk. It was a good plan. Dan and Sarah, and Dave and Theresa seemed enthusiastic. I was enthusiastic. But Roger wasn’t. He wasn’t up for a long ride and decided not to come. I felt a bit bad about that, but he seemed perfectly happy to go back home and get on with whatever he needed to do there, and he is normally straight about what he thinks.
We set off, with Dan in front, me in the middle and David bringing up the rear. That’s the way we stayed for the whole trip, and though we frequently lost sight of each other for long periods, nobody got lost - even temporarily (that has to be a record for the S&DMCC). BTW, the club always abbreviates its name with an ampersand, ‘&’. I’ve just realised why. We rode down some wonderful minor roads out through Essex and Suffolk. It’s just a pity about the level of traffic on some of them.
It was a lovely day but in leathers, which most of us were wearing, it was HOT. Hot and sweaty, and clammy and airless. Not fun in a full face helmet despite the wind blast. At one point I was struggling for breath. And on these country roads we just could not find anywhere to stop for a drink. We rode for nearly two hours before we found somewhere, and by that time we were all feeling dehydrated and very uncomfortable. It was in a Tesco’s supermarket. Tesco's cafe's are cheap and cheerful, and dependable, but not very exciting.
On some country lanes close to the coast we were overtaken by a Kawasaki going hell for leather. It left us all fairly stunned. The road here was very twisty – very. The guy must have been a local with very intimate knowledge of these roads to have taken corners like that and survived.
At Thorpeness, we had some lunch, took a cursory look at the beach and then decided to hire some rowboats on a nearby lake. At least, Dan and I did. Dave decided to sit it out. Sarah reluctantly agreed to go with Dan and then sat out the next hour in the back of his boat with folded arms pointedly indicating her disapproval. After a long period of indecision, and a pep talk by the boatkeeper who pointed out that nowhere in the lake was deeper than three feet, Theresa agreed to come with me.
I haven’t been in a row boat for years, and was pleasantly surprised that my level of fitness hadn’t completely collapsed over the last year. We rowed across the lake and found some narrow channels on the other side. Moving gently along between the green, banks lined with droops of willow, was so relaxing. A total change of pace from the bikes. It did remind me, though, of the time we took Di out to Hartford Lock last year, and I got a bit upset for a while. I never know when something is going to set me off.
Having been Di's carer for over a year, it’s taken me quite a few months to relax back into a more ordinary way of being. I’m gradually beginning to rediscover what it is like to have a life of my own again and to remember a time before she got ill. And with that rediscovery and rememberance, I’ve really begun to miss her. While I rowed, Theresa and I talked personally about our experiences of death - I with Di and she with her mother.
Theresa did have a go with the oars for a few minutes, but let's just say she'll never get anywhere very fast in a rowboat.
Thorpeness is a pleasant town. Some of these Essex coastal towns are attractive and well-maintained, not like your average sea-side resorts which are usually quite tatty, if cheerful. The buildings here are mostly clapboard. You find that a lot in this part of Suffolk, but it’s quite unusual for the country as a whole. The town also has some unusual features: a huge windmill in a good state of preservation; the 'House in the Clouds,' a house which appears to be built on the top of a watertower and looks out across the treetops' and cafes which uniformly refuse to serve cooked food after two o’clock. I came home feeling pretty hungry.
Getting back was more straightforward. We took the major roads and put some speed on. 'Major roads' in rural Suffolk, however are pretty narrow and busy, and we had to ride some twenty miles before we hit dual-carriageway and a decent traffic flow. But the landscape in Suffolk is beautiful: miles of greenery and not a town to be seen.
The midweek event didn’t happen. On Tuesday evening a bunch of us were planning to ride down to Stonehenge. The idea was to stay overnight to witness the Druids celebrating the summer solstice. Thousands of people turn up every year to see the midsummer sun rising between the two central standing stones and casting its rays in a narrow band over the Helestone. The club goes down there every year. The event is sometimes relayed on TV but I’ve never seen it myself.
I don’t know anything about the Druids or what they believe, but I like the idea that someone is ritually marking such events as the solstice. I always think that though science has altered and reorganised our dependence on the natural world, it hasn’t overcome it; just obscured it a little. The cycle of the seasons still controls most farming activities. Even in a small market town like Hitchin, it is easy to forget that dependence. In the village where I grew up, you were always acutely aware of the changing seasons. You could see it in the fields and hedgerows every day.
I have no religious beliefs about such events, but I like to feel something that keeps me onnected to the natural world. That connection keeps me feeling grounded and prevents me getting too caught up in all the obsessive and artificial concerns of our hermetically sealed lifestyle. It puts me in touch with something more simple and phsical.
Unfortunately, towards evening on Tuesday the weather became wet, very windy and overcast. I foresaw an uncomfortable ride down in high winds, a wet night and no sight of the sun the next morning, so I decided not to go. It seems everyone else had the same idea.
Wednesday evening was the Meldreth Manor bike show. The show is organised by the Royston and District Motorcycle Club, a local rival to the S&DMCC. It’s very small, but on this occasion very well attended. There were some lovely old bikes in the barn, incuding a Douglas (I love Douglas’s). Haywards were there, so I went to have yet another look at the Enfields. BMW were also there. They’ve now taken delivery of the F800ST, which is the touring version of the new model. I went and ogled for ten minutes. I still love the bike, and I’ve got my name down for a test ride from the Hertford BMW dealers in the next couple of weeks. But as I looked at it, a thought occurred to me. It’s belt driven. I then remembered that someone once told me that belt driven bikes are liable to get stones lodged under the belt which can screw things up big time. Some of the roads I would encounter round the Baltic are rough surfaced, especially in Poland. A belt drive might not be a good idea. I would have to look into that further.
Tomorrow, I am planning to go down to the Beaulieu show with Ron. I've never been before and it sounds like a very good day out. It's a long ride, but it's down South, so we'll be riding through some of my favourite country. Watch this space.
