Life laundry and bike stains

There is a bit in Three Men in a Boat where J implores us to ‘Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need.’ I’ve been trying to do that a little recently. I have given away some books to work colleagues, some chairs to Nina and some bike parts to Julia. I’ve also been furiously recycling and disposing of worn out clothes.

As you will have noticed my Achilles heel is currently bike paraphernalia. I have three bikes of my own and sit-up-and-beg bike of Julia’s cluttering up my house. I have to admit that one thoroughbred racing bike and a quirky cool hack bike would probably be sufficient. Must… keep… that… in… mind.

My general fitness is coming along slowly but surely. I have now done two 14mile sprints to Stewkley and back on the Bianchi. I seem to be stuck at 19.5mph however. I’d like to break 20mph average this year and maybe even push on a little from there. I managed a run of about 6 miles on Tuesday and a mile or so of jog/sprint on Wednesday. Sadly tennis didn’t happen today because of the rain so I ate chips instead. Oops.

Breakfast in the reed beds

We had a wonderful little interlude this morning. Nina, Julia and I met at Unsatisfactory Bridge on the Ouzel at 5am to experience the dawn chorus in the reed beds.

The morning was idyllic with a clear sky overhead and the reddening glow of morning on the eastern horizon. There were two hides in the reeds but one seems to have been burned down by under-stimulated morons so we used the other one. The hide is situated between an area of woodland, some relatively open water and a patch of dense reeds. Each of these tiny habitats had its own distinct soundscape.

The woodland singers were chaffinch, woodpecker, robin, wren, blackbird, sparrow, dunnock and thrush – many singing heartily from the top of trees and shrubs. The reeds were a dense twitter of unseen small birds, including what may have been reed warblers, with an amazing variety of calls.

For the birds on the open water and at its margins breeding was obviously in full swing. A pair of moorhens (moorhuhns) had already laid a clutch of six white and brown speckled eggs in a lovely nest elevated just above the water while a male coot was fiercely defending his territory against even the most harmless passersby.

The geese are clearly not big on early mornings and the canadas and greylags swam in sleepy circles. A lugubrious heron hovered in and landed expertly on a dry tuft in the margins then appeared to spend the next two hours closely watching an enormous nesting swan – a prey surely too large to eat?

We watched and listened; ate a hearty breakfast; took some photos and botanical samples and made some recordings – and were still in work by 07:15.

Julia also spotted a flock of gold finches which have haircuts almost as impressive as A Flock of Seagulls.

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The joy of spring without its cleaning

The evenings are getting longer, the flowers and the trees of Buckinghamshire are coming to their best, and the hedgerows are alive with the sound of birds. Green growth is bursting from the soul’s dead wood and like Badger I am ‘fidgety and wanting to be up and doing’. I can’t wait to get out to run at lunchtime to cycle after work or to get my hands in the soil of the garden.

Over the long weekend I was in Champagne with some friends but as soon as I returned I took the Holdsworth for a test ride from Bletchley via Stewkley to Wing’s magnificent Anglo-Saxon parish church. I was surprised how quickly I settled into the rhythm of the bike but I did note some areas for improvement. The bell got in the way of my knee when climbing. The set up of the toe clips left my ankles too close to the cranks and the front mech wouldn’t allow me to select the largest chain ring and the smallest cassette ring at the same time. All these are fixable and I am confident that the bike will be useable for L’Eroica.

I need to push my fitness levels up for Town and Gown on the 18th and for an upcoming sportif in Wales next month so I thought I’d see if I could push my record for Bletchley-Stewkley-Bletchley above an 18mph average. I took the Bianchi obviously and had a glorious ride out into the wind and back with the gradient and the thermals behind me. My reward was an average of 19.5mph and that wonderful feeling of deep muscle tiredness that speaks of performance improvement.