Categories: uncategorized
Date: 11 October 2006 21:23:08
well i'm cycling to work twice a week at the moment.
by complete luck its always been dry on the way in, mostly rained torrentially during the day and then cleared up by the time i go home.
today however after a quick glance at multimap before the off i decided to try a different route.
i usually avoid where possible busy roads & town centers but i must confess to loving a quick play in the traffic, especially where as it was this evening in solihull i'm significantly faster than the average speed of the traffic.
all was going well if rather damply when i got to the section of my route i knew least well, no matter since i'd memorised the turnings & road names. fortunately it had stopped tipping it down by now but at the first junction i reached i didn't recognise any of the road names and the finger post made little sense.
i went half a few hundred meters down the first option before deciding it was wrong... then all the way down the other option to find a main road i wasn't expecting. back to the junction and down the first one far enough to confirm my suspicions, definitely the wrong way.
no here's where it got cunning, i paused and switched my gps to map mode and looked at the traces of where i'd just been. recalling the road layout on multimap it looked like i had gone too far although there definitely wasn't a junction earlier. i concluded that the road on multimap wasn't a real road but a bridleway i had passed.
so i went back up and thought what the heck i'll try it. squirming a couple of miles in the mud and gravel on slick tyres was immensely fun! again i took a wrong turn and backtracked to a junction in the trails (i didn't have a clue quite where i was or where each branch went but for some reason i took a dislike to the one i'd chosen). climbing now and concentrating hard to keep the maximum traction on the rear wheel, knowing at any second it could just spin and leave me standing in a puddle.
finally, aside from a few nettle stings i made it grinning to a road, and chose to go right just cos it felt right.. no actually i think i consulted the gps map again and decided right was more of a straight line than left. another random/gps guided left turn and i was amazed to recognise the road name i was originally looking for.
in theory this meant turn right onto it and next left.... which it was.
after a final battle through town i arrived home muddy & wet..... to find a bath ready and waiting... fab.