Today was going to be an off road epic, where I was going to test ride an Orange Clockwork to within an inch of its life (or mine). However, with Kid 2 coming over all hot and covered in weird lumps I thought I’d better cancel my test ride today. This of course meant that by this morning he’d made a full recovery and was fit to go to nursery as usual.
However, all was not lost as it was SUNNY. This means that riding on the road is actually fun and pleasant, so I arranged to meet Twitterati and Blogosphere writer, pundit and megastar @AccidentoBizaro for a pedal to somewhere. No route was determined in advance, other than that we would start off by heading over Cock Hill towards Haworth.
Once we’d got to Stanbury reservoir, we decided that we had ‘good legs’ and would go for a longer option by heading over past Wycoller Country Park, through Trawden (where there’s a pub which @AccidentoBizaro confirmed has very nice toilets should a wee stop be necessary), up past Cold Well Activity Centre, and home over the Widdop road (my Strava recording puts it at 52km, 1,100m climbing, including the extra bit to an from Mytholmroyd).
It was lovely – we chatted, spotted birds (lapwing, curlew, goldfinch), chatted, looked at lambs, chatted, and stopped chatting for the occasional steep hill (me because I was busy reserving oxygen for critical organs, @accidentobizaro because she was too far ahead for me to hear her). We talked about cycling things, and the view, and not cycling things. If I’d read her last blog post before I set off I’d have told her how brilliant I think it is (If you haven’t already clicked the link, you should go and read it, and then you should read some of her other stuff too).
She hadn’t been over Widdop since years ago, so discovered a whole new world of lovely cycling opportunities, and I just enjoyed being out with exposed bits of flesh that weren’t being threatened with frostbite. It was all very pretty too, and with my phone still playing up this would be another picture free post and you’d just have to imagine the sunny, happy beauty of it all. However, a local artist (who has sadly not been asked to exhibit at this year’s Hebden Bridge Arts Festival) has managed to capture the joy of the outing in this artist’s impression of the day.
Curlew Over Widdop
April 11, 2014 at 8:14 pm
I love this write-up, and not just because it describes me as a ‘megastar’ (I might put that on my CV, though). It sums up the ride perfectly, and the lovely jolly time we had. And the drawing is brilliant (the 5yo looked at it and said ‘Which one’s Mummy?’).