Win a few....

One day recently, I overtook two cyclists and no cyclists overtook me. That was a first. The next day, my record of one day’s duration was still intact, when a cyclist pulled up alongside me and started to chat. It was a narrow lane and he was not two metres away so I drifted a bit nearer to the grass verge. I limited my responses in the hope that he would overtake me, in spite of the imminent danger to my now potentially short-lived record. “Horrible year it’s been”, he had started, moving quickly on to the other, big - and pre-Covid - talking point. “Looks like no deal”, he said. “Getting the lorry parks ready in Kent”, I replied. “We voted out”, he said, “but it makes you think we might have got it wrong”. I glanced over towards him. “You don’t say”, I thought.

We climbed the sharp rise to the T junction at the top. A bin lorry sat across the junction waiting for us both to get out of the way. I prayed for him to go left, as I had planned to go right - though I had just decided that my travel plans were actually very flexible. He stopped to engage the bin lorry driver in conversation. “Horrible year…”, I guessed. I braved a quick look over my shoulder. If the driver had already managed to extricate himself, my new friend must have gone left and he hadn’t even overtaken me.

Yesterday, with the sun out, I noticed an unusual freight working from Immingham was due mid-morning so I shot off to the station. The train never came but its cancellation was not posted until I got home. I photographed my bike, instead, along with its shadow. Somebody needs to give that bike a good clean. I was overtaken by a cyclist on the way home. Not to be completely outdone, I slipped back down to the station in the car in the afternoon, in time to see Class 60 No. 60015 returning the oil empties to the refinery.