It's been a busy few weeks of moving admin before and after the New Year holidays. Because those were effectively cancelled last year, this was a much needed chance to get back together with family some of whom, like my Dad and my sister, I hadn't seen in two years.
What with all the travelling back and forth to Surrey, Devon and Cornwall and the preparations for the move, it rather crept up on me that this week the removers were going to take the bikes and it would be my last chance to ride in the surroundings of Potton that I've come to know so well.
So one week before the packing started in earnest, when I could risk getting the bike muddy, I took what I thought might be my last ride through the lovely Bedfordshire countryside - the old faithful favourite flying bum route along the Greensand ridge. Because the weather was so good, and in rather valedictory mood, I thought it right to squeeze in another just before the removers came to take the bikes away.
On the heath outside Potton near the topiary farm, this branch seems to have grown in the perfect shape to create an arch to ride through
I rode off to do the flying bum route, so called because it gives a good view over the Cardington airship sheds and for a few years I would get a good spot of the giant prototype airship (nicknamed the "flying bum"), on a beautiful clear and cold day. The mud was sometimes thick on the ground, and I was seriously out of shape after my long hiatus from cycling over the winter - I considered turning round at Danish camp on the Ouse, but thought it would be a shame not to do justice to the day and surroundings.
I struggled a bit in the muddiest stretches crossing the fields and climbing onto the ridge, and my camera battery only worked intermittently. But I thoroughly enjoyed myself, pulling slowly through the bright and wintery January-deserted landscape. I must have done this ride 30 times, but I never got bored of it and doing it one last time was a touch emotional.
My final ride was grabbed in an intermission in the increasingly intense packing. I couldn't go far, and wanted to stay largely on paved roads to avoid coating the bike/house with too much mud - so I picked my favourite in the area, the long empty tiny lane that runs down into Herfordshire to Ashwell.
I felt stronger cycling now, and positively enjoyed climbing the rolling hills in the crisp, cold air.
The impressive basin of one of the three sand quarries outside Potton. This one is disused, and while it's technically out-of-bounds, quite a lot of people ramble down there
This was a big puzzle to me when I first moved to eastern England. "How do they get so many rocks out each field?" I wondered. They're actually beets, hundreds of them, grown for fodder or to make sugar.
After going through Ashwell, as a short finale I thought I'd climb up the range of hills just beyond the village. Partridge Hill climbs up to the Arbury banks Roman hill fort, and gives great views over the three counties. It was a fitting ending of my last ride.
Coming over the top of Partridge hill, the sun emerged from beneath the low cloud to give strange light effects over the rolling hills of Hertfordshire to the south.
I said my goodbyes and turned around to return home. I had a tailwind and the sun came out again - a good augury.
I also got a great look at a Red Kite circling above the fields. These were once completely wiped out in England, and were re-introduced into the Cotswolds from a small number of breeding pairs in Wales. In the last 10 years they've really flourished, and are now reasonably common in East Anglia too.
