The green corridor
A short and sweet ride into the city with Nick this morning for breakfast and a catch up turned into a sixty mile full day out. We had planned to head down the river to brew and breakfast somewhere along the way but a suggestion from Nick to head to Moose Cafe for breakfast didn’t get challenged and off we went, despite having ridden here many times we managed to get lost in the city and it took a quick google to sort us out.
A breakfast of pancakes and coffee hit the spot and then we headed out of the city via Media city and back along the canal for another quick coffee and more putting the world to rights before going our separate ways.
I had a full day to myself but despite feeling under the weather of late I headed out into the lush greens to see where I ended up, once away from the tarmac I couldn’t believe just how lush and in fact massively overgrown everywhere is.
Obviously the hottest May in living memory combined with occasional heavy rain has done wonders for the plants, there are sections of the Trans Pennine Trail that are now unrideable without enduring some kind of ritual scarification of the arms and legs, and this combined with neck high nettles makes for painful riding in some places.
However this is all okay because of the greens, I can’t recall ever seeing my trails looking so good, so good that even though I took a Canon out when I should have taken a Fuji the colours in the photographs are still amazing.
After a while I was quite greened out so started to actively look for other colours to provide some contrast, one trail in particular that I’ve ridden many times over the years revealed a red painted trig point type of edifice that I’ve never noticed before.
A little further along and there was what looked to be the remains of a formal garden, the Rhododendrons being the give away, I was really quite surprised to see these things, I used to use this trail on my commute to work but I guess that my slow and steady pace these days is useful for seeing things through fresh eyes.
Of course another positive of all this green action is the emergence of some fabulous grass up the middle, I found a couple of new to me examples today, sadly both ending in dead ends but fun for a while, unfortunately though one victim of the heat has been our favourite ‘Pointless Lane’ it seems that the dirt strip in the middle of the lane has dried to a bone (being on top of tarmac I guess) and the lush green strip of a week ago is now mousy blonde and looking very sorry for itself !
Heading home now and I head under the bridge near to the canal and was intrigued to see the vibrant green glow reflected on the walls, the ceiling and in the stream that flows through there, I linger for a few minutes to let my eyes adjust, its quite eerie and only when some fellow cyclists come through do I realise that it’s possibly not a great idea to be hanging around under here taking photographs !
Words and pictures - Steve Makin