Heart is on my sleeve

I told my osteopath I'd have a quiet December, and since the last post,as far as cycling goes, that has been largely true. A couple of Sunday rides, where the coffee/cake/bacon sandwich have been the objective. There was quite a lot of inadvertent climbing last week, rather than hard and fast miles. Together with a couple of commutes, characterised by lots of rain, muck and headwind, have made for a gradual wind-down as Christmas and the New Year approaches.

There was the small matter of my niece's wedding, where my siblings and I got together for the first time in a while, it was lovely to catch up with them all. Notice how much taller my elder brother is, he is in fact 7 feet 5.

Gandalf & the Hobbits

Then I have had the visit of my sister, her partner, and my younger brother. Wherever you live I bet you take its beauty for granted. You only really find out what a great place you live in when strangers come to town and tell you so.

We had a great night out watching the The Waterboys at the Colston Hall, and the drive into Bristol over the suspension bridge seemed to impress. But not as much as our walk over Cross Plain, Wavering Down and up the Strawberry Line.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Mike Scott. What can I say. Supreme lyricist and tunesmith. Fantastic visionary, musical pioneer. Just genius. Songs of incredible memory and meaning, played with aplomb, with Anto Thistlethwaite and Steve Wickham adding in dollops of sparkling inventiveness too. That means something.

My brother and I debated which song they would play first, he was right and I was about as wrong as it's possible to be, my guess was the last song. And if you understand the significance of this photo (apologies for the poor quality) then you too followed the raggle-taggle band in 1988.

Today I was up and over Shipham Hill just in time to see the remnants of the sunrise. It was cold, very windy, and wet. It's December, that's what you get. But the company and the coffee stop was good, and neither of us wanted much more out of the day. We didn't go far, in fact we went less than our original limited plan, mainly because neither of us fancied being blasted to kingdom come by the wind.

An easy ride, nothing spectacular.  Ordinary , but good.