The tile tossing, branch breaking, cloud chasing, leaf stripping, mad March winds have ended, at least for a moment. Better weather, is here for a day and hope flourishes. The green spirits of spring are stirring beneath the land. A single rook glimpsed with a stick in its beak marks the end of winter. Life is beginning again. Another long ride beckons, a seductive trail on a map, a promise of adventure.

Winter weak sunshine cannot dispel the lingering cold of the morning but those blue skies are enough to lift the heart. Out of Truro and heading east for a change, direction channeled by high hedges and ancient lanes, daffodil lined, the trees budding and birds nesting.  

It always feels hard in the first few kilometres. No fluency, muffed gear changes, out of the saddle too soon and wearing myself out early in the ride. Energy conservation is important at the beginning. 

Through the dark wooded valley of Coombe where the low winter sun is lost behind a hill and the cold air gathers. Uphill now through St Stephen, a ragged collection of old miners cottages and then breaking into sunshine on the hills above.  Pure white, china clay quarries reflect the bright spring sunlight. The clay tips surround, white boned under the flesh of scrubby gorse and heather, fenced off ponds of turquoise depths, a incongruous Caribbean beach of white sand and azure water set against the dark, granite moors. 

Down a long, quiet, oak wooded valley to the Camel Trail, streams running white with yesterdays’ rain. The Trail itself is empty. In the summer crowds would make it an obstacle course of wobbling hire bikes, towed buggies, unpredictable small children and snaking dog leads, but today it is the muddy, gritty surface and long deep puddles that impede progress. The trail finishes after fifteen kilometres at the foot of Bodmin Moor and there is now a long uphill rising steeply onto the high moors. 

It’s very quiet up here on these bleak moors where it rains and snows more days than it is dry and the winds blow off the nearby Atlantic unimpeded. When I stop there is silence, nothing moving except the wind on the grass. No traffic. No people. Rough Tor and Brown Willy sit majestically to the right, granite darkened by winter rains, the rough grass yellowed, tussocky. This is the best part of the ride and I have been looking forward to these vast vistas of undulating open moor, distant projecting tors and an endless sky. 

Moving rhythmically along the empty road, as a tune follows the crotchets and quavers of a music sheet.  A long rising note to a summit, staccato braking into the hollows, crossing streams on clapper bridges.  Faster and then slower. Allegro then andante. A soaring alto of delight in movement, fingering notes through gears, a back beat through the pedals. A cantata of tyre hiss and clicking derailleur. 

Off the moor with a sense of sadness that it is over and onto an A road that thinks it is a B road, moving from one to two lanes, hemmed by hedges but always with the blue Atlantic in the distance. Nearly to Boscastle but then turn for home, aware of time flowing away, passing Delabole and Port Isaac and dropping downhill past crow pecked, stubbled fields to Wadebridge. A necessity here is a five kilometre foray along the Camel Trail towards Padstow before returning around and waving again to everyone I passed in the opposite direction just minutes before. Those extra ten kilometres get me to the ‘right’ distance although again I haven’t registered the ride as a DIY. It’s the challenge I want, not the points.  

Soon back  on familiar roads and I get itchy, wanting to get it done, shoulders complaining, knees groaning. When I start a ride, I always just want to finish, to get it done. When I finish I want to start again. The balm of motion, the soothing wind, the hiss of tyres eating up the road, wondering what lies beyond the next bend, the next summit. The problem now is that I know only too well what is next,  I am all too familiar with the hills ahead, the knee grinding gradients to come. The last twenty kilometres always feel the slowest. 

I will come this way again one day. Every time is different, new thoughts, contemplations, time flowing on quietly until it runs out of road. Winter is done now. Roads are drying out and the impish spirits of spring are running amok in the hedgerows and woods. Spring is here and hope flourishes. To celebrate, I have entered an audax ride for April. No more lonely rides on dark days and early nights.