Winter has arrived: it’s too far to drive to calendar events up near Bristol or the Midlands but I still want to be challenged and have a reason to go out. My riding friends shudder at the thought of staying out for more than three hours and are unimpressed by my cafe avoiding routes. Now is the season for DIY riding. Calendar rides are too far away or perhaps I just need to get up earlier.  No cake, no company but no three hour drive either. Start from home and finish at home making the most of the brief daylight.. As the winter progresses, the solitude of riding alone all day makes me feel more and more introspective, vulnerable, lost. My mood darkens with the shorter days and lower light levels, the constant wind and rain, the cold and the loneliness. Only in the longer, brighter days of March will the joy begin to return.

November

All this month there has been a continuous barrage of fierce westerlies battering Cornwall. The long summer drought is well over and the reservoirs and moors are drinking down the rain. It has sluiced topsoil from the fields leaving the lanes tyre deep in sticky clay and stones. Long road edge puddles, rippled by the wind, will linger now for the rest of this winter. It is a south westerly wind and it’s always blustery except when it’s a tree shaking, roof whistling gale. The air tastes Atlantic salty, clouds tearing just above the roof, the surrounding hills gone from sight. 

November days are very suddenly short of daylight. Our little house nestles deep at the bottom of a valley, surrounded by woods and owls and deer. It is very dark here. No light unless the moon appears from behind the scudding clouds. No sound except the rain on the roof and the wind in the trees. Sometimes it is hard to remember the world still exists beyond our circle of trees.

I like to spend the winter evenings planning rides, looking for routes that avoid the worst of the ‘snakes and ladders’, the ‘up and down and up again’, sawtooth hills. Rides that take me somewhere new or just make me want to go out and explore. Planning a ride tracing new lanes up new valleys, looking for something flatter, or more direct, a different destination for a ride. Looking too for weather windows, a brief respite between Atlantic fronts. 

November rides: low winter light, reflecting off puddles in the furrowed fields, glinting blackly on the wet roads. Fallen leaves make my wheel skid and my heart flutter. An unexpected rain shower can leave hands cold, fingers uncoordinated on the brakes, gears grinding as a sticky, muddy paste coats the chain. 

I catch glimpses of the sea on every ride. It is never far away. No horizon line, just shades of grey merging sea and sky. Sometimes the ride will take me right down to the coast, seaside beach villages closed up for winter and black suited surfers sitting out beyond the break like a line of curious seals. 

Or riding along a high ridge, views across rough grazing land with pale, yellow, tussocky grass, rain flattened heather, dead bracken and exposed ribs of granite on the higher moors. The valleys below patched with empty fields and damp farmhouses, the cows indoors now, their breath steaming in the open sided barns, patiently waiting for the winter to end. Poor cows. They will be food once spring comes. 

Still daylight when I get home from a long ride, rattling down the corrugated lane, brakes on hard, balancing carefully on the cattle grids as the wheels spin and twist away. Tea and cake are waiting and a debate over whether to clean the bike now or wait until tomorrow. The hot shower always wins. It’s good to get out, it’s better to be home.