The land hasn’t died this year. It is still green and not yet black as it should be in December. This old year refuses to die even while new life springs from the withered flesh, the sagging skin, the emaciated carcass. It is hard to know what is departing and what is arriving and the orderly march of the season is disrupted.

The hedgerows glow with spring primroses and daffodils in these last dark days of December. Mallow and parsley are pushing through. The storms of autumn stripped the holly trees leaving a litter of light and dark green leaves along the verge as if a leaf stripping machine has been through, strewing waste in its passage. Tree branches are still bare, skeletally waving in the cold, grey winds but there are buds clearly visible, waiting for some slightly warmer days. I don’t think the land knows what season it is and everything feels confused and unready. We have to get through January and February yet and there may be snows and frost to come although we saw little or none of either last winter.

My tyres are running through a thin layer of mud that lies right across the lane and the effect is the reverse of a tan wall. I have a tan tread and a black sidewall, the mud spattered forks like an ocelots fur. There are hedge trimmings to avoid, especially the long darts of hawthorn and the deeper layers of mud are making the bike squirm and wriggle its back end. I can see buzzards hunting ahead, silently quartering the land, waiting for an unwise twitch by a mouse or shrew.

Blackbirds frolic despite the coldness and gusting winds, sweeping the lane ahead, diving through the curling claws of bramble and gorse. Sardonic magpies watch from the trees and then screech a warning that is echoed along the lane. Beware of the human, they mean no good.

It hasn’t rained for a couple of weeks but you wouldn’t know it as everything is wet from the mist and low cloud that draggles in from the sea. Branches drip onto the lane, water runs down the trunk, collecting in knots and wrinkles and the sun has not been visible for days.

Grey, grey, grey and all the more reason to push the bike out of the shed and load it with lights and food and set off to find some new lanes. There are always new lanes to find and in this ancient Celtic landscape it is easy to get lost. The lanes shift about, never where they were before, vanishing and re appearing somewhere else, looking the same but no longer connecting. They knot themselves around tiny, granite fringed fields and tie me up trying to find my way. The sky offers no clues and lanes that seem to be wide and so must go somewhere end up in a muddy farm lane and I have to turn around and hunt again. They play tricks on you, lead you on with seductive promises of flatness and views but then cast you down into another secret valley.

It is easy to believe in the Celtic gods and goddesses that once ruled this land. They are always just around the corner, spitefully grinning from beneath a bramble entangled sapling, darkening the sky, moving the lanes so they vanish and re appear somewhere new. Tricksters who enjoy tormenting humans, especially lonely travellers in an empty land. Nothing stirs, it is winter quiet.

There are glimpses, unexpected panoramas of Falmouth Bay or the wider Atlantic, between the wind harried woods and sullen, empty fields.

The lanes dip down into steep wooded valleys, dark beneath the overhanging oaks, a hidden stream, an unexpected bridge, then viciously rise up the other side, tyres scrabbling on the mud and the left over detritus of the last Atlantic gale. My breath comes fast, my chest not big enough for lungs to expand, needing to breath in again before I have breathed out, a desperate search for air, throat sore, arms stiff on the brake hoods, standing on the pedals arse waving at the sky.

I should take the time to see what’s around me, absorb the landscape.

But instead all I want to do is to get to the top of this hill, the sooner the better so the pain will stop. Every minor summit is followed by another descent and I just want it to be over.

I know I will look back on this ride and remember only the sudden views, the flashes of insight into this ancient landscape, the ache in my legs forgotten, the lack of grace in my riding style glossed over. Right now it just hurts and I can’t understand why I never get stronger and it never gets any easier.

Heading home in the remains of the day. My front light strobes against road signs, dimly penetrating the mist. Into Truro and through the main square as the shops close and people gather in small knots and drift home with shopping bags and shoe boxes. The cathedral spires are lost in low cloud and there is a ‘between’ feeling in the town. Christmas gone, New Year yet to start and most people have been off work for a week and are beginning to slow down, as they did in the pandemic.

I will be home before dark, the byre warmth beckoning me on in the last few miles on quiet lanes. Time to think. A new year starts soon and it is time to make resolutions, make a new start but it is never easy just as the land is entangled in the past with new growth on the stubborn remains of the last growth, so my resolutions are rooted in past failures amid fresh hope for change.

I can think of goals around distances or challenges but that seems facile, shallow, pointless. I want to move from quantitative targets or hopeless ambitions to something more meaningful.

Stopping at the top of the steep descent to home – a final skeetering, brake squealing drop on broken tarmac, gravel and old leaves. There is a view from here across to the clay hills of St Austell some fifteen miles away, stark white bones pushing through the rolling fields and woods.

Breathing stills, the world waits. A blackbird sings from within the hedge, calling to his mate. Rabbits emerge cautiously and sniff their way across the field. The disappearing sun flares red on the low cloud and shadows emerge in the deeper hollows.

I resolve to spend more time looking, watching, observing and reflecting. Although immediately I push on, shoes clicking onto pedals, settling into the groove of saddle and bar. Right now I am hungry, cold and damp and have no more time to stand and stare. The resolutions can begin tomorrow.