Our cat is, as nature intended, a hunter.  By rights she should be a killing machine.  What she actually is is a “catch things and play with them a lot” machine.  Before you go getting all RSPB on my ass, she has a bell, and she’s well fed.  We’ve done the best we can…  As a result of her ineptitude I spend more time than I wish to disposing of small corpses, or attempting to rescue the not yet dead.  Recently there has a been a small black parade of rodents that have not made the cut…

This morning I went to open the door to the conservatory and discovered one jellicle cat with a recognisable guilty look on her face and, out of the corner of one eye, something moving by a plant pot.  What joys awaited me this time?  A small bird trying very hard to get underneath anything and away.  So I rescued it, as you do.  It turned out to be a fledgling of some sort, unharmed as far as I could tell, though maybe minus the odd feather.  Quite cute as these things go, and happy to sit in the palm of my hand and doze.  What to do now?  Well I tried putting it outside in a sheltered spot and hoping its parents would reclaim it.  All this did was attract other cats into the garden…which would seem to defeat the object of rescuing it.  I scared them away.  It remained parentless yet resolutely alive.

What to do now?  (And here comes the relevance…I know you’ve been wondering).    I was supposed to be going for a ride, but if I left it out there for 2 hours, with the hordes gathering, then it was never going to make it.  I know nature is red in tooth and claw, but my conscience (inconvenient thing) just wouldn’t let me do it.  *Sigh*.  So I retrieved the bird and put it in a small cardboard box.  A couple of phone calls later, and a quick trip down the A38, and the baby blue tit was installed at Secret World.  My karma was topped up, and the cat versus the animal world balance was redressed a little.

An hour later than planned and I got to hit the road.  Sort of literally.  I was barely out of the Square when I had to stop and tinker with the mp3 player, and failed dismally to pull over neatly, instead getting too close to the curb, failing to unclip properly, and heading up in an ungainly heap on the pavement.   Nice.  Karma clearly hadn’t been impressed…as the graze on my left knee demonstrates.

A little shaken but still determined to get my ride in I headed for the hills.  Shipham Hill to be precise.  I was feeling like a record attempt so I made sure not to dilly dally getting to the bottom and to push myself a bit more than usual on the way up.  Did it work?  Sho’ did!  My door to the top of the hill in 14:30 – beating my previous best by a minute.  Man I’m good! *grin*.

Now, this would have been a celebratory moment, but again with the karma.  As I neared the top I was happily going up and the drizzle started coming down.  Just lovely.  Ho hum.  I may be getting better at corners and downhills in the dry, but give me wet roads and all bets are off.  Not to mention the fact that cycling in the rain, into the wind, is not a whole heap of fun.  Oh yes, there was wind too.  Plenty of it.  Nothing new there then.

So where do you go on a day like that?  Well, the seaside of course! Across the usual flat nowhere to hide wiggly bits to Sand Bay, which was truly miserable.  Getting wetter and wetter, fighting the wind, and wondering why I was putting myself through it.  The upside is that I was so keen to get it over and done with that I was at least going pretty fast on the flat.  Not so much so up the kicker past the Commodore Hotel though, but even that was ok.  From there it was off into Weston which was at least relatively grockle free, and the rain did lift a bit.  I went out through Uphill and straight over up the big Bleadon Hill.  Yes – another hill.

I pootled my way up happily, until some lad in a white van (I should so know better) asked me to stop for a mo.  Which I did because hey, maybe he wanted directions or something.  Nope.  Just to tell ask me if I knew it was going to be much harder to get going now since I was going uphill.  A real comedian. Him and his mate thought he was very funny.  And maybe he is, down in the shallow end of the gene pool.  I just sighed, said yes but I was used to it, and carried on my merry way.

The rest of the hill was fine, as was the second bit.  I’m sure it used to be worse.  In fact I was so happy with my hill prowess that rather than come home back past the Webbington, I turned left beforehand, just to go up Winscombe Hill again.  Still no frogs though…even though the weather was more suitable for them than usual 😉

Cycling time: 2:05:48 hrs
Distance: 33.18 miles
Avs: 15.8 mph
ODO: 8428 miles

It’s like I have to keep doing hills to prove that I can still do them.  Which is probably daft in a tapering week.  However they went well, my knee didn’t hurt, and my average speed was pretty darn good too.  That should set me up nicely for Sunday 🙂