Forgotten Journalists, Immigration Deaths & Traffic Fumes – 2017

Forgotten Journalists, Immigration Deaths & Traffic Fumes: On Thursday 21st September I photographed a protest in Islilngton against the deaths and detention of journalists in Eritrea, a protest at the Home Office following the the deaths of men in immigration detention centres and ‘Stop Killing Londoners’ bringing traffic to a halt at rush hour to dance in Trafalgar Square in a short protest about the illegal levels of air pollution.


Free forgotten jailed Eritrean Journalists – Eritrean Embassy, Islington

Sixteen years earlier in September and October 2001 Eritrean dictator Isayas Afewerki closed all independent media and began the arrests of journalists and opposition politicians.

Around a dozen prominent journalists were arrested along with politicians. Since then they have been in isolation without charge, without trial and without contact with the outside world. Nobody knows their whereabouts and only four are now thought to be still alive.

One man with dual Eritrean-Swedish citizenship, Dawit Isaak, was in 2024 awarded the Swedish Edelstam human rights prize for his exceptional courage. In 2001 he had founded Eritrea’s first independent newspaper Setit which had called for democratic reforms and had criticised the government. His daughter accepted the prize on his behalf. If still alive he is now 60, having been in jail for 23 years.

The imprisoned journalists were represented at the protest by empty chairs, with people sitting on them holding posters showing the names and photograph of those thought to be still living. Others stood with similar posters of those thought dead as well as some with pictures of the missing politicians.

More at Free forgotten jailed Eritrean Journalists.


No More Deaths in immigration detention – Home Office

The protest had been called at short notice after the death was announced of a Chinese man held at Dungavel immigration detention centre. Earlier in the month a Polish man took his own life in the Harmondsworth centre after the Home Office refused to release him despite the courts having granted him bail.

Since 1989 there have been 31 people who have died in immigration removal centres. “Britain is the only country in the EU which subjects refugees and asylum seekers to indefinite detention, and the conditions in the detention centres have been criticised in many official reports and media investigations.” It leads some to lose hope.

No More Deaths in immigration detention


Trafalgar Square blocked over pollution deaths

Campaigners from ‘Stop Killing Londoners‘ cleared Trafalgar Square of traffic in a short protest against the illegal levels of air pollution in the capital which result in 9,500 premature deaths and much suffering from respiratory disease.

Trafalgar Square, an iconic meeting place at the heart of London is also a major traffic junction, with five major roads bringing traffic in and taking it away with often long queues. Stopping the traffic at all five points needed careful planning and coordination, with five groups with large banners stepping out and blocking traffic.

The square itself was greatly improved when the road along its northern side was pedestrianised and the current terrace built with its wide steps leading down into the rest of the square. Though I think a more drastic pedestrianisation of both Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square along with Westminster Bridge – with some provision for buses, cycles and horse-drawn vehicles – would now be a very welcome improvement.

The protesters had planned to hold up the traffic for ten minutes. They told drivers, a few of whom were irate, that the protest would only be brief and to stop their engines to cut pollution – though most failed to do so. The protesters then danced in the roads to loud music from the sound system they had brought with them.

Among those leading the protest was Roger Hallam, recently released from a four year prison sentence for organising a series of protest to block the M25 which took place in November 2022. Earlier this month, three of the activists who were on trial for actually climbing the gantries in the protest against the government’s plan to licence over 100 new oil and gas projects against all expert advice were unanimously found not guilty by a jury which decided they had a reasonable excuse for their actions.

The activists stopped their protest which was to demand action by the Mayor and TfL after about the ten minutes they had previously decided it would last and when police came and asked them to do so they immediately left the roads.

Since 2017 under London Mayor Sadiq Khan, elected in 2016, London pollution levels have dropped dramatically with the first 24-hour Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in 2019, extended in 2023 to cover the whole city, the switch to less polluting vehicles including buses and taxis and the encouragement of cycling and other measures. Protests such as these and others will certainly have helped spur the city into action.

More at Trafalgar Square blocked over pollution.


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1995 Colour – Kent Landscapes

1995 Colour – Kent Landscapes: Part 7 of my posts on my colour work in 1995. In the early months of 1995 I continued working in both Walthamstow, Chingford and other areas of North London but also made a number of visits south of the river to St Mary Cray, Belvedere and elsewhere. But most of my work was in black and white, though I’ve already posted a few colour images in this series.

River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-342
River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-342

I took far fewer colour pictures and at the time kept few records of locations and dates of these, relying on the annotations I made on my black and white contact sheets.

Brooklands Lakes, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-472
Brooklands Lakes, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-472

On April 1st 1995 I took the train to Dartford, a town I had previously photographed and visited occasionally to visit a friend. Dartford is just outside the east edge of London in Kent and at the west edge of an area beside the Thames which had for many years been the home of the cement industry with huge chalk quarries and riverside cement factories, the largest of which was still operation in the 1990s and which I’d photographed fairly extensively.

Farm, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-473
Farm, River Darent, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-473

I made a long walk around the area south of Dartford, beginning along the river that runs through the town, the Darent, but then through some of the countryside to the south.

Hollands Farm, Hawley Rd, Hawley, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-441
Hollands Farm, Hawley Rd, Hawley, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-441

As well as photographing traces of the cement industry – including a no longer working mineral conveyor which had carried chalk from a quarry to the factory I also photographed the two major roads which have impacted on the landscape south of Dartford, the A2 Dartford By-Pass and the M25 motorway.

Mineral Conveyor, M25, Hawley, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-433
Mineral Conveyor, M25, Hawley, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-433
Farm, Parsonage Lane, Darenth, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-413
Farm, Parsonage Lane, Darenth, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-413
Farm, Darenth, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-663
Farm, Darenth, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-663
Dartford, 1995, 95p4-631
Dartford, 1995, 95p4-631

You can see larger versions of the images by clicking on them which will take you to my Flickr album 1995 London Colour. More colour pictures from Dartford in a later post.


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North Downs & the M25 – Woldingham 2007

North Downs & the M25: We had our elder son staying with us over the Christmas break and by the 29th the trains in our area were almost working normally and we decided to have a walk on the North Downs.

I didn’t write a lot about it on-line, though some of the pictures have captions, but here is the complete text from My London Diary other than those.

A couple of days later we took a walk on the North Downs at Woldingham. It was pretty enough, but for much of the walk we could hear and see the M25.

Though we were walking along rather less busy roads – the sign here says ‘Public Bridleway. No Four Wheel Vehicular Access.’

Wikipedia begins its entry on the village with “Woldingham is a village and civil parish high on the North Downs between Oxted and Warlingham in Surrey, England, within the M25, 17.5 miles (28.2 km) southeast of London.”

Which isn’t a great deal of help to those of us who have only the vaguest idea of where Oxted and Warlingham are, but this is a part of what I think of as “deepest Surrey“, a few miles out past Croydon. We live in a very different part of the county with few large houses and virtually free of horses and on the other side of the Thames which doesn’t really belong in the county – and until the 1960s was Middlesex, the county which once included London and our town is still a part of it.

There is a steep escaprment on the Southern edge of the North Downs

This year today engineering work on the railway means there would be no way to get to Woldingham by train, but back in 2007 – and at normal times of the year now – it’s a relatively short journey, with a change at Clapham Junction we could be there in around an hour and a quarter. So even with the short December days there would still be plenty of time to walk around ten or twelve miles before it gets dark and be home in time for dinner.

I can’t remember the route we took, but this was a circular walk from Woldingham station Both the first and last pictures I made that day were at Church Farm, just a quarter of a mile south from the station. It’s probably not a walk I would recommend unless for some reason this section of the M25 was closed, as almost everywhere you can hear the noise of the traffic along it.

My shadow taking a picture in the churchyard of St Agatha’s Woldingham, first recorded in 1270

It’s probably not a walk I would recommend unless for some reason this section of the M25 was closed, as almost everywhere you can hear the noise of the traffic along it. There seemed to be some long traffic jams, with cars moving hardly any faster than us.

The final picture I made on the walk. More on My London Diary at North Downs & M25.


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Boxing Day Walk – 2014

Boxing Day Walk: Most years this century we have walked from Staines to Old Windsor for a family lunch, at first at my sister’s house, but more recently at a pub in Old Windsor where we have been joined by other members of the family. We are hoping to do the same today, though perhaps we might need to take a bus, a few of which are rumoured to be running, though I think likely to be cancelled at zero notice.

Boxing Day Walk - 2014
The Swanmaster statue had been moved earlier in 2014 to the riverside garden in Staines

It’s not a great distance, though in earlier years we often added a few miles to the more direct five or so to develop more of an appetite, and sometimes we had too when the path beside the River Thames was flooded.

Boxing Day Walk - 2014
Offices on a small riverside dock on the Surrey bank in Staines

On My London Diary you can read more about some of these walks, and in particular about our walk on Friday 26th December 2014, ten years ago, when I wrote about it in rather more detail than usual. Here I’ll just post a few of the pictures from that walk with some captions, mainly those I wrote back in 2014. The pictures follow the order of our walk.

Boxing Day Walk - 2014
The annual Boxing Day Challenge (if river flow allows) between Staines Boat Club and Burway Rowing Club
Boxing Day Walk - 2014
The more recent of the two bridges taking the M25 and A30 Staines Bypass across the river
Boxing Day Walk - 2014
A floating crane moored by the weir at Bell Weir Lock in water undisturbed by boats
The 1910 water intake to the Staines aqueduct takes water to reservoirs and treatment works.
Rosehearty has been moored here for years. The name is a town on the Moray Firth.
Dock at Bell Weir Boats in Runnymede
Houses on The Island in Wraysbury – many here were flooded in February 2014
The Thames at Runnymede, where we crazily swum in the buff when young after an evening in the Angler’s Rest Hotel. Then there was a diving board here too.
R G Bargee – most boat owners seem unable to resist a pun. We were almost there.
Another family at our destination.

Boxing Day Walk


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No New Coal Rally and March – Rochester, Kent 2008

No New Coal Rally and March: On Sunday 3rd August I took a train to Rochester in Kent to photograph a rally in the town of Rochester from which people were marching to the Climate Camp was at Kingsnorth on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent where E.ON were intending to build the country’s first new coal-fired power station in 30 years.

No New Coal Rally and March

I wasn’t able to attend the Climate Camp itself as I was leaving for Glasgow early the following morning so I left the marchers on their way to the site, seven miles away.

No New Coal Rally and March

There was a large police presence at the rally and for the march, and later at Kingsnorth a number of protesters were arrested, with others assaulted by police who carried out a repressive action against the campers.

No New Coal Rally and March

Press who had gone to cover the event were stopped and searchers, some multiple times and were subjected to both obvious and secret filming, as well as being pushed and shoved by police who demanded unnecessary personal information. Months later Kent Police admitted they had been wrong to film journalists, but claimed it was hard to tell them from the protesters – despite the fact that they all wore or showed the police-recognised UK Press Cards.

No New Coal Rally and March

E.ON’s proposals to build a new and highly polluting power station at Kingsnorth had gone largely unnoticed in the media until the Climate Camp brought the issue to national attention. The over-reaction by the police helped to raise its profile, as did the trail of the Kingsnorth Six, activists arrested for causing an alleged £30,000 damage to one of the chimneys of the existing coal-fired in October 2007 and charged with criminal damage.

The activists claimed they had “lawful excuse” for their actions in that they carried it out to help prevent the much greater damage that a new coal-fired power station would cause by accelerating climate change.

Their trial heard evident from five defence witnesses, one of them Professor James Hansen, a former climate change adviser to the US White House, who stated that the social cost of emitting a tonne of CO2 was around £50. He estimated that a new coal-fired power station would cause around £1 million worth of damage per day it ran.

In truth the activists had not actually damaged the chimney significantly, but had simply painted the word ‘Gordon‘ on it, but they were acquitted in September 2008 because the jury found the damage they did to the smokestack was outweighed by the harm done to the planet by emissions from the power station.

E.ON was forced to abandon its plans largely because of the substantial public protests and criticism much of it arising from the publicity given to the Climate Camp and the trial.

The UK establishment were appalled by the verdict, and we have recently seen part of their reaction to this in the recent trial of Just Stop Oil activists who were judged to have committed contempt of court for attempting to introduce similar issues in their defence and then given draconian sentences for their peaceful protest. The law is meant to protect the interests of the rich and powerful not the planet.

You can read more about the rally in Rochester and the march towards Kingsnorth on My London Diary. One Climate Camp Caravan had started from Heathrow a week ago and another, the Stop Incineration Climate Camp Caravan had been travelling from Brighton, both demonstrating at various related sites along their routes and they met on Sunday morning in the middle of Rochester for a ‘No New Coal’ Rally attended by around 300 people.

After the rally the protesters set off to march to Kingsnorth and I went with them across the Medway and up the long hill in Strood before leaving them and returning to Strood station.

More at No New Coal Rally and March.


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No Third Runway, TTIP & Zombies

No Third Runway, TTIP & Zombies: Saturday 10th October 2015 saw me in Parliament Square for a rally against building another runway at Heathrow, then outside the Dept of Business, Innovation and Skills against a secret US/EU trade deal and finally meeting charity zombies walking across the Jubilee Bridge.


No Third Runway – Parliament Square

No Third Runway, TTIP & Zombies

Community protests and a little environmental common sense had defeated plans to expand Heathrow Airport which was cancelled by the coalition government in 2010, but the aviation industry didn’t take no for an answer. A biased commission was set up to look at airport growth and in July 2015 came out with its report putting a third runway back on the table.

No Third Runway, TTIP & Zombies

Around a thousand people turned up a few months later on October 10th for a central London rally against the third runway at Heathrow as levels of noise and pollution across London were already unacceptable. They argued the Davies commission was flawed and airport expansion was both unnecessary and impractical.

No Third Runway, TTIP & Zombies

Any expansion would be a catastrophe for those living around the airport whose land and homes would be lost, but huge areas around already suffer from noise and illegal levels of pollution due to Heathrow, including Chiswick, Hammersmith and Teddington. And we would all suffer from increasing carbon emissions leading to global heating as environmental groups including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace pointed out.

No Third Runway, TTIP & Zombies

As well as the flights and the problems they cause directly, Heathrow expansion would also increase traffic in the surrounding area, where roads including the M25 which are already often greatly overcrowded are already under stress, with minor incidents often bringing large areas to a standstill. Another runway would bring more road traffic with more pollution and more and more gridlock. The existing problems would also be made worse as the expansion would further disrupt traffic routes in the area.

The meeting was chaired by one of my least favourite media presenters Gyles Brandreth who introduced in his usual sick-making way a number of well-known speakers including Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, MPs Andy Slaughter & Tania Mathias, four of London’s Mayoral candidates, Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan, Sian Berry and Caroline Pidgeon, Richmond Council leader Lord True, campaigners John Sauven of Greenpeace, John Stewart of HACAN and others.

Also treated to his ingratiating manner was the star of the show, local resident Mrs Taylor who has lived in a house right on the edge of the proposed extension for 80 years and came on helped by her daughter and grand-daughter to be interviewed by Brandreth.

Although Parliament approved the expansion in 2018 and legal challenges were finally dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2020, given that we now feel so much more keenly the disastrous effects of carbon emissions on global temperatures it seems virtually impossible for it to take place – and if it did that it would become a massive white elephant, greater than even the current HS2 scandal.

More at No Third Runway.


TTIP protest at Business Ministry, Westminster

A short distance away outside the Dept of Business, Innovation and Skills a part of an EU-wide protest against TTIP was taking place. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership was a secret US/EU trade deal which puts company profits above democracy and over 3 million of us EU citizens had signed petitions against it.

TTIP would have forced us to accept US grown and processed foods, including GM crops and meat and dairy products from animals fed on GM, chickens that are washed in chlorine, meat containing high hormone levels and other chemical solutions to allow sloppy husbandry.

TTIP would also allow corporations to dictate government policies by taking them to courts where any policy might possibly impact on their profits, and would drive the rapid privatisation of the NHS and other public services.

Fortunately the secret negotiations ended without conclusion at the end of 2016, and the EU later declared that they were “obsolete and no longer relevant“. The documents detailing the negotiated proposals are still secret, only available to authorised persons.

Since Brexit, TTIP would not have directly applied to trade between the US and UK, but similar secret negotiations have been carrying on between the UK and the US. But the US has taken little interest in concluding these as the UK is less important as a trading partner.

TTIP protest at Business Ministry


Zombies crawl for St Mungo’s – Jubilee Bridge & Embankment Gardens

I was too late to see the start of the Zombie crawl at Leake Street,but was able to photograph them as they came up the steps from Jubilee Gardens onto the Jubilee Bridge and as they took a short break in Enbankment Gardens before their lengthy crawl around the West End.

This Zombie crawl was a fund-raising event for St Mungo’s Broadway, a charity which provides the homeless with emergency shelter, housing, healthcare and training, and the zombies were remarkably friendly. Perhaps a little less dramatically zombified than on some zombie crawls I’ve photographed in the past, and certainly rather less alcohol-fuelled than most.

Some zombie crawls have been overtly political, others just young people having a fun pub crawl. This one was for charity, and the fact we need to have charities to provide support for the homeless certainly shows a failure by government to provide support for some of the most needy in our society.

Back in the 1960s I remember going to Paris and seeing people sleeping on the streets and not understanding what a beggar who approached us was doing – I’d just not experienced this on the streets of London.

Of course there were some homeless people in our cities, and homeless men walking to the centre of London would sometimes come to our back door and ask my mother for a cup of tea (which she always provided, along with a few pence we couldn’t afford) but nothing on the scale we have seen over the past 20 or 30 years.

I didn’t spend long photographing the zombies. There were too many other people taking pictures for me to be able to work in the way I like, and it was even worse in the Embankment Gardens than on the bridge. I don’t often crop pictures, liking to work with the full-frame though occasionally making some minor adjustments, but on this occasion there were simply too many other people with cameras who I wanted to remove.

Zombies crawl for St Mungo’s


Epping Forest Centenary Walk

Epping Forest Centenary Walk 2009: London is in some ways a ‘green city’ with over 3,000 parks of varying sizes within the boroughs which make up Greater London. These range from pocket handkerchief areas to large commons and royal parks such as the roughly 2500 acre Richmond Park.

Epping Forest Centenary Walk
Wanstead Flats

London Mayor Sadiq Khan supported London being designated as the world’s first National Park City in 2019 and announced plans to increase the amount of ‘green space’ to 50%. This isn’t a huge target as according to the capital’s environmental records centreRoughly 47% of Greater London is ‘green’; 33% of London is natural habitats within open space according to surveyed habitat information and an additional 14% is estimated to be vegetated private, domestic garden land.”

Epping Forest Centenary Walk
One of the Montague Road Estate flats had misssiles on its roof for the Olympics

In order of size, starting with the largest they categorise this as Other Urban Fringe, Parks And Gardens, Natural And Semi-natural Urban Greenspace, Green Corridors, Outdoor Sports Facilities, Unknown and amenities with other minor contributions. Some 22% is classified as Green Belt which gives some quite strong protection against development, though my borough is currently proposing to build on a little of it.

Epping Forest Centenary Walk
The walk goes on a bridge across the North Circular Road

The protection of green spaces in and around London has a long history, back to the Norman conquest when kings set up royal hunting grounds convenient to their palaces in Westminster and further afield. These were called forests, though most were mainly open land rather than full of trees; the name was a legal term meaning only the king had the right to hunt deer in them. One of the larger areas, established by Henry II in the 12th century was Epping Forest, part of an even larger Forest of Essex.

Epping Forest Centenary Walk
Memorial to a famous evanglalist Gypsy Rodney Smith born in a bender here

Enclosures began to threaten the future of the forest at the start of the 19th century when around a third of the remaining forest was allowed to be privatised for building development and farming by the lords of various manors in the forest. By 1870 around two thirds of the forest had been enclosed.

Warren Pond

By this time many people had become worried about the loss of the commons, particular after neighbouring Hainault Forest had been sold off by the Crown, the trees removed and the area turned into poor agricultural land. More and more people were coming out from London during their free times to enjoy the green spaces in the outskirts and preservation societies were set up.

Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge

The City of London became involved after it bought land at Manor Park for the City of London Cemetery. Traditonally the city had organised Easter Monday stag hunts in the forest, but they now became commoners with the right to graze animals, and began legal actions agaimst lords of the manor who had enclosed forest land. Eventually Acts of Parliament allowed them to purchase the forest manors and an court in 1874 ruled that all enclosures made since 1851 were illegal.

Under the Epping Forest Act 1878 the forest ceased to be a royal forest and became managed by the City – as it still is. The Crown lost its right to venison and commoners lost some of their rights too, but the City Conservators were obliged to “at all times keep Epping Forest unenclosed and unbuilt on as an open space for the recreation and enjoyment of the people.”

The preservation of Epping Forest was the first major victory in Europe for the modern environmental movement. Four years later it was endorsed by Queen Victoria, who although it was no longer royal but in the hands of the City of London, nevertheless stated “It gives me the greatest satisfaction to dedicate this beautiful forest to the use and enjoyment of my people for all time“.

On the 100th anniversary of the Epping Forest Act in 1978, the Friends of Epping Forest began a annual series of anniversary walks from along a route they established from Manor Park Station to Epping. The Friends were originally formed to oppose the routing of London’s orbital M25 through the Forest, leading to it being put in a tunnel. But they have been less successful in opposing some other breaches of the 1878 Act, and in 1989-94 a large section of the south of the forest was lost to build the M11 link road, and during the London 2012 Olympics a temporary police station was allowed to be built on Wanstead Flats.

Epping Station at the end of our walk

I walked the Epping Forest Centenary Walk with some of my family and a friend on Bank Holiday Monday 31 August 2009, and you can download a leaflet including a map (though I’d advise also having the OS Explorer 174) of what has now been renamed the Epping Forest Big Walk. According to this it is 14.1 miles (22.7km) but we managed to walk rather further, possibly partly because we got a little lost at times. Of course you can do the walk in stages rather than all on the same day. If you want to walk with others you can join the free Big Walk this year on Sunday 17th September 2023 to be led by experienced guides!


Slowing Down

The Old Town Hall, Staines – given away and now being converted to flats

Tuesday

Two lycra-clad cyclists were chatting nonchalantly as they came up beside me on the road coming into Laleham this morning and I heard them for a few seconds until they swept apparently effortlessly past me. Perhaps I sped up just a little, though I was already going as fast as I could comfortably, and I was just a little discomforted as I saw them take the same route as I was intending to travel, down Ferry Lane and Thames Side, though they were only perhaps 50 yards ahead as I made the right turn behind them.

They weren’t actually going a great deal faster than me, and they were still in sight by the time we reached Chertsey Lock, over a mile and a half after they had passed me, perhaps just 300 yards ahead, but it was their apparent ease that upset me a little, as I was more or less at full stretch.

I lost them then, as they went right and I went left, continuing to push myself on my morning 10 mile exercise ride. It was a warm morning with little wind, ideal for cycling, and as I made my way through Littleton and Charlton, glances at my watch confirmed that I had a good chance of meeting my target time for the ride of 40 minutes. It was after all only 15 miles per hour.

It was when I came to the busy A308 Staines Road West that things really began to go pear-shaped. Rather than ride along the road I decided to take the safer shared foot and cycle path on its north side. It starts along pavements, with a few nuisance side-roads which crazily have right of way and then becomes a fairly narrow path with a surface disrupted by tree roots. I had to slow down, changing down two gears, and even then it was heavy and uncomfortable going. Then came a combination of bumps and a large jolt shook my pannier off its rack and I had to stop to fix it back on.

I stopped and found I was pretty well exhausted. What should have been a simple job of lifting the pannier back on eluded me, it slipping out of my hands. After around a minute of struggling I thought I had it fixed and rode off – but when I got home found I had only got one of the two supports on the rack. I struggled on, but when my target time came still had a little over a mile to ride.

I was deflated and could hardly bring myself to go on. That last mile or so was hard going although I took it at around half my normal pace, finishing the ride in 49 minutes. When I got home I collapsed into an armchair and could do little for the next half hour or so. Twelve hours later I’m still feeling tired from the ride.

I don’t intend to give up the rides but I think I have to become rather more realistic about my capabilities. Back in the day I’d reckon on three minutes per mile, but roads were smoother then and I was younger and fitter and on a lighter and faster bike, with lightweight alloy wheels and tubular tires – and around three stone less of rider to carry. Those two riders who passed me were probably each 50 years younger than me – and probably hadn’t had a heart attack and weren’t insulin dependent.

So tomorrow when I take the bike out for another ten, I’ll be happy to get home in around an hour – perhaps a little longer if I stop off a few times to take pictures – and leave targets to the young and fit.

Wraysbury River

Wednesday

Today it was three or four degrees cooler as I left home around 9am for one of the easier and possibly slightly shorter 10 mile rides on my list of nine routes. I made a point of stopping a number of times to take a few photographs to illustrate this post.

Wraysbury River and M25

This was a largely traffic-free route – a back road to nowhere, a bridleway, a minor road, a wide shared path beside a road, with just a short section at each end close to home through normal suburban traffic. But what really makes it an easy ride is the road surfaces. Non-cyclists just don’t realise what a difference this makes. Our road network was largely built for cyclists and back in my youth we had road-rollers (and even the occasional steam roller among them) which smoothed the road when it was relaid. Whoever decided to do away with these and just chuck on tar and gravel and let the traffic bed it down was certainly not a cyclist. These rough road surfaces just mean a little more road noise for drivers, but need noticeably more effort to cycle on – and along with the extra potholes and road waves tire our wrists and keep our eyes looking down at the road rather than enjoying the view.

Wraysbury River

After yesterday’s ride I took things easy, not pushing things but going at a comfortable rate. On the long roadside shared path down from Stanwell Moor between the reservoirs, now gloriously smooth, I couldn’t resist, changed up a gear and really flew, but otherwise took it easy.

Mill, River Colne, Stanwell Moor

There were just a few drops of rain as I approached home. I’d done my daily exercise and was sweating a bit, but wasn’t exhausted. The ten miles are fairly nominal, and this one may be a little shorter than yesterday, but despite being much more relaxed and making several short stops I’d taken three minutes less.


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