Pages

Thursday 11 December 2014

Mud, mud, glorious mud ...

I went out today to the north-east, hoping to avoid rain. It rained as I drove up the M11, but I didn't get rained on while I was caching.

I did get mudded on, though.

The worst part was when I followed a track across a little bridge; it should then have taken me along the side of a field. The problem was, the farmer had recentlyscooped out his ditch, and the scooped-out mud was lying along where I would be going - thick, brown and gooey.

Cleverly, I decided not to cross the bridge, but to go along on the wrong side of the ditch, where it wasn't thick, brown and gooey. that worked well for about 100 meters, but then I couldn't go any further, and I had to cross the ditch. It would have been a difficult ditch to cross on foot - the ditch was deep, the sides were steep and the mud, although gooey, was also slippery. Getting across with a heavy electric bike was a nightmare. I pretty much had to throw it across, then scramble after it.

And the nightmare wasn't over - I was right about the terrible difficulty of making progress over that mud - I had to pretty much carry the bike, and that's about 80 pounds. Eventually, I got to a place where I could progress over grass ... except that the grass was soft and squidgy, and had been very badly torn about by horses hooves.

I covered about 9 miles today, and a couple of those were on foot, either carrying or dragging the bike. My elbow hurts (I think I strained it a week or so ago, but I thought it had mended) and my back hurts.

But ladysolly has promised me a hot dinner, so I'm still good.

And here's the hippopotamus song.

No comments:

Post a Comment