Sunday 5 June 2011

creatures of habit

It is one of our many human qualities that, having found something we like we stick with it. A foible no doubt exploited by those in marketing or sales who find ever more sophisticated ways to persuade us to stick with the brand.

So it is with the cyclesguff choice of routes. Though we have built up a repertoire of options over the years we tend to stick to a set 2 or 3 routes. Not always through a lack of imagination since we are blessed with a prevailing Westerly in these parts that influences the way we return home, wind at our backs.

This weekend would have been no different had it not been necessary to accommodate a family gathering on Saturday and a blustery Easterly that has been around of late. Some creative thinking and the aid of a map (beautiful things surely?) provided a chance to do part of the route in reverse and try out some new roads that we usually pass-by. Sunday was a straight reverse route but it too offered up something new.

Well ridden roads where we know every nook, corner and pothole offered new delights and previously unseen glimpses of buildings and vistas that had been hidden behind fences and hedges or left in our wake as we passed in the opposite direction.

Familiar and strange at the same time, the shape of the route, the curves and hills that we had taken for granted now required a different pedalling effort and position. It makes for new insights and appreciation of what we put on the road all those other days without really thinking about it.

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