blackberries, trig points and birdwatching

Autumn has arrived in Essex this past week or so - after months of warm,dry weather it's back to cool, windy and wet. I even lit our first coal fire of the season. So, the outdoor activities have been curtailed somewhat, I've wimped out of cycling and resorted to a bit of ambling about.

We had a wander around one of my favourite places - Fingringhoe Wick Nature Reserve, run by the very nice people at Essex Wildlife Trust.

Our visit didn't involve much in the way of exercise, just a bit of a stroll, a bit of half-hearted bird-watching (the tide was out, so there wasn't a great deal to see) and the immensely therapeutic pastime of blackberrying (I'm not sure if that's a real word).

Strangely enough, I'm not overly fond of blackberries taste-wise, but it's immensely satisfying to harvest a bit of free fruit from the hedgerows, and if it's possible to overdose on blackberry crumble, I've come close the past few days.

Another reason for visiting Fingringhoe, apart from the free soft fruit, is this small but perfectly formed little structure

Trig points are a rarity around these parts, and, having spent much of my adult life blundering around hill tops and summit ridges looking for them, it's a real pleasure to find one just loitering in an Essex field, at a massive height, by my reckoning, of all of sixty feet above sea level (I've heard rumours of Fenland trig points that are actually below sea level). The re-surveying of this country using a network of trig points took a quarter of a century, beginning in the 1930's, and was a stupendous achievement that gave us our wonderfully accurate, and quite beautiful, Ordance Survey maps.

I took a walk down the river from the Hythe to Wivenhoe. The Hythe remains as shabby as ever, the ghetto-like new flats (sold,of course, as "luxury apartments") doing little to mask the overriding sense of industrial decay. However, once beyond the disused and derelict warehouses, the graffiti, the mud and the sewage works outlet pipe, the river is home to an abundance of wildlife.

I'm a fairly incompetent birdwatcher, but within an hour I saw, in no particular order, Herring Gulls, Black Headed Gulls, Teal, Swans, Robin, Moorhen, Great Tit, Carrion Crow, Mallard, Redshank, Black-Tailed Godwit, Little Grebe, Little Egret and Magpies. Not bad for a dirty, polluted piece of river, and well worth a stroll on a rainy day

Keith gets his cape out

Another Cycale trip, and 6 of us cycled about 35 miles through deepest Suffolk from Diss to Stowmarket. It was one of Nigel's routes, so that meant plenty of pub stops

Keith was with us on this one, so that meant and endless supply of inadvertently comic material courtesy of our nearly crowned Cycale Supremo. He began the day by announcing that he had pumped up BOTH his rear tyres, before completely misunderstanding Matt's request for some lube and offering him something inappropriate.

First stop was the Bell at Rickinghall

Then on to the Dun Cow at Bardwell, a Greene King pub with a "beer festival" consisting of three beers that weren't Greene King

Next was our lunch stop, the excellent Greyhound at Ixworth, a curry for myself and Keith and an enormous fry up for the others. However, the highlight of the pub was the inexplicably rare Greene King XX Mild, one of my favourite beers. Greene King may well be the least popular brewery in the country, with a reputation for buying up and asset stripping other breweries while retaining the "brand", as well as brewing rather bland beers, but XX Mild is a fantastic beer.

Next up was the Fox and Hounds at Thurston

 As we left Thurston it started raining, ordinarily not good news on a bike ride. However, with Keith in the group this was a moment to savour. Cycling with Keith in the rain can only mean one thing - Keith might get his cape out, with all the comic possibilities of one of the most ridiculous garments ever seen on two wheels. Keith, to his credit, is a man seemingly without any sense of embarrassment, and he didn't let us down. The only disappointment was that he didn't manage to accidentally set fire to it, as happened on a previous ride. Here it is in all it's glory.

 The Five Bells at Rattlesdon was my favourite of the day - a proper village pub, full of locals with Earl Soham Gannet Mild at £2.40 a pint.

Then on to the Kings Arms at Stowmarket for a quick half before getting the train home - an excellent day.

As the Cycale year comes to an end, I'm in a bit of a dilemma - I'm the inaugural winner of this coveted trophy, the Cycale Puncture of the Year Award

I was presented this in recognition of simultaneously getting a puncture and falling off on last year's Norwich ride, and it's my responsibility to present it to this year's winner. The trouble is, there haven't actually been any decent punctures on any official cycale rides this year, so I'm struggling to find a new recipient. I may just have to keep it for another year.