I noted in the post this morning about how that pesky thing called ‘work’ has interrupted my desire to get out on the new bike this week. Perhaps it was the picture below that I noticed on the wall of the school where I was working today but upon arrival home, I unlocked Wanda and went out for a spin…

I am lucky to live within a short ride of what feels like very remote countryside. It isn’t, not really, but when you arrive in the almost featureless moors that straddle Lancashire and Yorkshire and turn your back towards the urban areas of (in my case) West Yorkshire, you could feasibly be is a far less populated corner of the planet. The plains of Spain perhaps. Or the wilds of Canada.

Today I wasn’t alone in escaping to the hills. On a day that has finally delivered some weather that you might describe as ‘summery’, the post-work cyclists were out in number. Only I seemed to be on a heavy touring bicycle however and, as I was passed on numerous occasions by my fellow cyclists, I was able to reflect upon how I have missed slow, uphill cycling. There were some seriously steep segments on my ride this evening…

…notably the cobbled road climbing out of the valley of the Black Brook at Stainland Dean – perhaps you know it – but I was strangely contented by finally having access, via Wanda’s Rohloff 14-gear Speedhub, to gears that keep me in the seat and the bike moving up the hill. Slowly. Very slowly. Gone was the utter exhaustion invoked by the Cannondale, just a nice raising of the heart rate and a veneer of perspiration on the brow. Good stuff. I very much look forward to putting the low gears into more action over the coming weeks and then, in the mountains of northern Spain at the end of August as featured in a rather timely July edition of Lonely Planet Magazine about Cantabria.