Add your rides in 2019 here so visitors can find inspiration all in the same place. Text and photos* welcome.
(http://www.coolmainpress.com/miscimage/Andre%20Jute%20Bandon%20River%20NY's%20Day%202019%20800pxh.jpg)
Andre Jute: New Year's Day 2019, The Weir and Salmon Ladder, Bandon River, Bandon, Co Cork, Ireland, 800pxh
The light a week after the shortest day of the year is still Irish, but there isn't much of it. As that deep blue sky, and brown trees, and a deep brown-blue river tell you, the sun even at midday is well away in the Southern Hemisphere. I live within spitting distance of the footbridge from which I took this photograph and many of my rides to three sides of the town start here; rides on the fourth side, which is essentially half the cycleable topography, start at my front door. The stone hut is a communal electricity generating venture -- really! -- which every Christmas powers the town's Christmas decorations.
Looking forward to your rides!
* Post by Dan the Mod on size limit of 512Kb per photo at http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=13133.msg98661#msg98661 (http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=13133.msg98661#msg98661). My large photo above is 121Kb, so Dan's limit is exceedingly generous. Resizing and uploading to the forum are discussed at http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=4313.0 (http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=4313.0)
Thank you, gentlemen. 9C when I took the photo, but more important only 6kph of wind -- the wind chill factor can be very nasty anywhere near that beautiful river, all the way from the Urals. Basically, any ride starting from my house either begins and ends at the river, has its turning point in the middle of the ride at the river or within sight of it when we ride across one of the loops it makes, or runs for part of the ride alongside the river. And, of course, at any point of any ride, you just have to reach out your hand and dip it in a feeder-stream of the Big River. There's nowhere in Ireland to escape the sound of tinkling water.
Here's my pedalpal showing off a Spanish tan -- she didn't get it here, as you can tell from the hazy sky. We've cycled across a bow of the river, alongside feeder streams almost all the way, and are now on a tiny link road between two small country roads, at about 180m elevation above the inland end of the Bandon River estuary, and two or three klicks away as the crow flies. The estuary is the tiny glint of water to the right of her helmet. At that point it is about a kilometer wide, and the sea is still ten klicks distant; the river is, or was, navigable by offshore-draught vessels for a few klicks further upriver, because for years there was a rotting hulk of a Baltic trader lying on the bank a way upriver.
(http://www.coolmainpress.com/miscimage/Andre%20Jute%20Pedalpal%20Helen%20above%20Kilmacsimon%2C%201919%20800pxh.jpg)
Andre Jute Helen above Kilmacsimon, 1919 800pxh
9C sounds great, but the thing is I ride mainly the very small roads and lanes because the main drags are unpleasant where they aren't lethal (I'm not indulging in hyperbole: a police superintendent with whom I refused to ride on a particular stretch of road was killed cycling on it, quite a few years ago now, and the traffic density has increased in that time). Across the lanes the sun never rises high enough in winter to reach the road over the hedgerows. So you have to watch the nighttime temperature to discover whether you lanes will still be icy even when it is 9C at noon. That's one of the advantage of "touring" so consistently in a small patch of our beautiful earth, that you gather valuable local knowledge that lets you cycle a month or two later, and the next year a month or two earlier, than anyone else. There have been years when we cycled for all intents and purposes year-round, only a week or two off at Christmas/New Year and then mainly to avoid the drunks on the roads.
Just this week we had freezing nights but today I got an engaged signal when I tried to call a pedalpal: she was calling me! What spurred such synchronised gregariousness was a forecast of eminently cycle-able weather. It turned out to be 13C at 1pm and 14C at 2pm, and remained there, with only 19kph wind, which we know how to defuse by riding at right angles to the wind up one of the many sheltered valleys. Not quite shirtsleeves and sandals weather but the pedalpal ventured shorts and didn't freeze. Super ride up a valley that a week ago was brown and now is green on the trees and purple under them from the bluebells. The fresh air is valuable at any time, of course, but the trees and plants kitting themselves out in spring finery besides lifts the spirits.
No photo because we didn't stop as we were in a hurry since my pedalpal had to attend a funeral. But here's a sketch of a set of bluebells I made:
(http://www.coolmainpress.com/andrepaintings/andre_jute_bluebells_spring_2014_watercolour_and_ink_4x6in_800pxh.jpg)
***
Further to John's pal Steve and by Bill counting the days since they last saw such good weather in Canada, we had some oddly out-of-season days in February, when the cherry trees beside the street on which I live blossomed, but not the ones in my orchard about a hundred feet away. My bike already has 393km I put on the clock in the interstices of the few dry, not too windy days in even the disturbed weather of the beginning of this year. But all of next week is forecast as excellent cycling weather: today was the real start of the cycling weather in Ireland.
Hallelujah!