I’m so fortunate to be able to work from home several days per week as it allows me to go for walks around the village and down the country lane at lunchtime.
Today is a particularly lovely autumn one with blue sky and a little remaining warmth in the sun. There’s a bit of a chill in the breeze but I’ve come out without a jacket.
In the sunshine the autumn colours really do stand out…
As we approach the changing of the clocks and the return of Greenwich Mean Time, my post-work cycles are coming to an end for this year.
I love heading out for a cycle in the country lanes after a day at my desk but I’m not keen on cycling in the dark once the clocks have gone back. Around here in Northamptonshire, the undulating and twisty roads can hide cyclists at night and many drivers don’t give enough consideration to cyclists (or walkers, pedestrians or horse riders for that matter). I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been close-passed by drivers this year and in the dark it is perhaps even more likely.
However, I’m not stopping cycling altogether over the darker days; I’ll try to make sure I head out at weekends and start running again to keep up my fitness.
This year has been great for exploring the off-road routes in the countryside surrounding my home and I feel closer to nature and the farming seasons because of it. Unfortunately, most of those routes are now very muddy and not really usable on a regular basis. I’m already looking forward to the drier days of spring and summer when the ground hardens and I can explore.
Here’s a sunset picture from my cycle last night…
It still feels quite mild at the moment with daytime temperatures in the mid-teens. This is actually about average for October in Northamptonshire and the night times are in their average range too (six to eight degrees Celsius). I even had my shorts on as I went for my lunchtime wander down the lane and eventually the track if turns into.
There were more signs of the changing season and the winter to come. The leaves really are starting to put on a show, even in the drab greyness of today. There was also a small flock of roving long-tailed tits in one of the hedgerows, which will hopefully arrive on our birdfeeders on their way past. Finally, there was also the first winter thrush of the season, a fieldfare calling alarm from the top of a tree.
Some photos from earlier this week when I almost missed the sunrise but rushed out just in time to see the dawn over the misty and slightly frosty fields.
Today, very unusually, I had some hours to burn and as I was in West Sussex, I decided to head to the coast. I spent a bit of time doing something I haven’t done in ages, focusing purely and simply on taking photos and getting engrossed in it.
Standing at the station it’s an autumnal morning with a sharpness to the very fresh air and a heavy dew on the fields. In the distance is one of the high points of Northamptonshire, Borough Hill, which appears to have a slight frost on its slopes beneath the radio mast. Whilst the spring dawn chorus is long gone, there’s a collective calling of birds that I haven’t heard in quite a while. It began with a couple of robins ‘ticking’ in the bushes but they have now started to sing. They are accompanied by more distant wrens and a single blackbird startled into its alarm. Overhead there are the less tuneful calls of crows and jackdaws and the occasional wood pigeon flying by. This is the scene of an autumn morning with the hope of some sun, something we’ve been missing for days, after heavy rains caused flooding across the county. The songs of the birds seem to sign a hope that the sun may bring some brightness and rare warmth that has been lost since the equinox.
Daft Mumblings 