Blogtober 2021 : Day 23

I’ve been playing out on bikes with my husband today!

We’ve been to Delamere Forest, about 40 minutes drive from our house.  My husband comes here to cycle quite regularly but I haven’t ridden a bike for years – four years, as it happens (I found the blog post!) – and my own bike isn’t roadworthy or forest path-worthy these days so I hired a mountain bike from the forest bike shop to make sure that I could keep up.

The forest has plenty of footpaths and cycle trails of varying degrees of difficulty and my husband had promised not to choose one that was going to require me to go home in an ambulance, so we set off with the promise of a bacon butty (sandwich) part way round.

There a few lakes within the forest.  We call them “prehistoric lakes” as some of look like they were wooded areas which have been flooded and we could imagine dinosaurs emerging from them!

There’s another one that I didn’t get a photo of – I’ll try to take one another day – which is full of tall dead trees and is very eerie to look at.

The forest is carefully managed and although it’s open for visitors to use, there are areas which are cordoned off from time to time as the forestry management activities take place.  This path was closed the last few times my husband visited and you can see that they have been very busy!

Across a road and up a long, slow, steep hill (I had to get off and push!) and my reward was in sight!  In fact, by the time I took this photo, it was in my mouth as well 🙂

We sat for ages chatting and drinking our tea and coffee.  It was crisp but not cold, and of course we had been cycling so we were pretty warm from the exertion.  It was such a good morning; it feels like ages since we’ve done anything like this!

It didn’t seem to take nearly as long to get back as it did to get there, fuelled as we were by our outdoor breakfasts.  There was one last hill that I needed to get off and push my bike up, and as I did so, I spotted these on the ground by my feet.

They’re sweet chestnuts; similar to the conkers that I love to photograph at this time of year but you can eat these ones.  “Chestnuts roasting by an open fire …” – that’s these little nuts and as much as I wanted to like them when I tried eating them one time, I really don’t.   I like to see them, though, and I like their spiky cases which are even spikier than conker cases.

I’ve got to say that I enjoyed our bike ride far more than I expected to – although I walk the dog regularly, I didn’t think that I would be fit enough to keep up with my husband but perhaps having a newer, fit-for-terrain bike to ride did the trick!  We’re already talking about our next trip out – and I am really looking forward to it!

Short and sweet again today – I’m off out tonight with my girls to watch one of our favourite bands, The Script, who are playing in Warrington (we’re very excited as we have only seen them at arena concerts before).  My husband is delighted as he gets to be King of the Remote Control without anybody else complaining about his choice of programme! 🙂

I’ll see you tomorrow! xx