The Twenty Day Month. March 2020 Round Up and Video

The Twenty Day Month. March 2020.

Video here

A bit of a shorter video this month, about three weeks worth of moors riding until Boris got a bit of backbone and enforced social distancing, after mother’s day weekend when the great British public demonstrated their aversion to anything approaching common sense and made like day workers on a bank holiday. (Day workers: (pl noun)  sub-species of humanity who seek safety in large shoals and comfort in following the same routines and timings as their flock. Antonym: shift worker.) Which left us in lockdown like 25% of the world at this moment, which means staying at home except for one exercise session per day (albeit of unspecified length), near to home and only with members of the household. Shopping as infrequently as possible, only for essentials and keeping two metres apart from anyone and everyone. No unnecessary travel and no unnecessary risks; go big or go home is now just go home and what were you doing here in the first place? For me and La Mujerita, it is local rides for the time being, swapping towering hills and verdant dales for steaming cooling towers and brackish mud flats. 

Until the lockdown it had been a pretty good month, riding mainly old favourite routes on the moors, which are beginning to dry up quite nicely and a trip to the lakes. For something completely different, I went to Sunderland to ride with Keith and Charlie on one of their local loops, which took us along the banks of the Tyne and beneath the same river using a 70 year old tunnel specifically for pedestrians and cyclists. The weather has been windy (still) on occasions but some fine days fooled us into thinking it was early summer, it is now the last weekend in March and the weather has taken a step back, treating us to gales, snow and hail as temperatures plunge towards freezing.  

For most of us, 2020 will be remembered with the same anguish as 2001, the year of foot and mouth, when off-road cycling was completely out of bounds - although roads through the countryside were still open. Riding across the moors on tarmac, passing closed bridleways was torture, who could be a road rider? We can still ride local at the moment, this country may follow some European nations and prohibit cycling all together, especially if people keep taking the piss. Don’t fight it, the tree that bends with the wind does not break as Confucious almost said, probably after he’d been up Guisborough Woods before the lockdown. Relax a bit, enjoy the break, the hills and moors aren’t going anywhere, by the time we get back it’ll be dry trails in the sunshine and tales of “what did you do in the great lockdown of oh twenty?” “Sat on the settee and sulked” isn’t going to make a great conversation.

Last pint of Jennings before the pubs closed.

Social Distancing