Another good thing

Another good thing about cycling is that you see all sorts of things that you would never notice in a car. I might drive along a road a hundred times but the first time I cycle it I will see something that I have never seen before the undressed face of a millstone built into a wall

or a millstone set out like a table or even a nice little water mill complete with chimney and timber framing.

From my bike I have wondered who loved Sarah enough to carve her name into unyielding granite

and stopped long enough to trace my finger around the stone mazeThen there are the smells that you miss in a car, wild garlic, headachy diesel around the heliport, the heavy wetness of cut reeds at Marazion that takes me straight back to my childhood and newly cut grass on the Morrisons roundabout (what is it about that particular roundabout that attracts oyster catchers and black headed gulls throughout the winter?)

There is no parking problem with a bike, I can stop where I like to tread softly along the rabbit mown grass of the marshes at Marazion enjoying the herons waiting like statues for their evening fish as I watch for the first swallows of the year. Stopping for ten minutes in the other direction I can bounce along the pontoons in Newlyn Harbour. I prefer the no-nonsense fishing boats and my favourite could be my inspiration for this epic bike rideand YIPPEEEEE the Ross Bridge is open again.