Week 290: … and back again

Strictly speaking, I didn’t have to cycle all the way back from Electromagnetic Field – I could have cycled as far as a convenient station and taken a train the rest of the way – but I was mentally committed to finishing what I’d started. After a reasonably early bed and an adequate night of sleep on Sunday night, I woke, ate breakfast in my tent, packed everything onto my bike, and left the festival site a little after seven o’clock. My first day’s route was 86 km with 860 m of climbing. I saw wrens, corncrakes, peacocks (and peahens), a dunnock, some birds of prey I couldn’t identify (buzzards, perhaps), some I could (red kites), and some unexpectedly excellent cycling infrastructure in Gloucestershire outside Cheltenham. Good cycling infrastructure I had to attack one particularly steep hill in 10 m bursts, but I loved coasting down the other side at over 50 km/h. I imported my maps from cycle.travel into Organic Maps, but made the mistake of allowing it to suggest a slight…