Saturday Morning Bike Ride

Up bright and early this morning, I'm away just before 7am.

It's a frosty start to the day as seen here on the Lady's Mantle enroute to get the bike from the shed at the top of the garden...

...and here on some brambles on the cycle path once I'm on my way. I have to admit to taking rather a large number of photos of various frosty leaves this morning. Anyway, frost means...

...clear blue skies. It was a beautiful May morning.

Bike shot.

I notice the logs against which my bike is leaning have interesting knots and patches of moss.

Past the bike sculpture silhoutted by the sun.

Past the folly (and telegraph poles)

Lovely fresh new leaves on most trees now.

I leave the cyclepath now and head past the old 15th century chapel.

Stonework detail.

Peeking inside. It is possible to go inside too, which I do, but the contrast of sun and shade is too strong for any decent photos.

I'm still on the hunt for bluebells and still too early.

The bluebell woods round here are on quite a small scale, at the least the ones I've found so far are.

Out the woods, past a fields of ewes and lambs...

...and down to the loch.

Great sculling conditions today.

Away from the loch now and after climbing a big steep hill (and getting very puffed out), I reach decision time -whether to go for a much longer ride or not bother. I decide not to bother - I'm starting to feel hungry and my camera is showing low battery.

The view. The little patch of blue is the loch I've just left.

Pretty much the same view but with a different focus.

Up at the reservoir gorse bushes line the road.

The water sparkles in the sunshine.

Just on from here there's an old ruin that I usually am happy just to view form the road. I visited it once a few years ago but the ground round about was very wet and I got rather mucky. However, as the weather her has been mainly dry recently there are few puddles around so I decide to pop in for another look.

I'm so glad I do, the views here are fantastic.

The ruin from the south west.

More views, zoomed in to show the distant hills. The biggest one on the right is Ben Nevis.

The ruin from the east. Definitely worth further investigation, I'd like to come walk here for a proper walk over the fields round about.

At this point my camera battery fails and no amount of sticking it under my oxter brings it back to life. A good reason just to head straight home (mostly downhill from here too). Before leaving home earlier I'd taken some chocolate banana loaf out the freezer so I know that's waiting for me too, yum!

Anyway, I believe I mentioned we've had quite dry weather here recently. Often the way weather is percieved is skewed by how normal it is for that area. I like to see the raw data...

Here we have the rainfall anomaly chart for the UK for April 2012 as a percentage of the 1971 to 2000 average. The blue areas have been wetter than "normal", the darker the blue the more rain there has been compared to "normal". It does look very dramatic.
 

However, here we have the actual rainfall chart for the UK for April 2012. Much less dramatic.

The charts are from this site. Very interesting if you're interested in UK weather.