Circumstances as much as anything. Like I said a couple of days ago, my ride yesterday was to try to hit one or more distance targets. The evidence of that ride was that to hit the highest one it needed to be flat or I’d have conked out. I live in a London suburb between two ridges of hills, with the South Downs just the other side of the M25 to the south and… London to the north, so a continuous flattish ride of 50+ miles either has to be in the little pocket to the south east of me, or a joyless and very slow troll through the traffic lights of London.
Seeing new places is fun, for sure, but actually you can see new things doing laps too. Yesterday in 18 installments I saw a gang of men build two six foot tall brick walls from the ground up. About half way through my ride a car broke down on the other side of the road, and for a couple of hours I watched the owner pacing up and down the road by his car. It was quite nice that on the last lap I saw the recovery vehicle turn up. I also got a good handle on how long different people like to hang around in the cafe in West Wickham. There’s always something to see, everywhere, and when I’m on my bike I don’t have time to get bored. I’m busy with being in pain.
Possibly the main reason I don’t venture that far afield that often (and I do sometimes) is that I like spending time with my wife. I don’t really want to spend a whole day disappearing off for miles and only seeing her first thing and then dusk. And since she is, despite my best efforts, completely terrified of cycling, particularly in the kind of traffic we have around here, the chances of us spending the day riding out together are slim (which disappoints me no end). So I tend to ride out where I can check back in again at home when I want to.
