On Crisp Mornings

 We begin to notice that spring is slowly emerging.  The maple hedge is filled with birdsong.  The robin trills away early, drawing me away from slumber in that half-waking period before one cat wants out, the other fed.

These are days when the early frosts dissipate as the sun rises, when the bike calls from the shed.  Fresh from going through the gears on The Grasshopper, it's the turn of the Big Black Beast.  This is a different type of trundling round very different lanes.

No gears, an automated box; no chain to care for, a drive belt doing the hard work.  An upright position, hands above the hips, sitting tall.  Seeing over the hedges.  Familiar roads, after near thirty years, and I realise that I start to view them with a slightly different slant.

Not yet saying farewells, just noticing all the things taken for granted.  In a new light; filing away into future memories.

The field in front of Robert's farmhouse is grazed by several hundred pink-footed geese.  Not long ago we remarked that there were a handful.  Now there are skeins in the skies, gaggles on the ground, and a new stopping point on the migratory route has been established.

I see online that the osprey has landed, NC0 at Loch of the Lowes; puffins have made it to the Forth, ready for landfall on the Isle of May.  Spring is most certainly in the air.  My next trip to Spey Bay will be one where I scan the skies as well as the waters.

Meanwhile The Beast heads out on the back roads of Avondale.  Into town for a new prescription, a pretty crucial one, and one not free from anxiety.  We take the long road, the high road.

Past the wee primary school, packed with unforgettable memories, and hitting the headlines of late with a quite brilliant performance review.  Not sure whether the roll remains below 30, though there was a bumper intake looming, last year, perhaps this one.

We climb, painfully.  Past the alpacas, whiz downhill past the monument, where the covenanters fought.  And won.  And climb again.  And again.  The edge of the windfarm, into the wind. 

Mature timber, awaiting the logging machines and those lorries that hammer along the roads with trailers of cut pine.  Scaring cyclists.  Beside the burn, where the heron watches, and waits.  Herdwicks, a rare sight in these parts, thriving on rough ground and heather.

The long drag into town, the little airfield's windsock pointing towards me.  Past the milk farm and the duck pond.  No longer can I fill my bottles with fresh, award-winning, Jersey milk.  Lactose, one of the concerns with those new tablets I am about to collect from the chemist.  The town is quiet, I have managed to avoid school lunch hour.  There is little traffic to be wary of a rogue cyclist.

Homeward, to complete a roundabout route knocking on for 25 miles.  Climbing again.  And again, and again.  I stop, pull over, to give a tractor and massive trailer more room. My mind drifts wistfully northwards, to traffic free cycling sans climbing.  Coastal views.

For now though, over the hedges, from the elevated position I don't get on The Grasshopper, I rejoice as the first of the lambs discovers grass and freedom, scurrying back to the teat when strange creatures happen by. The fields are alive.

And so am I, as take that final painful climb, through the bends to Peelhill.  Making memories to take with me.  Eventually.