Who would have thought it......?

Yes...who would have thought it.... Here at the Dartmoor Caravan Park the good weather that we have been enjoying this past week has seen me actually sitting out sunbathing in February.

Tee shirt and shorts has been the camp uniform of choice and when out on my cycle rides I have been wearing my summer cycling kit...

Normally I wouldn't be wearing this sort of attire until at the earliest April....
Apparently this sort of weather is what we would expect to have during mid to late May...

Unfortunately the weather forecast has just informed me that this brilliant weather is due to change a bit on this coming Thursday until then I will continue to make the most of it with a couple of good rides planned for both tomorrow and Wednesday....

Below are some pictures taken around the site and out on my bike over the past few days....

I hope the weather has been good wherever you are.....

At Burrator Reservoir 

Sign at the entrance to our current site.

Near St John's church at Horrabridge

Our pitch earlier today..It really was as warm as it looks.

A Hint of an Early Spring ?

Over the past couple of weeks we seem to have been enjoying a hint of an early spring......
Now I am not someone who is fooled by nature's habit of kidding us into believing that winter is on the way out and that spring has arrived early.... However I do think that when the weather is good you need to get the bike out and make the most of the good weather when it's here and that is just what I have been doing....

Not all of Dartmoor consists of wide open areas of wild  moorland there are lots of narrow country lanes  bordered on each side by hedges that take you from small village to small hamlet...

One of these hamlets is Sampford Spiney. I used to cycle there when we stayed at the Tavistock C&CC site so it seemed a good place to head for on a recent ride...

Near Sampford Spiney.

A great lunch stop

After riding up the very steep drag of a hill from Horrabridge up towards Sampford Spiney there is a very nice spot at a junction of lanes surrounded by trees where I pulled over for a brief rest....
As I stood there chewing on an energy bar an old gentleman  riding his ebike stopped and we fell into conversation. He told me that he had started cycling way back in 1945 which was three years before I was born... Over the years he had raced...toured and ridden for fitness... Apparently only three weeks ago he had a stent fitted due to an aortic aneurysm and was told that he should wait six weeks before riding his bike again but cabin fever had set in and he just had to get out and ride... This is something that I can fully understand.

He told me that over the past few years due to his health problems he had tried various types of ebike but each one had failed due to one reason or another but he had persevered with them because they had allowed him to continue to ride way beyond what would otherwise have been possible.....

As he zoomed off on his ebike I reflected on the way cycling allows you to meet some very interesting and colourful  people... I was so impressed by his determination to continue to ride despite his health problems way into his late eighties... Hats off to you sir......

Looking back at Rendlesham.....

With the current spell of bad weather I have to admit that I have not been out on the bike since my last post on the blog..... Not just the weather I have also been putting up with a pretty bad cold that seems to have migrated to my chest.

Experience has shown me that there is no point in going out for a ride when I have a bad cold

 ...there are no gains to be made...I don't enjoy it and I seem to come back feeling worse than when I set out...It also seems to delay my recovery.....

Because of this I thought that for this weeks post I would look back on a walk that Anne and I did last summer when we were staying in Suffolk.

I had read that there was a trail in Rendlesham Forest just a few miles from where we we were staying that was centered around the area of the Rendlesham Incident. 

In late December 1980 there was an apparent UFO 👽 sighting over a couple of nights around the Woodbridge RAF base which is in the middle of the Forest...

At the time the base was being used by the USAF and it was American servicemen and the base commander who made the first sightings.

It was even reported that a UFO had actually landed in a clearing in the forest.....

Now although I don't actually believe in so called UFO sightings I thought that the Rendlesham UFO trail would make for a good walk in the forest and give it some interest....

We both had a really enjoyable day.... We collected maps and information from the forest visitor centre. This gave us the route that followed the timeline of the incident itself.

A few years ago the Forestry Commission had arranged for a replica of the UFO to be placed in the clearing where the USAF men had reported seeing it land....... 

Coming towards the end of the walk this 'UFO' was the highlight of the walk.... It was difficult to find at first sat in a forest clearing but it gave the walk a bit of a treasure hunt feeling....
Perhaps Anne and I are easily pleased but the whole day was voted a real success by both of us. We had a very enjoyable picnic in the forest and we also saw plenty of wildlife as well.....

A few weeks ago I heard on the radio that it had recently been announced that the whole incident was a prank played on the USAF by the SAS.       Now I have no idea if that is true or not but in no way does it diminish what was a great day out. For those of you interested in knowing more about the Rendlesham Forest UFO 👽 Incident just google it.... 👽