Ah, high summer, or what passes for it around here, which means it’s time for the council to start on its annual roadside hedgerow massacree. I passed the tractor on my bike as it made its way along the back roads hacking down the vegetation. I don’t have a problem with them cutting the grass verges because on many roads the verges function as informal passing places and it’s nice to be able to see that the road edge you’re trusting your car to is just grass and not, say, ditch before you end up in it. But this time the lawnmower-onna-stick thing that the tractor was wielding was being applied higher up and further back, right back to the drystone dykes. Never mind the effect on the still-nesting birds, or on wildlife in general – and never mind particularly that they do this right before the blackberries start ripening, but before we get a chance to pick them – the countryside must be neat and tidy! Or at least the bits of it that can be reached by a tractor with a flail. Shame they can’t send a machine round to tidy up the rest of it: although I’m not sure a machine big enough to cut off an ugly bungalow at ground level could get up the worst affected roads. Oh well, maybe this means they’ll do the potholes next.
And speaking of which, and many other road related things, it seems there is an explanation for my rides being always uphill – or the double-ramped hill, as I now know to be the correct technical term. All explained by Bistromathic‘s more practical (and American) cousin, Cyclo-math…
Posted by disgruntled 
