Juneathon and Shopping

Juneathon day 4: Cycle 21 miles, time 1hr 32min

No I am not trying to claim shopping as a Juneathon activity, that would be plain wrong. Instead I am claiming the effort in getting to the shops.

It is very simple: I needed a camera bag and the best camera shop in the area is in Watford and so instead of driving there I cycled and thus managed to combine Juneathon with making a teeny tiny reduction to my carbon emissions. Double win.

The ride itself was extremely pleasant - a sunny day with enough breeze to stop overheating. In fact it was one of those days when you toddle along with a song on your lips. I have to add that songs don’t go much further than my lips because I am a hopeless singer. However I will often have a song in my head and sort of hum along.

Today it was ‘Vincent Black Lightening 1952, by Richard Thompson. I love his songs as they always have jagged phrases that can embed themselves in your mind: “red hair and black leather my favourite colour scheme”, “I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome swooping down from heaven to carry me home”, and something that often pops up when I am running “he was running out of road and he was running out of breath”

So with that and the perfect conditions the journey just whizzed by. It hardly felt like I had Juneathoned.

Today’s photo is of a house I passed in one of Watford’s quiet residential streets. Most of the houses nearby were the traditional tudorbethan or arts and craft homes from a 30s estate, but this stood out because of it was so much more of the era, with its passing nod to both modernism and art deco (i.e the squareness of shape and the wrap around windows from modernism combined with a sunbeam stained glass window and a rounded doorway). The white render was immaculate and on a sunny day, like today, it dazzled.

So in a way this ride was about design from two eras - home building from the 30s and engineering from the 50s. But remember “BSAs, and Triumphs and Nortons won’t do. they don’t have the soul of a Vincent 52”




Juneathon statistics 4/4
run 3/4
distance 18.5k
time 1hr 46min
Cycle 1/4
distance 21 miles
time 1hr 32min