6.8.2011 Ride: "Mind The Gap"

A good night sleep.  In fact, I awoke at 6:30 London time and was ready to go out riding.  However, I did not prepare the night before and navigating around the room with two other sleeping souls would have been rather challenging.  My goal for today was to head out to Richmond park, the royal park dating back to the 1600s, and to get in some good biking along the 7 mile road that circles through.

On my way to breakfast, I had to stop and take another aerial dinning shot for my collection.

These shots are somewhat like "Where's Waldo?" in that one has to look closely to catch the details of what the people are doing, which, to me, is part of what make the pictures interesting. 

Walking down the stairwell in the hotel, I came across this view of the eye.  

 Rain was in the forecast with a 30% chance of scattered showers.  For some reason, 30% here in London seems to have more weight than in Fayetteville.  Whereas in the States, 30% ends up probably not raining, here it usually ends up raining (at least that has been my experience the three days I have been here).  I had thought of riding from the hotel to the park, a distance of 8 miles but given that I had no tools in case of a flat tyre, no maps in case I got lost and no phone service in case I got stranded, riding down did not seem to be the wisest choice.  So, I opted for taking the train to the town of Richmond and hiring a bike there.

 I was told that the park was filled with deer and I saw a few right away.  Of course, we have plenty of deer back home that love to pick our garden bare, but these were royal deer with lineage back to Henry VIII.

I do not think that the boy's lineage can be traced back that far but he sure has a commanding look.

 This stump was interesting but what really made it interesting was that it seemed worthy of a supporting post making me very curious about how old it was and its history.

Much of the views along the roadside were of opens fields with very mature trees scattered about.  Occasionally, the ground was covered with a thick carpet of ferns.

 Road view through the park

 I like how this royal deer seems to be kissing the ground.

 I probably could have done an entire photographic study of  stump formations in the park.

 For Angie:  Norman and rider, whose name I did not get.  The woman kept apologizing for Norman because he was slobbering excessively.  Yes, he was, but he was also very nice.

I saw several people with dogs that appeared to be very well trained or behaved in that they stayed with their owners.  One man had a gaggle of about six dogs who were following him away from the road to the fields.  Once they were a safe distance away, he gave a command with his arm and the dogs all took off to go play.

Not really any flowers to speak of in the park, so when I came across these below, they really stood out.

 

Close up of closed blossoms further up on stalk.

 

 When it comes to royalty, I figure there is no such thing as too many shots.

I noticed these mounds all over the fields and they reminded me of fire ant mounds back in the States but I didn't think there would be anything like that here in England.  I asked a park worker and they were indeed ant mounds that were hundreds of years old.  They are formed by the Yellow Meadow Ants and the average size of the mounds I saw were about 2-3 feet wide and almost a foot high.  Several hundred seem to cover the fields.  They are very territorial with other ants but I didn't read anything about them biting people.  They live deep underground and the mounds are a result of them pushing soil to the top year after year.  The queens can live for 22 years. 

I always like to get a picture of the bikes I have used along my year-long journey.  I forgot to do so before they put it away but here is a shot of the shop along the Thames.  While the owner wasn't renting bikes, he was working on refinishing a sailboat just a few metres away.

This is Henry, a bulldog with character.  Especially when he is viewed from the rear.

I decided to go into a small vegetarian cafe for lunch which made a good balance to the very traditional British breakfast I had in the morning.  When I came out it was raining very steadily.  The rain gods were good to me today as I had great weather for the ride.  

Since the Richmond underground station was the end of the line, it was very quiet until the first stop when 50 eight year-olds on a field trip to Kew Gardens descended on our car.  They were on for several stops and I talked with a couple of them for a bit.  It was fun having their energy fill our car and the silence was very striking when they got off a later.  This hat left behind seemed rather poignant.

Often, on the train and in the stations, the PA will announce to be aware of the gap between the platform and the train as there can sometimes be quite a step up.  As I waited for my train at Westminster Station this morning, the PA kept repeating "Mind the gap."  Hearing it over and over, the term came to take on deeper meaning, a term that was stated when a person wanted to get a philosophical point across.  A cliche that seems important but is so broad that it becomes irrelevant.  Anyway, I like it.  Mind the gap.

Coming back to the hotel, the empty tables conveyed a very striking, elegant and abstract look.

It's nice to get this posting completed while it is still relatively early in the day.  Tomorrow we head for Paris.  I seem to have adjusted to London time so I'm contemplating a sunrise ride before we depart.  The forecast is for clear skies and 52 degrees.  Not bad.  

Today's ride:  1hr 50mins.  18.5 miles.  60-65 degrees.  17mph winds.  Miles YTD:  3,492.19