32c9fad8-6968-49ed-ab1b-8eaa77d7a8a5.md (2661B)
1 Topics: motorbike ride-report 2 Date: 2024-06-08T16:30:31.988179Z 3 Title: D is for Duck pond 4 5  6 Did I mention there was going to be a duckpond? 7 8 9 It took longer to get to Writtle than I'd expected, mostly due to the need to pull over several times and fiddle with the phone screen ( I'm sure the ultimateaddons case is very waterproof but its also impossible to see in sunlight and not helped by low-contrast colors used by map apps) so I didn't stay for longer than needed to get photos. Very pleasant village green when eventually I found it 10 11  12 13 14 Improving: 15 16 * much smoother on the clutch/matching revs: still have occasional leaps from first to second, but they're less common than they were 17 * cornering confidence (yes, I know about countersteering :-) 18 * much more adept at getting the bike up the kerb and wheeling it back into the back garden at the end of the ride 19 20 Need to improve: 21 22 * low-speed manoeuvres - couple of places I could probably have U-turned in the road, I instead got off and pushed it around. 23 24 Special moment: 25 26 * attempted an overtake of some car driver doing 35mph on a straightish A road with a 60 limit, had to pull back in behind them when they sped up to 55 and oncoming traffic appeared. They did go a bit quicker after that though 27 28  29 30 Navigational: 31 32 * managed to avoid the M11 this time, by dint of [getting lost in North Weald Bassett and ending up on Epping Road](https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=fossgis_osrm_bike&route=51.7296%2C0.1601%3B51.6152%2C0.0246#map=15/51.7078/0.1418&layers=N). Rode home through Epping Forest, which is almost as scenic but not quite as much fun as cycling through it (because when cycling you can ride through the actual forest not just along the roads that bisect it) 33 34 35  36 Just to prove that I actually _went_ to the village green and duck pond in Writtle and didn't steal the photos off the internet, here a picture of my bike in front of the green. If you zoom in far enough you run out of pixels, but if you didn't run out of pixels you'd see the pond at the far end. 37 38 According to my list, E is for earthworks, which sounds a bit dull. Maybe I can think of something better