A Trip to the unknown

Yesterday I finally got back on my bike for a proper bike ride, I have had many bike rides recently but these are the kind of rides I class as proper rides, rides that shatter bones as you shoot down hills, pedalling through slush and having full on concentration, that is what I love

The place I went to yesterday is not far from my mums house, that place being Havering Country Park and this time I managed to drag along Sarah with me on a bike ride. So let's begin the story, the day started with both of us drinking a smoothie and me eating half of a malt loaf, Sarah had an apple, pear and mango smoothie and I had an apple, pear, mango, kiwi and spinach smoothie, both of which boosted our energy levels, now it was time to set off towards Romford or Collier Row to be exact? after what must have been about a 35 or 40 minute ride we arrived at my mums which is where Sarah would take her pit stop while I had a banana and set off again towards the park which took me about 10 minutes to reach the entrance of the park, once you first get in there and past the sign it seems boring, but not for long, once you ride through this fence the action packed fun ride begins, some hills were tricky to ride up, not because they were steep but because of the sloppy mud, so I was pedalling fast to get up the hill but was only going at a slow speed which was a challenge and I love myself some challenges

If you see the above right image that is me looking back, so that was the sloppy hill I had to ride up, not steep at all, but was still a challenge because of the mud, while riding through the mud I had lovely sounds to ride to and I also stopped for a moment to breath in that lovely natural scent in the air and to even video record a 1 minute clip of the lovely sounds of nature that I enjoyed listening to, which can be seen and heard below

Once I had stopped recording I moved on and continued to ride around the park and encountered many of these annoying gates, anyone else hate these gates? Well anyway once past those gates I noticed smoke up ahead so went to look and it looked like workers were burning away old wood, I am not sure why as I would have thought parts of trees and whatever else they were burning should just remain in the woods on the ground, but no they were burning it all away and creating a nasty pollution of smoke and I even went to have a closer look at the enemy

Now it was time to move on again, as I was not going to stand there and watch them have fun with fire all day, further into the woods and I came to a part of the woods that seemed to contain more life and green things such as these mushrooms that I decided to eat, of course I am joking, I also loved the view of this long path, look at the size of those trees and I even thought I would get a close up of a tree which you can see below

I had also decided to take myself to the bench for a short while and to pose for the camera which is when I noticed another tree opposite me that was something interesting to see, I wonder who lives in here at night?

After so long of sitting down I decided to move along on so I headed up that path with all the trees which was slightly uphill and after a short while I slowly rode past 2 horse riders and eventually reached the end of the woods it seemed, at which point I turned back and headed along the same kind of path but over to the right some more which is where I got this lovely view and not so lovely fence, slightly further down I stopped to take some photos of this horse and crow and this cool looking tree that had a sign on it saying 'private keep out'. Yet again I moved along and came to this sign which I found confusing because although it points in that direction and says parking, once through the gate there is only some grass and a path which I took a ride around

After a quick ride around that strange part of the country park I decided it was time to head back as I had covered most of the country park, well about 80% of it because there were some turns and paths I did not go down, but now I was heading back, and all of those hills I rode up was finally going to pay off as I would go as fast as I have ever been on the bike it seemed, I could even feel the g-force on the back of my neck while shooting down the very long hill although from that photo it does not look very downhill or long at all, I could have even gone much faster down that hill but as it was muddy and it was my first time over there I was not going to not use the brakes at all, but when I next ride over there I will be sure to go faster down the hill as yesterday it was a very nice experience with that wind blasting me in the face and that evil g-force pulling on my neck

Thank you for reading, I know it has been a while since my last bike journey type of post, I am sure they will be more often as the weather is getting warmer now and the forests and country parks are starting to dry up so I hope to see you back here soon