C is for Coal-tax obelisk#
Thu May 30 13:13:34 2024
C is for Coal-tax obelisk
In an early example of the City of London's approach to democratic principle, they erected a series of pillars of various kinds at a 20 mile radius from London to mark the boundaries at which coal brought into London would be taxed. The tax was spent on rebuilding bits of central London (mostly churches) after the Great Fire. The practice ceased in 1890.
This particular obelisk I went to visit is in Wormley, just south of Broxbourne. It took a bit of finding, too, mostly because I saw something that I thought was it on OSM but that turned out to be a completely different coal tax marker. It is entirely possible that I also found (or at least, looked past) that marker and didn't register it because I was expecting to see something taller than I am.
- https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1296269
- https://rhaworth.net/cowi/cowitin.php?f=cowinort#TL369051
The ride there was speed-limited, first to 20/30-in-places by speed limits in Waltham Forest, and then to around 40 by the van in front of me and the solid white "no overtaking" lines in the middle of the road. It took ~ 40 minutes longer than I'd planned, most of that spent wandering around Wormley woods looking for the wrong thing in the right place.
(My other clue was http://www.coaldutyposts.org.uk/today/list.html which says "E side of railway, N side of Slipe Lane at level crossing". This is all true except for the bit about the level crossing: there is no level crossing there.)
I suppose the lesson is that if I want to do motorcycle treasure hunts for random listed monuments I should expect to spend time hunting, not juist ride there and back and tick off another box,
The ride back was straight down the A10, not a lot to say there.
Anyway, D is - unless I have a better idea by the time of my next ride - for Duck Pond, which should be a much more straightforward endeavour.
Close-ups
D is for Duck pond#
Sat Jun 8 16:30:31 2024
Did I mention there was going to be a duckpond?
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
Improving:
- much smoother on the clutch/matching revs: still have occasional leaps from first to second, but they're less common than they were
- cornering confidence (yes, I know about countersteering :-)
- much more adept at getting the bike up the kerb and wheeling it back into the back garden at the end of the ride
Need to improve:
- low-speed manoeuvres - couple of places I could probably have U-turned in the road, I instead got off and pushed it around.
Special moment:
- 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
Navigational:
- managed to avoid the M11 this time, by dint of getting lost in North Weald Bassett and ending up on Epping Road. 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)
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.
According to my list, E is for earthworks, which sounds a bit dull. Maybe I can think of something better
E is for Elm Trees#
Wed Jun 26 19:23:32 2024
E is for Elm Trees. Once a common sight, but since 1970 Dutch elm disease has killed approximately 100 million elm trees in Britain. These trees are, according to the Conservation Foundation, Sapporo Autumn Gold, which is a hybrid of a Japanese and a Siberian elm (thanks wikipedia). I don't know how long they've been there but they must be from the 1980s or later.
Chadwell Springs Golf Centre is also conveniently close to the Harlow branch of Sport Bike Shop, where I picked up some earplugs, a cargo net and a tyre pressure gauge. My front tyre is about 4psi too low, it turns out (probably more, as I'd been riding for an hour when I measured it)
I could have nominated earplugs for E but they don't really photograph as well as elm trees do. Here's a shot showing the cargo net though, which looks like it will prove to be a useful bit of kit. Hooked to two small hooks near the numberplate holder at the back, and to the pillion peg bracket at the front.
What else?
- trip counter (which I reset after filling the tank) is on 107 miles and the low fuel warning hasn't come on yet. Can't be long now can it?
- tried filtering, didn't hit anyone or crash. Did tut quite strongly at a van driver who put his left indicator on whenever I tried to come alongside him, but I was able to pass him and leave him behind 30 seconds later when he had to stop for traffic. Filtering between lanes on a multilane road is much much easier than filtering down the middle on a two-way road, andI don't know why I should find that surprising.
- bluetooth headset! I bought a cheap "Freedconn" helmet speaker and paired it to my phone so that I can have turn-by-turn directions and actually be able to hear them. Works quite well at up to around 60mph, haven't yet internalised which way to turn the volume control to make it louder. It also works for phone calls (already accidentally dialled my wife once) and Zoom meetings - although I wasn't on the bike for the Zoom meeting
- think I need to repurpose one of my old phones - preferably one with a replaceable battery - for directions and maps and things, because I get about two-three hours of screen-on time on my primary phone before the battery dies and that could be awkward if I needed to call someone