H is for Haunted Church#

Sat Sep 7 19:11:02 2024

H is for Haunted (allegedly) Church. This is the tower (and all that remains) of Little St. Mary’s (a.k.a St Mary's and All Saints) Church in Thundridge, which is more commonly known as Cold Christmas Church. It's said to be one of the most haunted churches in Britain, but when I was there it seemed quite calm and tranquil. Also boarded up, which apparently is to prevent local teens from drawing more pentagrams on the inside walls.

The church is a ten minute walk from the road: I parked the bike just off the road at the start of the path. On my return as I was putting bike jacket and gloves back on I heard clipclopping so I called out "hello horses hello riders" as advised and managed to spook the horses slightly because apparently they could hear me but couldn't see me around the hedge. TIL, I guess.

I rode out through the forest to Epping then some fun zigzaggy small roads through Epping Green and Roydon, still practising the limit point "getting closer, closer, closer, same, opening" monologues. On the journey back I just accepted Kurviger's default and it wasn't particularly exciting: roundabout, roundabout, roundabout, roundabout, and I think there were also some roundabouts. Still, good practice for smooth downshifts.

(Been working on holding the throttle slightly more open and the clutch in friction zone when moving at speeds under ~ 12mph and it does seem a lot smoother)

Discovered shortly after setting off that somehow when I disconnected and reconnected the battery last week, I managed to change the display from miles to km. A small amount of extra mental effort therefore needed to convert the roadside speed limits (20,30,40,50,60) from mph to the km/h (32,48,64,80,96) that the speedo was showing. Manageable, but i think I'll change it back again as soon as I find the manual.

Filled up with petrol in Ware, forgot to set trip counter. Again.