Things can only get wetter

You've heard of Professor Brian Cox, I'm sure, although probably not as much as I have; he seems to be physically worming his way into this project. This is partly due to Matt's geek crush on the dashing scientist and partly due to his current omnipresence in the media. Either way, his explanations about the structure of the universe have led me to consider the very nature of time and space in relation to Chasing Spring.

We're made to be seasonal beings, to live through a cycle of cold and warmth, of rain and drought, of comfort and austerity. But travelling as I am with the spring is a little like trying to evade the passage of time, almost as if I were trying to cheat mortality.

To give an example: Yesterday we spent a fantastic day with Cheshire's resident daffodil expert, Len Tomlinson, filming the gardens where he gives annual daffodil tours to raise money for Macmillan. The variety of colours (from dusky pink to blueish-white to Seville orange), shapes (windswept, disc and 'Blue Peter'-like) and sizes and Len's passion for these beautiful flowers was a genuine pleasure to be around and made me look at daffodils in a whole new light. As we walked through the fields, Len would nod to a Tahiti or an Einstein, stroke a stem of Desdemona or point out the historic varieties that Wordsworth may well have looked out on so many years ago, all the while spinning tales about the history of the area and his own colourful life. So much of film-making, even documentary film-making, is faked, but enthusiasm on this level cannot be artificially recreated. 

The various breeds don't all bloom at once - they come and go from mid-February to late May - and their heady scents gave rise to heady thoughts; if I could keep cycling ever north, following the daffodils flowering around the globe, maybe I could evade the snare of death. After three weeks on the road the days are beginning to blur together, and cause and effect no longer seem to follow a linear pattern. Are we chasing spring or is it chasing us? After all, we seem to be literally taking the sunshine with us wherever we go (we've only had to cycle through one morning of feeble rain). Even today, we were warned that Manchester would be grey and wet but the sun has been dragged out kicking and screaming.

As we left Whitegate (where we were made very welcome by Len's family, to whom I'm extremely grateful) to cycle to Manchester we took a detour past Jodrell Bank which brought me firmly back to earth. While the telescope is pointing toward the stars the observatory itself is planted firmly in the ground, encircled by fields of moody cows. Having spoken to an astrophysicist at the centre, it seems that even those who spend their lives examining the celestial causes behind our earthly seasons watch out for the coming spring not by measuring the sun's angle to the earth but by the same simple, fallible and unscientific sign that so many of us look out for: the first daffodil.