The morning started with a jaunt down to the local post office, to the tune of Rock the Boat, where I proceeded to annoy the grumpy cashier by packaging up the latest batch of Chasing Spring video tapes to send back to base. I had to borrow her stationery shelf, her pen, several sheets of paper and some sticky tape; well, I'm hardly going to buy everything from scratch each time I need to post a parcel and I'm certainly not ferrying it all around with me on the bike that's now become an extension of my body.
Unencumbered by panniers for once (having left them at my friend's house) we flew along the hills with barely a pause towards today's filming destination. But as the day grew hotter, I seared like a fillet steak in the heat and, mildly dehydrated, began to see water everywhere; mirages pooling on the brows of hills, polytunnels lying flat across the fields like shimmering rivers, shadows of trees rippling across the road (and making it difficult to see the potholes as I sped over).
Which is why it was timely that we spent the afternoon at the National Trust's Fountains Abbey near Ripon. The sunshine was glorious, the children running riot because they'd just broken up for the Easter holidays, and the sky was a vast swatch of cobalt blue. Although there are no fountains, per se, the property does have extensive water gardens which have been sculpted and maintained over the past couple of centuries to reflect the sky like vast mirrors. I managed to resist the urge to dive in and wriggle among the little tunnels and channels that make up this carefully laid out water system, but it was a close call.
In fact the day was so lovely that my heart barely skipped a beat when Matt announced that he'd left the key to the bike chain (firmly attaching our bikes to the rail) at home. Oh, how I laughed* when I realised it was a particularly hilarious joke of his.
I got my revenge as we cycled through the rest of the grounds by encouraging (it's not bullying, Matt, it's direction) him to cycle through a shallow stream that I had just failed to ford. He got his feet wet. There is footage of this but it's pretty shaky as I was laughing so hard.
*swore blind.
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