Cycling through The Wolds.

With the wonderful weather we are having, what better way to enjoy it than pottering through the lanes on a bike.  Heather and I had arranged a day out on the bikes with a pub lunch at Rothwell with friends Brian and Heather.  We set out in ideal conditions in good time to meet the other two at Beelsby at 11.15.  Everywhere are signs that it is now high summer.  Harvesting has begun, late, I feel.  I would estimate a couple of weeks late due to the cold, wet spring.  I do think that things are catching up now though and the wheat, which usually ripens after the barley, is soon going to be ready.  I notice that broad beans are still om the plant.  I am sure we are usually eating them by now.  Roadside grasses are tall and burnt golden by the sun and verges are rich with the flowers of high summer especially knapweeds and thistles.  Butterflies are plentiful and easily disturbed as we ride past; largely whites, meadow browns and small heaths with the occasional ringlet and common blue.
On up towards Croxby after we had met up with Brian and Heather and we encountered the scourge of summer cycling: hedge flailing.  I appreciate that we are in a mechanised world where time is money and that it is not possible to control hedges by traditional laying techniques, but flailing them by machine just leaves them looking ugly and desecrated and the road covered in thorns ready to trap the unwary cyclist.
We disturbed the occasional buzzard, a delightfully common sight in Lincolnshire nowadays, but other than that the most common bird species were the young game birds, pheasants and partridges, that have just been released into the fields ready for the guns in the Autumn.  Can't afford to be holier than thou though as I love pheasant and we usually remember my dad with' the brace' on his December birthday. It was his favourite meal and when we were children, we would often have pheasant for our Christmas meal before turkey became popular.  In fact, even then, we used to have a big cockerel; of course in rural Lincolnshire back in the 50s and 60s things were automatically free range although we were just beginning to appreciate Rachael Carson's 'Silent Spring'.  It was good to see old photographs of Rothwell in the Blacksmith's Arms, beautifully printed on canvas.  They are from the original negatives and our a wondreful reminder of those gentler slower days of the last century and beyond.  OK I know I'm looking through rose-coloured glasses!!

Ripening barley in the late evening light.

Old farm buildings, Cuxwold.