Finally the sun's out and the temp's in the 20's

Yesterday I was tired, despondent and lacking in motivation..plus the TV was incessantly full of crowing Brits..well they had had a highly successful day at the Olympics...........gotta let them have a turn I guess!

Today I'm up for it again and I celebrated by having a naughty, naughty 2 hr ride..tsk tsk..well..the sky was blue , the temp was in the 20's..just gotta carpe diem. Having learned from a ride last week that signposting ain't always reliable around here, I took the map with me...juuuust in case. My planned route was into Marlborough, then to Pewsey, Burbage and then through the back lanes back to Ramsbury...it contained a grovel up the escarpment and then a lesser hoon down on the way back home..or at least that was the plan, but of course I changed my mind on the way and discovered the most humungous hill to descend instead. So what else did I discover this time..apart from meeting the good 'ole boys from Swindon CC out for their group ride that is....see the photo dump below:

I passed through the best looking village I've yet seen ...Wilton... and am going to have to go back to take a video..it has everything.....thatches, ducks, narrow lanes, a house called "The Quackers"(!). A bit out of the village is the Wilton windmill..built to replace water mills that had been made redundant when they canalised the local river in the 19th century and which I heaved myself up the hill to check out.....

Is this a Dodo???!!! and I haven't seen a haystack in ages..dont see these in Aus where hay is bundled into cylinder shapes and so is unstackable.

The sign below was coming into Ramsbury on a back road..the unplanned bit of my ride..it says 17% and I was going downhill, but I reckoned it was more than that as I had considerable difficulty hanging onto the brakes enough to slow me to a comfortable speed, which was not fast as it was very much a back road complete with potholes you could get lost in. When I got home I downloaded the Garmin and saw it was 21%....yup I'd have to agree with that.I'm glad I didn't find this earlier in my stay or else I'd have felt obliged to try climb it..today I have a valid excuse...can't wreck my legs this close to the competition! (phew!)

and finally while fixing up the link for the windmill I found out about this Wiltshire hamlet, which maybe I ought to visit to get my own photo:

apparently Tiddleywink is rhyming slang for a quick drink....something I'm looking forward to, having been TT since the Nationals in April