Byways

After an early morning start, on taxi duty from Manchester Airport, I managed late in the day to attach derriere to cycle and in what can only be described as the best of the weather, spent an hour and a half cycling the byways of the Pie Village and surrounding area.

I was chased along for a good quarter of a mile by swallows , newly fledged as they dived for the cloud of midges I attracted. Saw flooded fields , rivers bursting from their banks and cricket fields awash with laying water.

I also saw the field pictured which if you look very carefully you can see a few red flecks upon.

These were poppies amidst the wheat and seemed somewhat appropriate to see in the week when the end of the Falklands war 25 years ago was commemorated.

Unlike Flanders fields, or Iraq, or Afghanistan the road to Upper Cumberworth was thankfully at peace. Though it did make me think of those who are already there or are shortly to go to one of these troubled places and hope that they return in one piece to their families and communities as speedily as their duties allow.