The revelations of a mid-winter ride

Surveying the rolling fields of East Suffolk from a rise in the land a little to the north of Henley, I could hardly contain my surprise. It’s a view I know well, being part of my twice-weekly fair-weather perignations, and yet, dotted in the landscape were a score of buildings that had hitherto escaped my notice. Skeletal trees and sunshine reflected from the receding snow revealed Dutch gables, tufts of thatch and even the knapped flint of a Church tower that were more usually obscured by leaves or shrouded in shade.

Despite an unexpectedly commitment-free Saturday afternoon, I very nearly opted for the indoor training bike. Slushy snow still covered the minor roads and although the temperature had risen to five degrees Celsius, a hint of north-westerly wind delivered an authentically mid-winter chill. But set out I did, with melt-water spraying up from the road.

Illuminated by the first sunshine in weeks, the stark landscape had a brilliant quality. Essentially mono-chromatic, the slightest hints of colour added a vivid, hand-tinted aspect to the scene. To the west was a baby-blue sky and running beside one section of road, the bristling remnants of reddish reed. The few cars that I saw wore their own camouflage of road filth, but intense flashes of brick work, pantile and hung-out washing flecked the scene with tiny contrasting dashes.

My second surprise came by virtue of slight variation to my route. I am still rebuilding strength and stamina after a broken leg, so I shortened my usual loop. The junctions of the road that I took, I have passed hundreds of times, without once venturing to find our what lay between. I should here acknowledge the privilege enjoyed by those who cycle in East Anglia. The undulating countryside of Norfolk and Suffolk is served by a dense web or roads – a legacy of the labour-hungry demands of yesterday’s agriculture. Long, if circuitous journeys are possible without seeing a moving car, and a cyclist can explore for decades and still have more to find – as I was to discover.

Cutting down the road signposted ‘Hemingstone’ I came upon St Gregory’s, a simple, fourteenth century Church. Quite possibly this morning’s congregation hasn’t even reached double figures, and yet, the idea that the surrounding community has been nourished and tended from this building for more than half a millennium was humbling.

A mile or so down the road can you buy valium online came a more dramatic revelation. Hitherto my route was lined by frozen ditches, ragged hedgerows and snowy fields. Suddenly I found myself riding beside a tall, evergreen box hedge, clipped into shape with the aggressive precision of an army barber. A towering wall could have no better asserted the import and wealth of what lay behind.

I half expected to see a shadowy institute housing noiseless, white-coated scientists serving a humming mainframe from behind smoked windows. Instead, looking over the canalised boundary stream was Hemingstone Hall, an eight-bayed brick mansion dating from 1625. Its elaborate, curling gables, juxtaposed the garden of dramatic, geometric topiary. I was tempted to jump the gate for a closer look, as there was no evidence of anyone in residence. But having earlier in the day been shooed from his fence by householder over whose more modest property I was peering, I decided to press on.

My final discovery was a series of planning notices, pinned to stakes on open stretches of roadside. Doubtless they comply with statute, but it is hard to believe that any but cyclists will pause to consider their contents. On my reading, they appeared to announce Scottish Power’s plans to erect as many as 350 wind turbines, each potentially 200 meters high, in a curve between Felixstowe and Wattisham – a narrow, 20 mile corridor wrapped around the entire northern approach to Ipswich.

I’m unsure about the economics of wind farms, but I am a fan of their aesthetics – at least on hill sides, or at sea. But the suggested scale seemed terrifying. I calculated that existing line of pylons that delivers power from Sizewell to the grid, stand between 30 and 40 meters tall. Structures nearly five times taller than these, each nearly the height of Canary Wharf Tower (One Canada Square to give it its proper name) would dominate the countryside, and be visible form as much as thirty miles away. I finished my circumnavigation fearing that my inner Nimby was about to be exposed.

Happily, back at base, a check of the local newspaper’s archives revealed that my fears to be groundless. The Caledonian engineers plan to build their turbines at sea, it was their application to lay a fresh line of pylons that I had seen. Perhaps it is just as well that few others will stop pause to check their notices.