June round-up

It's the first of July, so time to review progress in June - which has been a bit disappointing. I had planned to build up some surplus miles to get further ahead of my plan for the year. The 200 mile lead that I had built up in early May had already slipped back to 50 miles by the start of June, and now it has disappeared altogether.

Things have only moved forward a bit on my other goals. The Eddington number is up from 45 to 46, and I've visited one more church on my list. It's progress, captain, but not as we know it.

There are some good reasons why I haven't been out on the bike often enough recently, but it's starting to leave me with a bit of a gap that I will have to close over the next six months. What I need now is a few quiet weeks with cooler weather.

To make a start on July I headed out to Sonning this evening, and crossed the picturesque bridge. I knew this was a bit of a bottleneck, but I hadn't realised quite how bad it got. Around 6pm the lines of cars waiting to cross must have been at least a mile long in each direction.

On the whole it was a pleasant enough ride, but if I was compiling a list of 100 things to do before you die, I don't think I would include crossing Sonning bridge at rush hour. I'm not even sure that I would add it to a list of 1,000 things to do before you die. Seeing it once falls somewhere on the scale between an unusual experience and a local phenomenon. Next time I go to Sonning I'll try to avoid 6pm on a weekday.