Fungi

Today I had a final go at completing my trace of the Hampden cycle route in Buckinghamshire. I rode out to Holmer Green, then worked my way round to South Heath near Great Missenden to join up the parts of the route that I had traced previously (and fix a few of my errors). The village of South Heath, where I finally closed the loop, has already been beautifully mapped on OSM, with a remarkable amount of detail.

There's a network of national, regional and local cycle routes in the area. They interlink and overlap a lot, which doesn't always work out too well when the map is rendered. Most of them are already on OSM, but the odd one is incomplete, so once I had joined up the Hampden route I traced Sustrans regional route 3 from South Heath back into Chesham. It was getting late by then, so riding the 15 miles or so back home in the dark was interesting.

A lot of my route was alongside woodland, and I saw an astonishing number of huge mushrooms. I don't know if this is a particularly good year for them but they were certainly larger and more numerous than I can remember seeing before.

All in all, it was a very pleasant ride of fifty miles or so. Two of the local Buckinghamshire millenium cycle routes should now be complete on OSM, though it will take a few days for them to render. I've still got the last one to finish.

I like the Hampden route for the views and for some pleasant villages, but I think I saw the best of it on my first attempt. That sounds a bit churlish, when I have just ridden through some of the most desirable residential areas in this part of the world. I am sure they are wonderful places to live, and there is certainly a good mix of attractive housing. Just a bit too much on a cycle ride. The mushrooms were more memorable.