Out pedalling today in the unseasonably warm winter weather on the campaign trail delivering memberships. First weekend ride of the year apart from weekday cycle commuting. Convoluted route today around the outskirts and suburbs and back along the Chesterfield Canal.

I noticed today how much the countryside between Inkersall and Arkwright is being converted into a sunshine state with acres of pasture now being turned over to harvesting the suns rays via massed ranks of solar panels. Not sure how I feel about this change to the countryside. It may be easy on the environment but it’s not so easy on the eye. I guess it’s the new revolution in agrarian endeavours.

Hoop driving along the old Arkwright Colliery train line – long since ripped up and now forming a loop on the Trans Pennine Trail (TPT) – and the NCN Cycle Route 67 – I passed the apple tree I have noticed on previous trips that stands out-of-place in scrub land on the right when approaching from the Calow end of the line. A sighting of this tree always brings to mind romanticist notions of a long dead Fireman or Engine Driver lobbing high the core of his lunchtime apple from the footplate of his coal locomotive and it taking root and bearing fruit. I prefer this version rather than it being deposited by a bird in flight after passing through it’s digestive system.

There’s nothing romantic about ‘bird dirt’.