Countryside¶
439 words on Photos
The countryside can be lovely and it looks nice in more places than you’d suspect. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to agree with the spirit that goes with it. All the ‘poor’ farmers driving around in their Mercedeces. All the families wanting to live ‘close to nature’, conveniently enjoying tax breaks for their travel costs as well as cheap rents and still driving around all the time in cars because they can’t really do anything in the small villages. I also don’t envy their kids who have to rely on Mom’s taxi or a bus going in one or two hour intervals to visit their friends. Let’s just say it’s not my kind of thing…
And I ran into a totally new aspect of this yesterday. Having been invited to a barbecque at some friends’ in a small village a few kilometres out of town I made my way there in the late afternoon. If it hadn’t been for the hills and my bike being not too good for that, it was a lovely ride there, following the road to the end of town and then going on on a path through the fields. Unfortunately I hadn’t thought this through properly as it was dark when I returned home. And that path across the fields wasn’t just hilly but not exactly in good shape or lit either. I didn’t want to use it in the dark for fear of falling over.
My friends recommended to just go on the usual road which is in good shape and reasonably straight. That sounded perfectly reasonable. Until I realised that unlike in town they just turn the street lights off in the countryside at ten or so. Leaving me on a pitch dark road on which my bike’s (not tremendously strong) front light didn’t shine particularly far. That wasn’t the biggest problem, though as following a road isn’t all that difficult. But I was absolutely scared of the cars going on the road. They went fast, this was the countryside so I would have to assume they might be drunk, and many of the morons just kept their lights switched to full beam when passing me. When that happened I was essentially blinded and it’s really hard to keep going straight when that happens. I was very happy when a separate cycle lane appeared after half the way and when the small town’s ‘bright lights’ surrounded me again.
Nice photo opportunities, though.
More dramatically:
[I sense a slight inefficiency in the JPEG format here. Both images contain the same information and their size differs by a factor of four.]
