Car repairs, cycling, bomb sites and bluebells.

I'm having to make some minor repairs to my new car as it ages. After all it is just over two years old now. My S2000 was six years old and I never had any problems with it. However my Alfa isn't ageing as well. It has already had one of the windscreen squirters stop working and now some of the interior trim is coming away. The squirter was easily repaired by taking apart the tubing, but the interior trim is proving a little more difficult. Here's my temporary botch job to hold the trim in place for now, till I can get some better glue for it.

Of course I could take it to the local Alfa dealer to have it repaired under warranty, but I'd have to take a day off work for that and really don't want to unless I really can't repair it. As an object I do still like it, but as a reliable car it is testing me. :-)

Last Monday on the bank holiday I took the opportunity to cycle around Cheddar Gorge and the Mendips again. It was still quite muddy on the routes despite the recent spell of good weather. It's always nice to do a route twice, the first time to figure out where to go and the second time to try to do it with minimal stops.

You can just about make out my tracks here where I came to an abrupt stop in the mud and had to put my foot into the mud to avoid falling over.

I took a slight detour on the long rocky downhill section of the route and came across this interesting sign, which was directed at people entering the path that I had just come from!

Last Thursday Susan and I went out on a really nice ride around Russells Water, a small village near the work office. There is a small nature reserve there and as a result some really nice tracks to ride.

Here we are at the village with our two cars parked up.

Around the nature reserve there were plenty of bluebells in the forests. They looked like a blue mist over the undergrowth and smelt fantastic.

It was a really pleasant ride and we discovered some unexpected nice tracks. All preparation for the Quantock Hills that we're about to ride this weekend.

More on this ride to come...