Just reminding myself that there is such a thing a s blue sky and that the landscape isn’t permanently damp around here, and that it will be possible to use cycle ways without getting the bike muddy again: one day.

And while you are here, does anyone in Germany have any knowledge or experience of a company called Medakadamie, the schools it runs or their reputation? Please let me know via the comments or contact form if you do, as I’m considering doing a school with them. Feel free to write in German, by the way.

Meanwhile…

I’m trying to organise the cob workshop (although one participant has gently reminded me that I’ve not responded to emails as fast as I could, sorry about that). I need a minimum of fifteen people to make the workshop worthwhile and I’ve not got anywhere near that many yet: either I’m not reaching these people or Germans aren’t interested in cob building. Any suggestions of forums or internet addresses welcome.

The workshops are slated to be in the Very Smallholding, and as half of it requires crampons and is currently infested by feral raspberry bushes with attitude and big thorns it isn’t safe to allow access by the general public, so this week I used some nervous energy productively by tidying up. The main job for this month is re-digging a veggie bed where the owner of the land, for some reason thinking that about 100 square metres of raspberry bushes was not nearly enough, planted another trellis’ worth. Now raspberry bushes are like puppies, they look all nice and cute when they’re little but soon they grow. This one grew, and grew, went feral with the others and tried to take over the garden. And the neighbours garden. So now it is gradually being eradicated one spade full at a time with some liberal use of the Anglo-Saxon vernacular.

The other major job for the month is to get two more trailer loads of poo. I think I’ll wait until the interviews are over first.

Middle Son blew a hole the size of my thumb in the back tyre on his bike by making a few too many skid stops. I’ve finally got around to replacing the tyre and inner tube so he’s able to use his bike again. Now he wants to travel under his own steam all the time, which suits me: it’s easier then schlepping him up hills…

However, the build-out is at the end of a gradual right hand curve. So when I’m cycling up the hill, I can see the build out, but the car following me can’t.

This means I have a choice: stay by the side of the road until the last minute and hope one of the cars rushing to the next set of lights will then let me pull out, to or signal early and follow the same line as other vehicles. I tried the first approach and if the driver of the Mercedes that passed me is reading this, I’d like the end of my handlebars back. Thanks. You’ll probably find it wedged into the mobile phone you were using.

Cars do seem to notice us a bit more when we follow the line of traffic, possibly because they realise we won’t just get out of the way. Trouble is, every now and again Mercedes Man (or, for some odd reason, Fiat Woman) gets stroppy and starts leaning on their horn.

In the end I decided it would be better -especially when I was taking small boys to Kindergarten- to go through the traffic calmed old centre (speed limit 7km/h) and back downhill to drop the boys off. It means a steep hill and driving three sides of a square, but at least the commuters are going the other way.

Except for Porsche** Man who decided that this was the perfect short cut this morning and took exception to the presence of a bicycle (and pedestrians, schoolchildren, etc) on a road that clearly belonged to him and him alone.

*With apologies to disgruntled for nicking her post title.
**My spell checker doesn’t recognise ‘Porsche’ but does recommend ‘Poacher’ or ‘Persecute’ as alternatives.

There was less than I thought: it turns out that stacking very, very long pieces of wood against a rickety privvy isn’t a great idea in high winds, and that weighing cardboard mulch at the corners because I was too lazy to move the rest of the cow poo down just means that the rain soaks it then the wind shreds it and deposits it in the next garden, and large empty compost bins are surprisingly good at catching wind, but apart from that -and some wretched cat thinking that our garden is its personal toilet- all was well. As an extra bonus the rain had washed the vegetation from the path I cleared in summer leaving what looks like pure clay, which is good news for the cob building workshops, even if it does mean crampons are required to get to the bottom of the hill…

I stacked the wood again and put bricks on anything that might move in high winds, although as we’d had storms off and on for a week it was a bit late, but never mind: gardening is a learning process and I’ve now learned that ‘severe weather warning’ means what it says, and that anything loose should be weighted down straight away and not at some theoretical future date.

Still doesn’t deal with the cat problem though. I’ll experiment with bramble branches to deter them (at lest I have plenty of bramble branches to spare, do you think there’s a market for them?) If that doesn’t work, maybe I could borrow the neighbours Doberman…

I duly emailed the shop who sold us the Xtracycle, and they promised to send me a paypal invoice sharpish and a replacement part as soon as the money hit their account.

That was several days ago and I’ve heard nothing since. I’m still waiting for a part I ordered under guarantee two years ago, so I’m not holding my breath.

As Xtracycles are made in sunny California I imagine parts are a bit easier to come by in the US. Are there any US based readers who could order me a spare clip, and send it on to me here if I pay the postage? It’s a pain to do things this way but I really need the Xtracycle to be back in operation. Any offers of help would be gratefully received.

Update: Thanks to Nigel’s comment, I was able to get some replacement clips from Rob at Really Useful Bikes, and have a great chat with a kindred spirit about Xtraycles and Bakfietsen and things cycling into the bargain.

The sky at sunrise a couple of days ago. About time too, I was getting tired of grey skies and dampness.

Tiny aircraft about to land on a massive chimney.

Add my inability to master time management and it’s a recipe for disaster, so when we had a sunny day last week I dropped everything and took the boys out to explore for the morning. Middle Son has been waiting for a dry day to go on a ‘Proper’ bike ride since he interited his first multigear bike from his brother for Chistmas, so we went to the the next town to see what the boys call “The UFO”. Notice real cycle infrastructure to the left of the boys (Click to enlarge).

We made sixteen kilometres (ten miles) which made Middle Son very happy. On the way home we found that Ostfildern are as usual doing their best for cyclists…

Which meant a minor detour over this interesting piece of cycling infrastructure:

Fortunately when you aren’t in a rush and you have three boys, nearly falling in a ditch is just part of the adventure, and Beautiful Wife was delighted to welcome four damp, mud-bespattered boys home just as she’d finished cleaning the house for the week…

*Apparently, going to the shops in the next village doesn’t count.

A chill morning out on the route to work. What my German colleagues call ‘British weather’

Wouldn’t miss it for the world.

From our balcony I can see a range of hills (when it’s not raining, and of course today it is, but work with me) which form the European Watershed, which I find pretty exciting, but I did study Geography for several years. Rain falling this side of them will flow north to the Rhine and out to Amsterdam, and anything falling beyond will make an epic journey through Austria, Hungary and Romania and off to the Black Sea.

If todays weather is anything to go by, neither region will be short of water over the next weeks.

I could cycle over the European Watershed from here, I just haven’t got around to it yet. This is partly because I was otherwise engaged doing things like attending permaculture courses, visiting Japan and transporting poo, but also because I’m a lazyoaf and the idea of climbing up the side of said hills is a bit daunting. But next year I’m determined to cross that watershed.

I’ve done some serious plotting with things called ‘maps’*. It seems I can follow a route I’ve done before to the Neckar valley, which has a well signposted long distance route. From there it looks fairly easy to the city of Reutlingen, which looks a bit daunting, but after that there is a traffic free cycleway on an old railway line from Reutlingen through Lichtenstein (Not the tax haven, but it does have a nice castle) and then up the side of a cliff hill to a smallish village called Engstingen, which is on a river leading to the Donau.

According to the mighty Google it’s about 65km. One way. And then I have to get back again, so 130km in total, which is a bit over my current record of 114km when we brought the Bakfiets from the Netherlands to Germany, and on that occasion it was in the sort of country where a bridge counts as a hill, whereas this route goes down into at least three valleys and back up out of them again, a caps the lot with a 200 metre (600 feet and then some) climb at the end. In theory, the return should be a bit easier because it’s down hill most of the way. Right…

Still, now I’ve told you lot about it, I’ll have to do it. I guess that’s not a bad new years resolution, especially as another resolution is to ride a full century (160km) next year** so It’ll be good preparation for that. I’ll put it on the list along with ‘sort out the garden’; ‘refurbish bike N+1′; and ‘write a blog entry each week’…

*A sort of papery thing that people used before GPS.
**Actually I said the same last year, but we’ll ignore that.