Myself and Simon hatched a plan yesterday to go out for a bit today. Despite the howling gale this morning, Simon arrived at mine , neatly dodging the horizontal rain, at 10am. Couple of lanes up by my house, up to California Cross for fuel, and off we went. First proper lane in we met Wheely and 4 or 5 others coming the other way. After a brief warning about the puddle we were about to encounter, we went our separate ways. The heavens opened on us shortly after that, but a painful 5 minutes of ice cold needles hitting us in the face at 40 mph was about all the proper rain we saw all day.
And I am delighted to be able to report that The Bog of Eternal Stench, and Lake Placid, are back to their former glories. Although the stench doesnt seem to be as bad as I remember. But both are as deep as I have ever seen them - up to the front mudguard at the deep end. Hurrah!!!!

I wont bore you all with endless lists of lane numbers, but we did a longish day round Ermington ( quietly up 195!), Modbury, Kingsridge, Marlborough, Loddiswell, Harberton , and finally back to Totnes.  We paused briefly on the coast at Thurlestone to look at the sea - boiling mass of towering surf as far as the eye could see, and salty spray stinging our faces, it looked amazing.

Loads of water about, lots of mud and proper slippy tricky conditions - we both had our share of lie downs, almost exclusivley in the rutty bits. It nice to see the winter conditions back - all that hard dry dusty stuff just isnt the same. The wind wasnt really a problem ,just a bit more deadwood lying about on the floor than normal.  Oddly enough the sun came out during the afternoon, and by the time we got back to Totnes the wind had almost completely gone.