Every had one of those rides that are peppered with bad omens warning you to turn back? Todays ride started with some old women trying to make me her new bonnet ornament on a roundabout. Luckily it just resulted in a bent hanger and a slightly less than true wheel. I pulled the hanger back into line and continued on to do Major Aitkens.
Then up Mount Pleasant, once above the houses there are two copses on the left. Whilst unhappily staring at my handle bar clamp, I noticed the shadowon the road of a fully wing-spanned magpie, fark, quickly followed by the whoosh of a low level fly-by, the little bugger just kept swooping down on me as it hopped from branch to branch, escorting me off its patch. I was bloody glad to get the hell away from there I can tell you. Then at the next copse of trees at the top, that farking shadow was back again, swooping down on me.
That's it, that time is gonna stand for me until well after nesting season is over.
Needless to say, I decided I'd rather go the long way home and dropped down Summit road into Sumner, rather than run that gauntlet again.