In the pub on Friday night, there was some discussion about what tactics people might use, should a raid by the squad occur, if we were caught, still on the premises after whenever closing time might actually be, however unlikely such an operation might be. One old boy declared that he would claim to be
bona fide, this being a term from the days of the empire, when patrons, whose residence was three miles or more from the licensed premises on which they had been apprehended, could claim an unspecified extra leeway. I suggested that his place might not actually be three miles away, but he declared that it was - just. So, this morning, prior to reconvening the meeting tonight, I decided to check the matter, via the 'Directions' feature on Google Maps, which will give the journey distance, as well as the route. Of course, Google recognises that such archaic things as "miles" are defunct here for the last couple of decades, so I had to convert it from the metric dimension and it came to 2.9 miles, thus I will suggest that he parks down the road a bit from now on. By the same method, I established that I am clearly bona fide, at 3.3 miles. I am considering reporting him, in case there's a reward.
Anyway, a by-product of all this map-work was that I spotted an untraversed road in a zone that I had considered to be fully surveyed. It is a road through a wooded area, deep into the bog and then connecting with another bog road that I have previously traversed. I elected to 'collect' this road today, in case it ever does actually rain again. The Street View car has done a lot of the bog access lanes here, but this one was missed, for some reason, hence it didn't 'light up blue' when I was checking the area for roads.
The road was a bit rough, you would have little loose stuff on the trailer by the time you reached the main road. After about a kilometre, you reach the edge of the forest and it all gets a bit
Blair Witch.
Here and there, there were tracks leading off to the side, but they seemed to be little-frequented by people from civilisation and I stayed on the main thoroughfare - the possibility of blundering into an uncontacted tribe did not appeal.
Occasionally, the tyres would fire a stone off into the vegetation, making a sound disturbingly like that which a blow-dart might make.
Eventually, I got as far as the other road that I had previously traversed and this reassuring solar-powered CCTV installation, some considerable distance from the nearest mains cable..
As an aside, this journey involved the ascent of my 'test hill' on the way out. Prior to Christmas, I had been getting steadily better at it, as the amount of cycling had improved matters, but, since the undefined plague that I had over Christmas, this is the first time that I have ascended it without having to drop to the 'smallest ring' on the way up.