Secondary

I was going to say that there has been a hiatus in my cycling, but I think the word has come to mean specifically a short pause or gap, and I was a bit shocked to find I have not ridden outside the village since January. A combination of hostile weather, other commitments, the disruption of an untimely death and - for the past 6 weeks! - illness. This is the first week I have felt enough energy to relish the ride

I discovered that hiatus also means the vocal break between two vowels that are adjacent in a word but are in different syllables. Imagine having a word for that - even if it is a hand-me-down. The examples given are 'cooperate' - cheating a bit, as I would hyphenate that - and 'ear'. I would not have said 'ear' has two syllables, but now I'm corrected

My plan was a modest distance that included a stretch of off-road that we have walked, but I have not ridden - anticipating that the dry conditions would make it feasible. I was thwarted by an uncompromising sign that the 'footway' (actually, it's a bridle-path) is closed, for two weeks of tarmac laying! There must be a (German?) word for that

Consulting the map, I found a bridle-path less travelled by - over the hill, rather than round it. I don't think many horses have relished the steep ascent and decent, either (I walked both!); the track soon became indistinguishable from the surrounding farmland, marked only by the (many!) gates with opening mechanisms designed for people who don't want to get off their high horses. The reality of how hard the dry ground really is was soon brought home to me via my well-inflated tyres

The picture is from a section that was a passage-way between two hedgerows. Somehow, a view through the trees from this high-point looks more dramatic than the many I took on open ground. There is an art to landscape photography that I have not mastered

I scoured my text to see if I have included a hiatus. Of course, silly me - hiding in plain sight