When it breaks through, late autumn sunshine is a lovely sight. Weakly playing on the effulgent remnants of summer’s deciduous foliage, it warms the commuting cyclist just enough to prompt thoughts of removing even lightweight gloves and dispels, if briefly, the morose mood engendered by the previous evening’s sodden ride home.
‘Cos cycling in sodden conditions is what late autumn is really about. Gloom, mist, drizzle and sometimes an a mixture of all three make this surely the nadir of the road cycling season. Until sleet starts to fall in early December, of course. But let’s not think about that with several days of that low, weak, soft sunlight forecast for a south east England that until yesterday had endured a week of suffocating gloom.
