Cycle Journey from Okehampton

Collecting Seeds and Plants
My bike and my computer broke.
Rather than have to try my luck with public transport; my friends let me use their spare bicycle.
Now, I used to cycle everywhere, when that was my only form of transport.  I often cycled to Bristol, Cardiff  (and Scotland once). But that was 6 years ago.

On year 5, I had my last bicycle stolen, from the hollow, where I had stashed it, whilst I was out planting trees in the Meavy valley.  Then I got the motorbike and I haven't pedaled a non motorised cycle since. 
Trouble was; my friends live some 20 miles away, the far side of Okehampton.

Betony grows along the roadside, enough to collect a bit and a few seeds.

 Roadside Plants

From the beginning; feelings of exhaustion were suppressed, by many wondrous discoveries, beside the road, which I could not have possibly noticed or collected, if I was on the motorbike, simply because I was travelling much more slowly and much more able to stop.  In fact much of the time I was pushing up massive Dartmoor hills and more than able to collect some seeds, from a variety of different habitats, like grassland, bog or under trees.



Wild Mustard



Betony and Wild Mustard, both illustrated here are just two of the completely new introductions for the high moor, which today's cycle has made possible.

Betony, which I would say was more closely aligned to the Dead nettle family than of Wood Betony; is a plant I have been blissfully unaware of until recently. Today I found enough of it to take a little rooted bit and to collect a few seeds. not really enough to form a healthy colony, but enough to make a start.

Wild Mustard is usually a very common roadside annual plant, so all I have done is broken off a few dry seed pods from as many different plants as possible.



 In all I got maybe 20 new species, mostly from seed, and from many of the uphill bits, most of the way home. 
The last 8 miles, from Tavistock is across open moors and it was dark and misty and raining.

In all it took me about 8 hours, when it used to take me 4.  But not bad after a 6 year gap.

Can't wait for my Motorbike to be fixed again, though.