One of the many pleasures of cycling is how your sense of smell plays a part in the overall experience.

Starting early there’s a crispness to the air, a faint smell of eucalyptus brought on the breeze. For the last few days I thought I may be picking up a cold, just lots of sniffles though and nothing more. I have realised my senses are on holiday too, like the rest of me just getting used to a different environment.

As the morning  warmed, those freshly ploughed fields smelt fecund out here. They grow plant canola, oats and barley in rows stretching for miles.

The ride was lumpy; up hill and down dale. I was treated to many micro climates. Subtle changes that would be unknown traveling any other way. I smell chocolate, orange and grapes. Like those wine lovers who suggest flavours can be detected in the palette. The soil looks good enough to eat!

Some time back I took an organic gardening and farming course at Burnley Horticultural College. One of my lectures was so engrossed with soil that he brought some in from his block up the country, in his backpack on the train. At class he proudly showed the dark friable soil obviously full of richness, before taking a tea spoon and scoping up a heaped serve, we held our breath was he going to eat it or worse offer the lovin’ spoonful to one of the now receding students: “There’s a million life forms in this teaspoon full of soil, maybe even more!”