Commute #161, but first one in ages

In early and working through lunch all week afforded me an hour of daylight at end of workday so I planned to do a bit of bus running to tidy up the county-wide bus run map then catch a bus the rest of the way home when I flagged (I’m still woefully far from my best condition).

But, at the turnoff for the 48 toward Warley Wood in Bearwood I still felt light of foot and decided to keep on going to Smethwick. At the Old Talbot (the last pub before the first lockdown was announced during another commute run), I felt that I could make it the rest of the way and continued on. Wanting to pick up some rarely run streets to fluff out the annual map, I chose a more-or-less direct path to the Altun Towers (a Turkish supermarket near the house) but was confronted by that worst of obstacles: children leaving a school. Shit. 

By now, I was starting to reach the limits but opted to go around a bit padding this effort out to 9 miles. This pitifully weak effort is actually pretty good for me having contracted one or another strain of The Dreaded Lurgy to be continuously ill since August 2023. I’ll try another time this month, perhaps to work if I can get out early enough to avoid the kids (or during half term, if there is one in February).