The Great (Warrington) Outdoors
Ben Lukey reflects on a year of cycle commuting

Over the last year I’ve been using my daily cycle commute to explore my creative side. I ride to work at the Environment Agency in Latchford after dropping my kids off at Stockton Heath primary school. The most straightforward route is down the Black Bear canal, which is a great place, especially now the stretch I use has been tarmaced. Watching the blossom come out in spring is a special delight. Since August 2006 though, I’ve been trying out a different route, which involves crossing the Ship Canal over the cantilever bridge.

The View to the East

You may even have seen me – quite a few commuters have. Some of them looked quite worried about me as they drove past. Each day I’ve cycled that way (usually about 4 days a week) I’ve taken a picture in each direction of the view along the canal. You can do that kind of thing on a bike; stop and look. And breath fresh air. The changing views are fantastic. One day, we have crisp clear blue skies. The next day the canal is choppy as the wind whistles along it. Perhaps the foggy days with the lights from the factory at Walton peering through are my favourites. And of course we got snow in February. And rain. Actually I didn’t get as wet as you might imagine. Slightly cheeky use of the rainfall records we have at work reveals that in the half hour between 8:30 and 9:00 each morning, it only rained on 40 out of 365 days. That means I got wet on the way to work only 10% of the time. Luckily I was on holiday most of August, because that was the worst month for morning commute related downpours!

You can see all my photographs compiled into two 45 second videos on YouTube

• Looking East in the Morning
• Looking West in the Morning