Early Sunday morning local road ride + a right old manky week of weather

Did not get out on the bike yesterday due to the lashing rain but it did dry up for a few hours after dinnertime. Today the rain is due to come back around 11am so wanted to get out early and have a good ride before its starts again.
I was up at 4.30am so out the door after 5am for a rather windy cold start to the ride. The temperatures through the week have been around 14 degrees, not today. The Garmin was reading around 4 degrees and that was without the wind chill factor. I wasn't bothered as the fog / mist / drizzle we have had all week has been proper depressing.
Back to todays ride I wanted to keep it mainly local again and do loops to build up the route / mileage. Again I set off with no real planned route just made it up as I went along. Less climbing this week but the wind made it tough going in places on the exposed roads. As for the roads there was plenty localised flooding with massive puddles to ride around and plenty of water coming off the fields and running across roads. I took the Pilgrims again as it is always ready just to jump on and go in the dark / winter conditions. Here is the ROUTE I covered 50miles in 3.5hrs with nearly 3500ft of climbing. Below are a few pics from the ride, enjoy and hopefully more soon :~)

remember Durham City Centre is closed to cars and pedestrians for the Lumiere next week

High Shincliffe

passed this monster parked up at the side of the road

back country lane flooded

proper dark on the unlight lanes

going up to Quarrington Hill

Day light just coming through 6.40am

wind turbines spinning away at full speed today

sunrise through the clouds

even the sun came out for all of about 10mins

time to turn some of my lights off / down

view over Chester Le Street

from Great Lumley

a few more miles into the headwind and I will be back home