My favourite time of year, the temperature is just right, usually not too wet, enough daylight hours and unlike spring, no swooping magpies! Although it’s heating up again later this week, on a still clear afternoon I took a few mini detours for a thoroughly enjoyable commute home.

Suburban back streets to Huntingdale, then through a back alley for some local colour, industrial brick buildings and rear yards. A few decades worth of discarded industrial detritus in some places. Not too much broken glass and only a few wheel-eating gratings to watch out for.

Huntingdale to Oakleigh along the Djerring trail – née Station trail – turning off to bypass the shops and up to the school to collect number one son. Unlike the fully rebuilt sections of the trail that accompanied the level crossing removals, Oakleigh to Huntingdale and on towards Clayton remain a wasteland of weeds, bare dirt and concrete covered in graffiti.

Out of the school and around the sports ground, then cross country through the pioneer cemetery. Cicadas in summer, corellas digging the grass year round, the old headstones gradually getting more vandalised over the years as bored yoof come and smash them up at night.

From there we rejoin the roads, make our way around the edge of the Oakleigh shops and under Warrigal road, then off along suburban streets and home.

You can make any ride into a mini adventure if you try, even if it is only a nanoadventure as you take a turn and try a back alley or a shortcut through the bushland along the creek.