Around Glasgow

I’ve been getting out on the bikes regularly but not doing any long rides other than last week’s mini tour. So with the good weather holding I took the chance to do a ride I had been planning for a while. Starting from my house 3 miles north of the Glasgow boundary and riding around the city without entering the city limits.

It has a certain logic and would also get me into a few areas I hadn’t been before. I decided to do the ride clockwise to get the bits where I needed to navigate out the way early in the day.

It went well. My route was via Balmore, Kirkintilloch, Muirhead, Gartcosh, Coatbridge, East Kilbride, Newton Mearns, Barrhead, Paisley, Erskine, Clydebank, and back home.

The mileage ended up at 58. Not a big ride but it was a hard 58 miles. Glasgow fills most of the flatlands around the River Clyde so to stay outside the city you need to do a fair bit of climbing and descending.

Overall it was a good ride in great weather. Not one I’d rush to repeat though. Apart from back roads before and after East KIlbride I was on busy A roads too much of the day.

First Tour of the Season

I managed to get away for a three day mini-tour last week. To a small corner of Scotland I hadn’t visited before. The north east, Inverness to Aberdeen via the Moray coast.

On day one I took the train to Inverness. Going north from Glasgow the sun disappeared under an overcast sky but leaving the train it was warm with a light breeze. Ideal cycling weather. I climbed the big hill to Culloden Battlefield then took the old road to Nairn. It’s a great cycling road. Mostly flat, little traffic, and enough twists and turns that the traffic has to behave. At Nairn I lunched on a park bench beside the river on chocolate milk and cold roast chicken. While I was there I met an English cyclist on a folder who had also left the train at Inverness earlier that day.

After Nairn I followed NCN Route 1 along the back roads to Forres. It certainly made routefinding easy – just looking for the blue signs at each junction. After Forres I went my own way along the coast towards Burghead. A mile before Burghead I found a quiet sheltered spot to camp in a stand of pine woods between the road and the shore. Later I got a good fire going and sat listening to owls hooting in the canopy above.

Day two and the weather was excellent again, high cloud and light warm breezes. The route was a ride along the coast on back roads through forests, fields and the small fishing villages and towns of Burghead, Lossiemouth, Port Gordon, Buckie, Cullen, and Banff.

Looking over Cullen from NCN1 on the old railway.

By the time I reached Banff it was late afternoon. I decided to start heading south away from the coast to get Aberdeen in easy reach the next day. The plan was to reach Turrif 12 miles away, get something to eat then camp either by the road or on a site in the town which was marked on the map. Away from the coast though I was in to the fertile rolling farmland of Buchan. The farmhouses were never more than a few hundred yards apart and almost all the land was under the plough or had cattle or sheep. So it looked like somewhere in the town would be the best. When I got to Turiff and found the site it turned out to be a small caravan and campsite run by the council. The shower block was excellent, my pitch had a picnic table and benches. Although there wasn’t a rate for one man tents the rate for a two man tent was reasonable at £9.50.

On the last day I only had 40 miles or so left to Aberdeen so the pace could be leisurely. After picking my way along rolling back roads through more farm country I reached Ellon and from there followed the Formartine and Buchan Way, a walking and cycle route along an abandoned railway line. The surface was fairly poor in parts. My 700×32 tyres were just adequate. Going south from Ellon the line climbs gradually for several miles. Once I was past the summit I found a nice sheltered south facing spot and got the mat out for a rest in the sun. Later on as I continued down the trail I came to the first distance marker showing Aberdeen was 12 miles away. A check of the watch show that I would need to get moving to catch my train. So it was head down and pedal. I made it with 3 minutes to spare. All in all a nice start to the touring season.

Primogeniture

With the wedding of Prince William and Kate taking place at the end of the month there is talk in the papers of changing the law to allow their first born child to have the right to succeed to the throne whether male or female. The justification for the change is that the current law is disciminatory and the change would be in line with the aim of equality in today’s society. Nobody, it seems, sees the irony of using equality as the reason for changing the rules about which child gets to become the Head of State merely by accident of birth.

Cheating Politician Jailed

And about time too. After wriggling and dodging and diving. After trying to claim the laws of the land did not apply to MPs. After doing everything he could to evade justice Former Labour MP David Chaytor has been sentenced to 18 months or fiddling his expenses to the tune of around £20’000.

“Chaytor, of Lumbutts, Todmorden, West Yorkshire, who owns a portfolio of five properties in London and Lancashire, pleaded guilty last month to three counts of false accounting between November 2005 and January 2008. Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said he submitted bogus documents to claim £15,275 for renting a flat in Hyde Tower, Regency Street, Westminster, when in fact he and his wife, Sheena, owned it and had paid off the mortgage. Just £12,925 of that claim was paid out.

He also falsely claimed £5,425 between September 2007 and January 2008 for renting a cottage in Summerseat, near Bury, Greater Manchester, owned by his elderly mother, Olive Trickett, who had moved to a care home suffering from dementia four months before. ”

One down ……………

Schwalbe Ice Spikers

My Schwalbe Ice Spikers arrived this week. Big 26×2.1 MTB tyres with an aggressive knobbly tread and 304 spikes each. So after three weeks with no cycling I’m back on the bike. The roads and paths around home are still covered with a mixture of snow and rutted ice. In places it is hard to even walk.

The tyres have proved to be superb. The grip has never faltered on snowy hills, frozen rivers and smooth frozen lochs. The spikes are small enough that they are not obvious to a casual observer. So today I was riding around getting puzzled looks from people having trouble staying upright as they walked along while I rode past on the Schwalbes able to steer, stop, and ride up icy slopes with ease.

At £100 for the pair they were not cheap but they are more fun than riding a bike in the gym.

Liar, Liar, Pants on fire..

Now it’s official. Tommy Sheridan found guilty of perjury.

Elsewhere, try going to Google Maps, click Get Directions, then put “Japan” in the from field and China as destination. Then scroll down to see step 42.

Still In The Deep Freeze

Four weeks later the big freeze is still here. It never got warmer than -5C today. During the night lows of -9C are being recorded in cities and -20C in more remote areas. I haven’t been out on the bike for weeks. My bike shop tells me my studded tyres will be here on Thursday though.

In the meantime I got out for a local walk today on the Campsie Fells. Dumgoyne is only a 1300 feet hill but it feels bigger. Especially on a day like today. There was a freezing fog over Glasgow keeping the cold air in and the sun out. Going up Dumgoyne I was up and out into the sunshine. With the tricky conditions today – powder snow on top of water ice – the hill was quiter than usual. I only met three other walkers.

The usual route straight up the front between the outcrops was slippy today.

At the top the views were outstanding. south to the peaks of Arran and north and west to the fringes of the highlands. Looking west towards Loch Lomond the surface was hidden by a veil of mist. Glasgow and the rest of the central belt under the thick freezing fog.

Loch Lomond hidden by mist.

After a brief halt, as the sun set I strolled back down out the light and in to the dusk and the fog.

Still Not Cycling

I got to work yesterday. More than half my colleagues didn’t as they were snowed in. Three days ago we had the heaviest snowfall I can remember, around 20cm in a few hours. In central Scotland the motorways were all blocked by vehicles unable to progess through the snow . Airports were closed. Trains were not running. A few days later and some petrol stations are running out of fuel. At the supermarket today the shelves were empty of bread. Central Scotland has been far colder than further south in the UK during this cold snap. Even so the long running CET – Central England Temperature record shows that for late November and early December this cold weather is almost unprecedented. From Acuweather

“The central England Temperature (CET) from the 1st-7th of December is -1.9, making this the coldest opening week of December since 1879; 1879 is the coldest opening week on CET record, so this week has been the second coldest opening week to December since CET records began in 1659.

The two-week period, last week of November and first week of December is the coldest since CET records began in 1659. ”

My studded tyres are still to arrive so no cycling today. I did get out and walk a couple of miles to the pub with Mrs Writeoncycling. The plan had been to have a pub lunch. The pub grub was off though as they had a burst pipe. Luckily the beer was on. After a pint beside the fire we trudged through the snow to another pub a mile away where grub was being served.

On the way to the pub.

The Big Freeze Continues

The record late November/early December low temperatures and snow show no signs of going away. There is no thaw forecast for the next few days anyway. The severe snowfall and cold of last winter was blamed by climate scientists on a “once-in-a-century, collision of two weather systems. “ Then Met Office forecasters predicted this winter would be mild. So we must just be really really unlucky this winter.

Ah well, I’ll just have to keep enjoying the forecast mild winter and hope my studded tyres are delivered soon before it gets so mild I need to dig my way through to the road.

Onwards through the "once in a century" snow.

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past. Or so we were told ten years ago after a few mild winters.

“According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

Well, after the coldest, longest winter for decades last year and after the worst November snowfalls for nearly twenty years over the last few days I think Dr Viner may have got it wrong.

A Thing Of The Past?