tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86397527947024120012024-03-13T15:19:08.391+00:00Breathe in and out. Now repeat for as long as possibleNature, weather, space, music, movies, cycling, running, swimming, triathlons, campervans, signs I like, Ella the Wonder Dog and assorted outdoor and indoor stuff. Everything, really...Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.comBlogger215125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-27118466471657706442022-08-01T23:18:00.002+01:002022-08-01T23:21:04.710+01:00The Endless Immensity of the Sea - music for National Marine Week 2022<div><span style="font-family: verdana;">I have <a href="https://soundcloud.com/cottishatureboy/tracks" target="_blank">a music project</a> that I've been working on for several years, producing mostly instrumental tracks inspired by nature, space, sometimes even by cycling. As a marine biologist, I take a lot of inspiration from the deep blue parts of our one and only home planet Earth. This week (actually being run over two weeks to make use of the differing tide times around the UK) is the UK's Wildlife Trusts' <a href="https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/national-marine-week" target="_blank">National Marine Week</a>, encouraging awareness and celebration of our fantastic marine environment and its amazingly diverse wildlife.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Q5myfLNlZqH3wcqw3g2EMTto8xeXOZ1h9LNajkXG3TNnFkWdU2TWGUFp7n1ux8u11czPMTmuT3NHgeQfGxdXuU4KZw3530R06HILbOo1kkkaRZNho6PIczL45piukV8CRKjtjC0zCe7cf4628dCEOdqgkOLLP7fgFk1pSq8CVJV2EmQa_zjn1NSG/s5640/PICT0043.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3760" data-original-width="5640" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Q5myfLNlZqH3wcqw3g2EMTto8xeXOZ1h9LNajkXG3TNnFkWdU2TWGUFp7n1ux8u11czPMTmuT3NHgeQfGxdXuU4KZw3530R06HILbOo1kkkaRZNho6PIczL45piukV8CRKjtjC0zCe7cf4628dCEOdqgkOLLP7fgFk1pSq8CVJV2EmQa_zjn1NSG/s320/PICT0043.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>It seemed an ideal opportunity for me to pull together, into a single playlist, all the music I've produced over the years that has been inspired by the sea, and the wildlife and people in and upon it, and even the exciting possibility of life under the ice on moons of Saturn and Jupiter, out there in the Solar System.</span></div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjprweIPvuObFmqVtZAjDLGhPQPbxSow1-kUIZouB4PFJxRyOhZX9w3QjVS5dShaLk1IDR_zQoNbT5YcT5J6N8h0R99R3NE4BAs72HPldv34ykMN1CzSVKtooEB2P6dLR_EqzakeZhBf7Agbdu9iImAHG-GZdUsE396JudS-ZiqYrHdfY1_sQtucufd/s5640/PICT0047.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3760" data-original-width="5640" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjprweIPvuObFmqVtZAjDLGhPQPbxSow1-kUIZouB4PFJxRyOhZX9w3QjVS5dShaLk1IDR_zQoNbT5YcT5J6N8h0R99R3NE4BAs72HPldv34ykMN1CzSVKtooEB2P6dLR_EqzakeZhBf7Agbdu9iImAHG-GZdUsE396JudS-ZiqYrHdfY1_sQtucufd/s320/PICT0047.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZa2x-9djM8Avqp4XpljrLQgXQz4Hn2kIzz10sWkuiwVTkJ7r2FVwaCuyqoqWRrZ35gLsWl7N25w-JIb5qk8GBA52SVNUiexA758nr--YQw4-OSs7SySXSn3ZSZtoEO9akLFK5TZUAlRfR7XuJJJQ1H27zfuaDXqNkKnCF8T5ZfOKkMp01iJLt6IBR/s5640/PICT0050.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3760" data-original-width="5640" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZa2x-9djM8Avqp4XpljrLQgXQz4Hn2kIzz10sWkuiwVTkJ7r2FVwaCuyqoqWRrZ35gLsWl7N25w-JIb5qk8GBA52SVNUiexA758nr--YQw4-OSs7SySXSn3ZSZtoEO9akLFK5TZUAlRfR7XuJJJQ1H27zfuaDXqNkKnCF8T5ZfOKkMp01iJLt6IBR/s320/PICT0050.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVzM_J5RhGwR4vj5SC7cWa5IqHTGPWBnyDKifQy9_YayH8oFSk8U7gxjrABK4ZiA4NeBGOfDN-vKc7_CiQNDWhg3YvnPBjnSw2hszq2aA7aT0dUVevhSvtyBc0r2aErBz1Hgsbl1sllAnGe3ED1-aTZqp4ZD5upaUx-mD7lB9AkxcTSCKUeqCq7Y0_/s5640/PICT0125.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3760" data-original-width="5640" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVzM_J5RhGwR4vj5SC7cWa5IqHTGPWBnyDKifQy9_YayH8oFSk8U7gxjrABK4ZiA4NeBGOfDN-vKc7_CiQNDWhg3YvnPBjnSw2hszq2aA7aT0dUVevhSvtyBc0r2aErBz1Hgsbl1sllAnGe3ED1-aTZqp4ZD5upaUx-mD7lB9AkxcTSCKUeqCq7Y0_/s320/PICT0125.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMsOS8qAYYtNfkNvhzX9dv_nULKnFawvGZDvLYBcd8bX76dNTPRZrRKoGl4U51Vo5UAk9AITrpHVZWFAcEChqNK6fUs9eFNYDECArTR7DVYISnDa2rW3NilcsvLEG8FkEoGkXceqoCI4wcUTQAjQ9crfwGDvtnl6GLIPoobInbcaex2LtESDQcsccj/s5640/PICT0180.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3760" data-original-width="5640" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMsOS8qAYYtNfkNvhzX9dv_nULKnFawvGZDvLYBcd8bX76dNTPRZrRKoGl4U51Vo5UAk9AITrpHVZWFAcEChqNK6fUs9eFNYDECArTR7DVYISnDa2rW3NilcsvLEG8FkEoGkXceqoCI4wcUTQAjQ9crfwGDvtnl6GLIPoobInbcaex2LtESDQcsccj/s320/PICT0180.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOWqKEaL5M3A0_oxgdU-ZSFCvxHZIwWbQnSgBDBo8n_ZibVqqrrAkDkiZ1lkDLwS3_PkB6gvBR4oW9fsefIdsNLMULgRjrqG-LSu7EkFiWByPtt4XRoJnCCyBMinJvRdaUTsEDX4VjVnAOpj8vTaqlAX8WLs9CZ5XOB6-XSkl7wBbo8OP2x0uVYFiD/s5640/PICT0191.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3760" data-original-width="5640" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOWqKEaL5M3A0_oxgdU-ZSFCvxHZIwWbQnSgBDBo8n_ZibVqqrrAkDkiZ1lkDLwS3_PkB6gvBR4oW9fsefIdsNLMULgRjrqG-LSu7EkFiWByPtt4XRoJnCCyBMinJvRdaUTsEDX4VjVnAOpj8vTaqlAX8WLs9CZ5XOB6-XSkl7wBbo8OP2x0uVYFiD/s320/PICT0191.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlicxEif5zWXFmJLko6IG80ugR1clBJ0Wz7UxBZ2mL9fFWbi485ikRYCSJyWG0h-S-2RkHlmyVuYrk2DlPnDatK2u64YNlpdX8XlqCePbtO99WwB0nP36J3RyL1ZzDOnHJRYeQzugG-GCdpuYYKsCSmS1g1zUyJSlhTG-XlHHNILnWkxErHS3B7dgh/s4608/PICT0011.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4608" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlicxEif5zWXFmJLko6IG80ugR1clBJ0Wz7UxBZ2mL9fFWbi485ikRYCSJyWG0h-S-2RkHlmyVuYrk2DlPnDatK2u64YNlpdX8XlqCePbtO99WwB0nP36J3RyL1ZzDOnHJRYeQzugG-GCdpuYYKsCSmS1g1zUyJSlhTG-XlHHNILnWkxErHS3B7dgh/s320/PICT0011.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">You can listen to the playlist on my Soundcloud site:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/cottishatureboy/sets/the-endless-immensity-of-the" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="" data-original-height="920" data-original-width="1264" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhziwXtmUgg7jlyDL9FzZAogRgWnHP8IWpGZKca0cQZaJZQh2ullLAaVq11JgsX2qYOl6JUbx7Art9IWdOdRiY1-tvoFkRY9NRdEiuoP5Zq4on9xqUah-dCFsg1k8adhHLCkxkvIznij6_8jFKCtaqxR_myh_lz40Gr_V9MnPyNHkeQkxI2OsTXYPuQ=w333-h243" width="333" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Click on the above image or <a href="https://soundcloud.com/cottishatureboy/sets/the-endless-immensity-of-the" target="_blank">HERE </a>to listen to the playlist.</span></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-70627628762288298832022-07-25T23:06:00.001+01:002022-07-25T23:09:15.867+01:00Tiger Sharks (Dick's tale)<p><span style="color: #b6d7a8; font-family: verdana;">As I’ve restarted my blog (after an absence of six years) with a shark-related post, here’s another one regarding a piece of music I produced, based around an old sailor's account of an attack by tiger sharks. </span></p><p><span style="color: #b6d7a8; font-family: verdana;">I produced this track about four years ago, and shared it on my Soundcloud site, but my blog was on hold at the time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span face="Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #b6d7a8; text-size-adjust: 100%;">On the sound file sharing site Freesound, I came across a remarkable recording of an old sailor telling the tale of the day his captain fell overboard from his sailing ship in the South China Sea </span><span face="Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; text-size-adjust: 100%;">(</span><a href="https://gate.sc/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffreesound.org%2Fpeople%2Fdinger154%2Fsounds%2F396518%2F&token=cb1476-1-1658694710227" rel="nofollow ugc" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #3388dd; text-decoration: none; text-size-adjust: 100%;" target="_blank" title="https://freesound.org/people/dinger154/sounds/396518/">freesound.org/people/dinger154/sounds/396518/</a><span face="Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; text-size-adjust: 100%;"> </span><span face="Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; text-size-adjust: 100%;">). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span face="Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #b6d7a8; text-size-adjust: 100%;">I contacted the Freesound member who had shared it (dinger154), asking about the sailor and his accent. Dinger 154 replied:</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span face="Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #b6d7a8; text-size-adjust: 100%;">"<i>All the old English sailors had a generic accent that never did identify exactly where they came from. They picked it up over the years of just speaking to each other, similar thing happened in the Army. This old boy's name was Dick. I met him in a pub in Portsmouth 40 years ago when he must have been about 80 years old. One of the last old proper sailors. He had skin burned mahogany colour by the sun and more wrinkles than your grandma.</i>"</span></span></p></blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8; font-family: verdana;">I found the story incredibly evocative and compelling, and produced this tune incorporating Dick's tale.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/cottishatureboy/tiger-sharks-dicks-tale?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing">https://soundcloud.com/cottishatureboy/tiger-sharks-dicks-tale?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing</a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/cottishatureboy/tiger-sharks-dicks-tale?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="978" data-original-width="2048" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT8kA67F95G9paaLbIIeoCqKioPJlJFP3PCMiBCQTCkOUMFw6ypZWLSDF-l0rVfMZdGAHEqHuWJnR8ZDCmmFQ3I14XMf1y_nT5jicoyFRE7OXTNtjF4V9l6ulYb2DzGlMpXDykbNHt1N19gSDZpX_u7zSjFoxRgmveCYht45yTmBiydyq5429R_2Xp/w435-h208/9C14D810-AB3C-42B8-9D72-47269B0FFC9E.jpeg" width="435" /></a></div><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: Interstate, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8;">No doubt Dick is long gone (he'd be maybe 120 by now) and I am very grateful to dinger154 for sharing his old recording (with Creative Commons 0 licence) and preserving Dick's voice and story for posterity.</span></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8;">My tune also incorporates a recording of gulls shared by another Freesound member, acclivity, (</span><a href="https://gate.sc/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffreesound.org%2Fpeople%2Facclivity%2Fsounds%2F38956%2F&token=c6592d-1-1658694710227" rel="nofollow ugc" style="color: #3388dd; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="https://freesound.org/people/acclivity/sounds/38956/">freesound.org/people/acclivity/sounds/38956/</a><span style="color: #333333;"> </span><span style="color: #b6d7a8;">under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) Licence) and another by laurent, of the creaking rope of a moored boat (</span><a href="https://gate.sc/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffreesound.org%2Fpeople%2Flaurent%2Fsounds%2F15553%2F&token=41a391-1-1658694710227" rel="nofollow ugc" style="color: #3388dd; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="https://freesound.org/people/laurent/sounds/15553/">freesound.org/people/laurent/sounds/15553/</a><span style="color: #333333;"> </span><span style="color: #b6d7a8;">also shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0) Licence). </span></span><span style="color: #b6d7a8; font-family: verdana;">The Chinese-sounding instrument is a simulated pipa playing a Japanese scale, that I played and recorded through Garageband.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8; font-family: verdana;">The location that Dick mentions is Zamboanga in the Philippines. I love the way his old sailor's voice pronounces it as 'Zambawanger'.<br /></span><span style="color: #b6d7a8; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); margin: 0px 0px 10px; text-size-adjust: 100%;"><span style="color: #b6d7a8; font-family: verdana;">The story's pretty grim but life was hard before the mast, and full of dangers!</span></p>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-17734416603230248392022-07-23T17:09:00.005+01:002022-07-23T17:26:10.965+01:00The Hunting of the Shark, subtitled An Agony in 2 Fits: Fit The First*<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">FIT THE FIRST*</span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">"<i>We have sailed many months, we have sailed many weeks,</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>(Four weeks to the month you may mark),</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>But never as yet ('tis your Captain who speaks)</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Have we caught the least glimpse of a Snark!</i>"</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">(From: '</span><i style="font-size: small;">The Hunting of the Snark</i><span style="font-size: small;">' by Lewis Carroll)</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Where to begin? Perhaps in the words of 'The Sound of Music':</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">'Let's start at the very beginning, A very good place to start...'</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />I have never seen a Basking Shark.<br /><br />I realise I'm not alone in that gap in my experience. After all, the Basking Shark, although the second largest fish and shark species on the planet (after the Whale Shark), is a sea-living giant, often spending winter months offshore or in deeper waters. Even when it comes closer to Britain and Ireland's coasts in summer time, it is usually off less populated parts of our west coasts. But it does sometimes come REALLY close inshore. With a typical adult basking shark reaching 7.9 metres in length (that's 26 feet in old money - longer than four six-foot-tall fridges laid end-to-end!) and the largest being over 12 metres, plus a stonking great big dorsal fin sticking up out of its back, people do often see them as they cruise slowly around, feeding at the surface of the sea. Top spotting locations around the British coast are Devon and Cornwall, around the Isle of Man and up and down the west coast of Scotland, particularly around the Inner Hebrides. But I've never seen one.<br /><br />A bit of background basking shark biology follows: Basking sharks (given the scientific name <i>Cetorhinus maximus</i>) are found all around the world, generally in the temperate oceans. They, like Whale Sharks and only one other species of shark (the Megamouth Shark), are filter feeders that eat zooplankton, other invertebrates and very small fish. They cruise slowly through denser patches of plankton with their huge mouth open, forcing seawater out through their gills and trapping their tiny prey on specialised structures on their gills, before swallowing them. Their name comes from their habit of swimming slowly at the sea's surface, feeding as they go, thus looking like they are basking in the sun. Of the many other names basking sharks have been given, the commonly used name ‘sun-fish’ also reflects this habit of surface feeding in sunny, calm weather.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: verdana; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg34Op1Cf8BTErq5scOhi2P9ohrGvsAjinM5E_tFpuGubttKL09tBY_3Pl6Ct4JCBI3ZknaXRzcwWyOR2CodQjIFRtfjl1wyUij4e7bjT_mrwGvD1GRio5o5dNQzE1wcPPp5WjsZeCD5AJ4m4Ka0HG3C8BpliijyikCjTNlr35D247hYxzhilycJjWz" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="717" data-original-width="679" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg34Op1Cf8BTErq5scOhi2P9ohrGvsAjinM5E_tFpuGubttKL09tBY_3Pl6Ct4JCBI3ZknaXRzcwWyOR2CodQjIFRtfjl1wyUij4e7bjT_mrwGvD1GRio5o5dNQzE1wcPPp5WjsZeCD5AJ4m4Ka0HG3C8BpliijyikCjTNlr35D247hYxzhilycJjWz=w303-h320" width="303" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: x-small;">Basking shark filter-feeding near the surface</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: xx-small;">(Photo via <a href="https://www.goodfreephotos.com/">Good Free Photos</a>)</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: verdana; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Basking sharks have a giant liver, running the length of their body, weighing up to 25% of body weight and packed with rich fish oil. For an average adult basking shark, weighing about 4 and a half tons, that makes for a liver weighing over one ton! This huge weight and volume of oil in the body had led to their historical exploitation through harpoon-based (and other) fisheries, as well as for their skin, meat and fins. The oil was largely used for lighting lamps (not unlike the history of whaling for whale oil). The resultant historical killing has led to significant declines in the populations of these slow-growing, slow-maturing, long-lived, gentle, ocean giants.<br /><br />Globally, the World Conservation Union, the IUCN, has listed the basking shark as an Endangered species since 2018. Basking sharks are still at risk globally because of the value of their fins to shark-fin fisheries (surely one of the most unsustainable catches of all time), for which they are directly targeted. Quoting a <a href="https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/fish/facts-about-basking-sharks/" target="_blank">BBC article on basking sharks</a>, they are 'also at risk of propeller damage from collision with boats and of entanglement in fishing gear, particularly the lines for static gear such as pots and creels for catching lobsters and crabs'. Concern over their status in Great Britain led to their legal protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (in 2000, although basking sharks were first named as a protected species on the Isle of Man under the Manx 1990 Wildlife Act).<br /><br />Truly one of the most under-appreciated wonders of the seas around these Sceptr'd Isles.<br /><br />The thing is, I've never seen one. So what? Well, the odds ought really to be skewed in my favour for incidental encounters, and not just on account of their enormous size. I am, by training, a marine biologist who grew up, studied, and have subsequently worked my whole career in Scotland; I've specialised in marine fish ecology; I've travelled extensively on Scotland's west coast and to its islands on the ferries of Caledonian MacBrayne, for work and pleasure; I've spent survey time on boats and on the coast up and down the west coast and on the Hebridean and northern islands; I even travelled right around the north, west and south coasts of Ireland one summer. Every chance I get, I will swim in the sea (for fun).<br /><br />And I've never run across a basking shark. In fact, I keep missing them. Sometimes by minutes.<br /><br /><u>Earliest ‘encounter’</u></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">I think the first time I came across the basking shark was on television sometime in the 1970s, in the 1969 film '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Bright_Water_(film)" target="_blank">Ring of Bright Water</a>', starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. 'Ring of Bright Water' is a story about a Londoner and his pet otter living on the Scottish coast. Although the story is fictional, it is is adapted from the 1960 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Bright_Water" target="_blank">autobiographical book of the same name</a> by British naturalist and author <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Maxwell" target="_blank">Gavin Maxwell</a>. In his attempt to find food for his ever-hungry otter, the hero harpoons a basking shark, cuts it up and freezes it (only to find that the otter won't touch it). In fact, this storyline echoes Maxwell's actual <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Maxwell#/media/File:Soaybaskingsharkfisheries.jpg" target="_blank">failed attempt of trying to establish a basking shark fishery based on the Isle of Soay</a> (which he had purchased) near Skye between 1945 and 1948. The experience was described subsequently in his 1952 book: 'Harpoon At A Venture'.<br /><br />In the film there is actual footage of a basking shark (apparently filmed in the Firth of Lorne), purportedly swimming under the hero's rowing boat.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="#"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgLipEtbTx8wjboZna8Y9BdHsOw5au5VHMutUBUsAzS8azrpHH2XOs993xcsO3qt7158GbLHT1X_hdkEF9ljnLN4QcsspI3p23eZWx8RSreQzKsamt1WZ35lSw3_speYZxb160kGIvfsQygj3lDKJQ4Th-qYORQ_LjgIxoqZNj10keWh5ism1nQBJ1/w342-h181/basking%203.gif" width="342" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Screenshot of basking shark from the film '<i>Ring of Bright Water</i>'</span></div><br />He returns later and harpoons a basking shark, kills it and cuts it up on the beach, before transferring it to an old freezer that he has bought. As a real, dead basking shark was shown (see below) being cut up on the shore (following a close-up shot of a harpoon in a real basking shark), I can only assume it was harpooned and killed for the film company by one of the existing Scottish basking shark fishermen of the time. I remember the sense of unfairness I felt in my boyhood breast at the time about the shark being killed and its flesh wasted for nothing (although a fictional account, a real shark was clearly killed).<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="#"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYnvBa_vxvZ1ULqVgAzm9ZIp6SPF8fBJZb9k8X32GTrSD5AaAYjWj-_FFKFRHy8grWQtfhb1hbSQPfbWDpqgl8shYeC5QnW1nHKpMf0VzS-4RuOrotuLcwvhtjro4fH2UnGbyPmSki6CG48rp-K70TdjkV2NdXgVX2BXQDsIAs_a4tKAoqAGBzSEJB/s320/basking%201.gif" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="#"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdqeU1Nk14-_TwnILAyLoKYgbQ1I4cELupVew7HL3PE_9tDJXWfRocbImizmS_2e3n5hLU4txHgIaDGVjZFlAVRKYO3dAJ4tG3r0AZZAibP57ImqTf-5LjkToj4qqxfwEXq49YPwKD-zylQhWTaAgdZWH0JHjZk9IOnEWI9jvNBFWDFLO4h-qx8f2w/s320/basking%202.gif" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Cutting up the poor bloody shark in '<i>Ring of Bright Water</i>'</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Screenshots from the film)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><u>The tagging of the shark</u></span></div><br />I actually got my first potential professional involvement in basking sharks off to a nearly-flying start. In 1996, I was working for Scotland's statutory nature conservation agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), in the marine and coastal conservation section. On the departure of a colleague, I was asked to take over the role of SNH project manager for a proposed project that hadn't begun, namely a collaboration with two academics at Durham University, Drs Mark O'Connell and Tim Thom, to attempt tracking of basking sharks with satellite tags. SNH provided funding to purchase four satellite tags and the darts that would allow them to be attached to basking sharks, with the aim spending an experimental season finding out more about the behaviour and movements of the sharks around the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde. As well as the tagging equipment, access was purchased, at an academic discount rate, to the Argos satellite run from Toulouse in France. My involvement, which commenced with a visit to Durham to meet Mark and Tim in early 1996, promptly ceased when I changed jobs and agencies in July 1996, moving on to the new Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and the project management role passed to one of my friends back in the SNH marine and coastal section. The subsequent field season around Arran in the summer of 1997 is well-described in detail in the lovely 2021 book: '<i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sea-Monsters-Tale-Search-Basking-ebook/dp/B0916KHJ75/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=9780957394681&linkCode=qs&qid=1658500665&s=books&sr=1-1" target="_blank">A Sea M</a></i><span style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sea-Monsters-Tale-Search-Basking-ebook/dp/B0916KHJ75/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=9780957394681&linkCode=qs&qid=1658500665&s=books&sr=1-1" target="_blank">onster's Tale: In search of the basking shark</a></i>' by Colin Speedie.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="text-align: center;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="text-align: center;">Following on from pioneering Scottish basking shark tracking studies by Dr 'Monty' Priede from the Aberdeen Fisheries Laboratory some 14 years earlier, the Durham University/SNH collaboration was only the second attempt to track Scotland's basking sharks. Had I still be employed by SNH in 1997 and managing the contract, there is a great chance that I would have secured my first sightings of basking sharks then; the project used a network of volunteers (mostly Scottish Wildlife Trust members, and mostly based on headlands and promontories) to make 29 shark sightings that summer. The researchers made a total of five approaches by boat to attempt to tag basking sharks and, although there was success at attaching the tags to two sharks, there were problems with the equipment that meant that, ultimately little was learned about the behaviour of the sharks. Useful lessons were learned, though, about the process of approaching and tagging basking sharks.</span></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />I was pleased to discover that, many years later, Scottish Natural Heritage was involved in studies that generated much improved understanding of basking shark behaviour. Since 2012, SNH (now called Nature Scot) has been working with the University of Exeter to understand more about basking shark habitat use and behaviour using a variety of tagging technologies. A total of 61 satellite tags have been deployed on basking sharks, as part of the Nature Scot and University of Exeter partnership project to investigate their movements and results were published in Nature Scot's <a href="https://www.nature.scot/doc/naturescot-commissioned-report-908-basking-shark-satellite-tagging-project-insights-basking-shark" target="_blank">2016 Research Report</a>, as well as peer-reviewed scientific papers. Nature Scot was also involved in an international collaboration in 2019, using REMUS SharkCam - a sophisticated Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) designed, built and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the USA, which generated some amazing underwater film of basking sharks swimming near the Isles of Coll and Tiree. All of the SNH/Nature Scot basking shark work since 2012 is <a href="https://www.nature.scot/plants-animals-and-fungi/fish/sea-fish/basking-shark" target="_blank">available here</a>.<br /></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /><u>Near misses</u><br /><br />I think the first time I actually realised that I'd missed a great opportunity to see basking sharks was when my wife and I took our old campervan on the CalMac ferry to the Inner Hebridean islands of Coll and Tiree. This is when I first realised that the waters around these islands in summer are a real hotspot for basking sharks. On our first day on Coll, we visited the Post Office and, while Olivia was in buying postcards and stamps, I chatted in the warm summer sun to the Post Mistress's husband. He told me, unprompted, that there had been 37 basking sharks swimming in the harbour bay the week before. Missed by a week or so. Needless to say, the further pleasant, sunny week we spent on Coll and Tiree, and two further ferry trips, resulted in no shark sightings.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXCQqhJybFfB4sqn9zbZISgKu5og-mapDr-PcNq6rCX36qMugAxtgst0nCK57TPKd_ujQR6qr6mGHAFj7WBvoa17oopIQUdjwNRGAf9hNPoDpFWKaPhThA9bstYMAy3kNvQ8TnhC6xSQujIGOFcBJpZCmJ55b7mV4YhHQL1T_L1YqQNP5EQODL3nqJ/s4608/PICT0001.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3072" data-original-width="4608" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXCQqhJybFfB4sqn9zbZISgKu5og-mapDr-PcNq6rCX36qMugAxtgst0nCK57TPKd_ujQR6qr6mGHAFj7WBvoa17oopIQUdjwNRGAf9hNPoDpFWKaPhThA9bstYMAy3kNvQ8TnhC6xSQujIGOFcBJpZCmJ55b7mV4YhHQL1T_L1YqQNP5EQODL3nqJ/w362-h241/PICT0001.JPG" width="362" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Isle of Coll Post Office</span></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>On another campervan trip, this time in the </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Outer Hebrides, when we travelled in two gloriously sunny, calm and warm weeks from Vatersay in the south, to Lewis in the north, we were on the Barra to Eriskay ferry, and decided to sit on the top deck, leaving our wee terrier Ella in the van down on the vehicle deck. About halfway across, I went down to check on the dog and missed a basking shark which had surfaced briefly and was spotted by my wife (who is also a marine biologist). This one, I missed by about a minute. I should have stayed where I was.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">The damned dog was fine. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />On a two week campervan holiday when we travelled around the Irish north-east, north, west and south coasts in high summer, no basking sharks were seen. On Achill Island, however, we took a trip out to the west end, to be informed at the beautiful bay at Keem, that there had been a basking shark swimming around the bay that morning.<br /><br />But the most frustrating miss was surely on a campervan trip to northwest Scotland, when we were engaged on a seaweed survey for the plant charity, Plantlife Scotland. We were staying one evening in the campsite at the really beautiful Clachtoll Beach, and I donned my wetsuit and went for a late evening swim in the bay, with a beautiful sunset developing on the western horizon. After a great 20 minute swim, I went to the shower block and showered. As I came out of the shower block, a fellow camper approached me from the beach and said highly excitedly, in German-accented English: ‘Did you see the basking shark?’</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">Me: ???</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;">‘Yes, it swam into the bay just now and swam around. It was wonderful. Amazing!’ It had appeared about five minutes after I got out and went for a shower. My fellow camper had been sitting on the promontory on the right of the above photo and had a great view of the shark. I’m very happy for him.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: -webkit-standard; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_swgdj679cvjuTgw6-r_eexfE_O-D_RNNC46yS2FAqXvJmapGFwDFsYlZ0bkKLJUsDEW2jbL546cn-twu7AEkOjxudxhxnhwR38uvRNLHXO0nfdUNXe5y80xyJdCEgKVeik2f3G18VpZYGNSAK5dmPNA3AFCotRfHvcU2ERsm2dHtSomG8l_St-8s/s2114/E1CCE1B0-0688-46BC-8721-3A5EE6EE3BFD.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1616" data-original-width="2114" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_swgdj679cvjuTgw6-r_eexfE_O-D_RNNC46yS2FAqXvJmapGFwDFsYlZ0bkKLJUsDEW2jbL546cn-twu7AEkOjxudxhxnhwR38uvRNLHXO0nfdUNXe5y80xyJdCEgKVeik2f3G18VpZYGNSAK5dmPNA3AFCotRfHvcU2ERsm2dHtSomG8l_St-8s/s320/E1CCE1B0-0688-46BC-8721-3A5EE6EE3BFD.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Clachtoll Bay, Sutherland, Highland Council ((c) Google Earth)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></div>I used to jest that I thought basking sharks were just made up, a work of fiction. My failure to see them, a bit of a standing joke between my wife and me. But, with a fair wind, some sun and a bit of luck, I’m hopeful of a change in my fortunes on that front. My family have given me an amazing gift, in late August, of a three day visit on a boat based on the Isle of Coll, during peak basking shark season, to attempt the spotting of, and potentially swimming with, basking sharks. I’ll be joining a trip with <a href="https://baskingsharkscotland.co.uk/" target="_blank">Basking Shark Scotland</a> (an eco-tourism business specialising in marine wildlife watching), and keeping everything crossed, with the aim of breaking my basking shark duck.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:</i></div></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i><div style="text-align: center;">That alone should encourage the crew.</div><div style="text-align: center;">Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:</div><div style="text-align: center;">What I tell you three times is true."</div></i></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span>(From: '</span><i>The Hunting of the Snark</i><span>' by Lewis Carroll)</span></span></div><br />I will find out soon enough if the sea around the Isle of Coll is indeed 'just the place' for a Shark - you'll have to await Fit The Second to find out! There are no guarantees. The trip will be great whatever happens, but we may see basking sharks, we may not. It’s such a beautiful area, with stunning seascapes and beaches, and packed with marine and island wildlife that, whatever happens, it will be an amazing experience and a real privilege to be there. There might be sharks and there might not. Watch this space…<br /><br />[*Fit The First: in case you are wondering about this unusual phrase, I was tickled to discover that Lewis Carroll had made use of an archaic literary phrase for verses or chapters, namely ‘Fits’, in his poem, ‘The Hunting of the Snark’. I first encountered this use of ‘Fit’ in Douglas Adams’ adaptation of his books, ‘The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, for BBC radio. Each weekly episode was named as Fit The First, Fit The Second, etc. I’d always thought that this was just a conceit of his own but was delighted to learn, in reading around for this blog post, that he actually did it as a tribute to Carroll’s ‘The Hunting of the Snark’! I hope my Fit The Second, to follow my Coll trip, will not be in the nature of the agonies of The Hunting of the Snark!]</span></div><div><br /><br /></div></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-47749058253212271282016-06-30T23:30:00.000+01:002016-06-30T23:30:03.318+01:00A century on from the Battle of the Somme - Wull Grant and one Ayrshire man's story<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 11pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's been quite a while since I posted in my blog but this seems a very appropriate time to do so.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One hundred years ago tomorrow, the first day of July 1916, the upper reaches of the River Somme in northern France saw the start of t<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme#Battles_of_the_Somme.2C_1916" target="_blank">he Battle of the Somme</a>. Also known as the ‘Somme Offensive’, the armies of the French and British Empires fought from the 1<sup>st</sup> of July for the next 141 days against the army of the German Empire. It was to be the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front and, with more than a million men wounded or killed, was one of the bloodiest battles in human history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">There are not many examples of the voices of ordinary soldiers from that hellish event, considering how many soldiers were involved. In an article from Thursday 8</span><sup style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> March 2007, the Guardian newspaper reported on the auction of the diary and photographs of Walter Hutchinson, a stretcher-bearer in the 10th Battalion, York & Lancaster Regiment, who wrote the diary during the first three weeks of the battle. The article began with the following statement:</span></div>
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<i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">“For almost a century, poets and historians have struggled to describe the carnage of July 1 1916, the bloodiest day in the history of the British army. Personal tales are easily lost amid the colossal death toll of the first day of the battle of the Somme. Of the 120,000 British soldiers who scrambled out of the trenches to march into a wall of fire, almost 20,000 died.”</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The article then goes on to describe the rare personal account from an ordinary soldier, as described by Hutchinson in his diary, and I recommend that you <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/mar/08/military.uknews4" target="_blank">read the article here</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Mention of personal stories from ordinary soldiers who fought in the trenches at the Somme resonate with me for reasons I will explain. Involvement in such horror must leave an indelible mark on a survivor. My own paternal Great Grandfather fought in World War One in a Scottish regiment at the hell-hole that was Gallipoli and, following a leg wound, was sent home and survived the First World War. My father said that his grandfather never talked about his war experience, and who can blame him? His injury maybe meant, though, that he missed being deployed to France and maybe to the Somme. The Battle of the Somme was, as stated above, one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The mental and physical effects on survivors must have been unimaginably horrible, severe and long-lasting – one British officer, Captain Leeham, t<a href="http://www.greatwar.nl/quotes/immortal79.html" target="_blank">alking about the first day of the battle</a>, in 'Tommy Goes to War', said:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>“The trench was a horrible sight. The dead were stretched out on one side, one on top of each other six feet high. I thought at the time I should never get the peculiar disgusting smell of the vapour of warm human blood heated by the sun out of my nostrils. I would rather have smelt gas a hundred times. I can never describe that faint sickening, horrible smell which several times nearly knocked me up altogether.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I never met any survivors from the Somme myself but, in our family, my father talked often, during our childhood and beyond, of an old soldier friend of his who had been sent to the Somme, survived and returned home to Ayrshire </span>in the west of Scotland<span style="font-size: 11pt;">, a man whom he had befriended, ironically enough, following his own return to Scotland after his own National Service in 1958.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Most of my immediate family hails from Ayrshire, and my father, sister and I were all born in Kilwinning. Before his period of National Service (in Centurion tank regiments in Germany as a gunner/ radio operator), Dad had worked on the Montgreenan estate (owned then by Lord Weir of Weir Pumps in Glasgow) near Kilwinning as an assistant gamekeeper, described as an under-keeper. By all accounts, he was great at the job, his boss, a lovely, calm, old gentleman of a gamekeeper called Donald Campbell, describing him as the best underkeeper he’d ever worked with. The local hostelry near the estate where he and his friends used to go for a pint or two after work or at the weekend was the Torranyard Inn (pictured below today in its current guise as a curry house). It was there he got to know an elderly, retired coal miner called William Grant, or Wull Grant, as he was known.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ3SX0IHTpcoqMIA5C2LPboS3iWHCGlOH_XLen5wHwOK8s8K4vAdzQVt6bC-fQMHmUE6FQLsCEZ_-rHwYQh4OyNhstlQ0MRz9lJtQp37gRg6j6lSO26qbS5o7ZY7nwGr1WBMdsC-MWaf0/s1600/Torranyardinn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ3SX0IHTpcoqMIA5C2LPboS3iWHCGlOH_XLen5wHwOK8s8K4vAdzQVt6bC-fQMHmUE6FQLsCEZ_-rHwYQh4OyNhstlQ0MRz9lJtQp37gRg6j6lSO26qbS5o7ZY7nwGr1WBMdsC-MWaf0/s400/Torranyardinn.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">Wull</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> lived upstairs at the Torranyard Inn, in a room with no running water and no electricity, lit at night by paraffin lamps and </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">with only</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> an outside water closet (toilet). </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Dad said Wull had silken white hair and skin like a baby. But his skin was marked with blue where coal dust had been sealed into injuries </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">picke</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">d up during his time in the mines. He wore a muffler (a woollen scarf) and an old light-checked Tweed suit and used to sit outside the back door of the pub in his </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">bunnet</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (flat cap) with an old pair of binoculars. I have no doubt that this was probably what got Dad talking with him, as Dad was also a keen </span></span></o:p><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">birdwatcher and they probably found common ground there. He was apparently one for the pithy phrase. He used to say (from no doubt bitter experience),"H</span><i style="font-size: 15px;">unger's guid [good] kitchen</i><span style="font-size: 15px;">" and, on hearing a young man at the bar holding forth that '"</span><i style="font-size: 15px;">Money isn't everything</i><span style="font-size: 15px;">", Wull apparently replied "</span><i style="font-size: 15px;">Aye son, but it's a handy thing to have when you go to buy a loaf</i><span style="font-size: 15px;">"! That latter one passed into our family treasure trove of sayings, to be oft-repeated. I think I would have liked Wull!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Over time, Wull shared with Dad that he had been at the Battle of the Somme. Dad couldn't remember the exact military unit that Wull had served in but it was a Scottish regiment, of which there were several present. Not only had Wull been a soldier there but he was a sniper and spent much of his time crawling around in </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">No-Man's Land, </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">looking for targets on the German side</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He was out there on the first day of the battle, one hundred years ago tomorrow, and the crossfire across No-Man's Land was so heavy that, while crawling around on </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">his</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> front, he received two bullet holes through his water bottle (which would have been on his belt or webbing, worn at the back and, so, sticking up more than the rest of his body. There were probably few who had closer shaves that day than "Auld Wu</span><span style="font-size: 15px;">ll</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Grant", as Dad often </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">referred</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> to him. He served </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">throughout</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> the Battle of the Somme. He told Dad that, once, he spent three days playing a deadly cat-and-mouse with a German sniper before Wull killed him. Although he returned home after the War, Dad said Wull's body was full of shrapnel from shell blasts out there between the trenches.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">I tell Wull's story today, not </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">because</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> it was exceptional. Of course it was exceptional, by the standards of our so-much safer, richer and more comfortable times. There would be countless exceptional stories of bravery, courage in the face of mind-numbing terror, of endurance in the appalling misery of the conditions in the trenches of the Somme, if only those stories had been or could be told. </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">Rather,</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> I tell Wull's story simply to honour the memory of an </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">ordinary</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Scottish man caught up in the first dramatic waves of 20th Century history, dragged from a presumably hard and rather dangerous life as a Scottish coal miner in the Edwardian era to the battlefields of France, </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">to the</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> first major battle of modern, mechanised war, with tanks and aircraft for the first time, poison gas, trench warfare and who survived the battle and the war despite being a sniper, surely one of the most dangerous of all roles in that hellish trench war. </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">Wull</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> survived all of that, returned home to continue </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">his</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> life as a miner in Ayrshire and eventually retired to live above a pub in the most basic </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">of</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> conditions, whiling away his time sitting in the open air watching birds and chatting. Dad said that Wull passed </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">away</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> sometime in the 1960's, perhaps before I was born in the middle of that decade.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Now my Dad is no longer with us and, as far as I know, the only people who know Wull's story are my brother, sister, mother and me. Maybe he has descendants. I d</span><span style="font-size: 15px;">on't</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> know. Maybe there are other old men or women still alive who remember him and his story from evenings spent at the Torranyard in the late 1950's and early 1960's. I don't know. I regret that I have no photo of Wull. I have no idea if his military service record was one of the 2 million or so destroyed by fire during the London Blitz in World War Two. But I know he was my father's friend and we know a little of his story. And now you know a little of his story too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Thanks to his story, which he shared with Dad, I have known about the Battle of the Somme since I was a very small boy and that there was nothing </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">glorious</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> about it. In one reference g<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme#Battles_of_the_Somme.2C_1916" target="_blank">iven in the Wikipedia entry for the Battle of the Somme</a>, a German officer, Friedrich Steinbrecher, is quoted as saying:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“<i>Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word.</i>” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">There will be a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/battle-of-the-somme-to-be-commemorated-with-two-minute-silence-a7110501.html" target="_blank">t</a></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/battle-of-the-somme-to-be-commemorated-with-two-minute-silence-a7110501.html" target="_blank">wo minute silence tomorrow morning in the UK</a> to honour those who fought at the Somme 100 years ago. Personally, I will be pausing to remember, as well as all those who fought and died on both sides, William Grant, Auld Wull, and my own Great Grandfather, two men loved and respected by my own father, and what they went through in the trenches of France and </span><span style="font-size: 15px;">Gallipoli</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">.</span></span></div>
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Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-74733722698685875092014-11-26T21:27:00.000+00:002014-11-26T21:27:53.062+00:00A fatbike nightride word picture<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thursday night is fatbike night. My night out on my own. The Scottish summer's late evening sunlit riding opportunities have passed for another year. To ride on a November evening is to gird yourself with onion layers of merino, lycra, Goretex. A headtorch precariously wrapped around the helmet. Mighty bright double beam lights on the handlebars, a veritable pair of arclights to cut the night ahead, and a flashing red bobtail behind. One minute to nine, daughter a-bed, dinner digested, dishes done, I roll down the gravel drive, fat tyres kicking out the stones that the neighbours and I so recently barrowed in and raked out. Pulling out onto the road and thankfully it's quiet at this hour, the tarmac ride a necessary evil to take me to the woods and trails. Four inch wide tyres thrum on the blacktop, fish out of water, not really meant for this environment, impatient for the soft, the wet, the yielding of the off-road world.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br /></span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Crossing over the motorway bridge, I soar above lorries, vans, cars and even motorbikes (with smaller wheels than mine), then it's down the dip, across the first watercourse of the trip, and up the hill to Cambusbarron church. I look left at the junction, see the house where John Grierson, the father of the documentary, spent his childhood. The man who first turned real stories into reel stories, real to reel. Then it's past the pub (and incredulous voices from the smokers outside the door as they spot the size of my wheels and tyres) and then the primary school as I climb gradually towards the quarry gate, rolling by quiet cul-de-sacs, their houses with softly golden glowing windows. No one is out here except me, this winter evening world a largely indoor one.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br /></span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I approach the quarry gate, my lights pick out a constellation of reflections from stacks of stockpiled traffic cones, a shoal of silver flashes that slide left and right as my lights swing back and forth, and then past me in my journey's flow. No one's parked here. It looks like I have the place to myself. As I cross the threshold at the quarry gate, it feels like I'm escaping. But I am surrounded by aliens. Non-native, invasive Japanese knotweed dying back for winter on my right and snowberry to the left, it's crop of gleaming white berries like oyster pearls in the light cast sideways from my bike. And I know the small quarry just up on the left is infested with pernicious alien peri-peri burr, out of my sight for now.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm struck by how absolutely still it is tonight. Not a breath of a breeze, nor twitch of a leaf. Only the sound of my tyres on the small gravel of the path and the quiet roll of chain on gears and jockey wheels. And, behind me now, less than a mile back, the noise of many other tyres, the sound of the motorway like an constant low exhaling.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It isn't cold, not even cool but, with conditions this still, it must the light cloud cover that's preventing the temperature from plunging like an inappropriate neckline at a wake. I do see a few stars but even these slip from view for now as I enter the tunnel of trees. My headlights arc back and forth with my increased effort as the path's slope steepens, a little at first, then dramatically. I am forced down the gears, already on the small chain ring at the front but, pleasingly after months of riding nearly every day, still having a couple in reserve on the rear sprocket. This is the only serious climb of the night and I begin to leak a little sweat. I am overdressed for a steep climb but, soon enough, I reach the boulders blocking what was once a road for engined vehicles and, jinking past those obstacles, I reach the flat plateau of gravel into which the hanging valley of the upper quarry opens From here, it will be a pretty steady run down to the quarry plant and access road. As I pedal and freewheel across this dark plain, a moving cone of brightness, gravels crunching underwheel, I see the soft houselights of the hill farms gleaming off to my right, and flashes from headlights on cars negotiating the North Third road's bends, undulations and slopes.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then... looking around with my headtorch, I see a different light, not illumination but two glowing points of my reflected torch, the eyes of something, I know not what at first but which resolves itself into a roe deer ahead of me, and which slips quickly and silently off to the scrub on the right. It's the first deer I have seen tonight but won't be the last.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The downhill run is pleasant recovery after the climb and, all too soon, after a little weaving to find the path and negotiate more bouldery roadblocks, I pass the tall and currently silent white tower of the batching plant and my wheels glide in relative smoothness onto the access road. During the day, huge trucks may trundle up and down here with dusty plumes and roaring diesel engines but, tonight, there's just me and my bike, its whirring freewheel and the road buzz from my fat tyres. Slipping past the old limekilns on the left now, steep enough downhill for me to need to brake, conscious of the large metal gate ahead, which I need to come down off the saddle to walk the bike past.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another short steep downhill, now on the North Third road but only until I reach the bend by the river, where our ways will diverge. On the way down, I see a searchbeam of torchlight, obviously handheld from its movements, as someone from one of the farms up the hill goes about their business. Then, I reach the river and peel off left on the bend, across the wee bridge. I look down into the fast-flowing current as I cross, my headtorch a poor illuminator as the water seems to suck in the lightbeam, giving nothing back, an aquatic event horizon.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Off the bridge, I wheel into a huge black cavern of tall trees, and the only real muddy patch of the ride, then out into the open air. The farm track, one of my favourite sections of this ride, offers many possibilities. But not for tonight, the enticing delights of the North Third cliff and wood paths. Rather, my ride takes me straight on down towards the Swanswater Fishery. Before I reach the junction offering such choices, a gleam of eyes picked out ahead by my headtorch presages the passage across my path of two more roe deer, their crossing rather panicked by my rattling, whirring cone of light. The farm track is dry tonight and the usual mix of hard-packed earth, cobbly stones and hollows, not puddle-filled tonight. It makes for a slightly weaving, slightly downhill run as I try to find the smoothest line in the view allowed by my lights. And it is a pretty smooth ride, the four inch deep tyres playing give and take with holes, rocks, bumps and buffeting from the track. As I reach the first ponds of the fishery, the sound of rushing, gurgling water reaches me with an odd doppler effect as I pass over small streams draining through the site. On summer rides through here, the pond banks are dotted with silent sentinel anglers, in their own bubbles of focus and concentration. Not tonight. The lights in the windows of the scattered houses by the fishery provide the only other signs of human life.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All too quickly, I reach another tarmac road and the occasional four wheel drive flicks by, headlamps blazing and windows dark, heading home into the hills. Again, my time on the road is brief, although here, the closeness of the motorway, less than a couple of hundred metres away provides the dominant soundtrack as I sneak along to connect to the next section of path.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Through a farmyard and past the 'big hoose', the path bends down to the Bannockburn, its presence heard and felt in the dark, rather than seen. As I descend the narrow path, the temperature falls some degrees, into a nearly frosty pocket along the burn side. Glistening dew is not far from freezing, if that sky clears a little more. I need to cross the Bannockburn to reach the next stage of the ride, Tinker's Loan, and roll cautiously across the old, narrow and frankly crumbling stone bridge, not the greatest fun in the dark. Another tunnel of trees and a steady climb up Tinker's Loan, my lights filling the narrow space of the path, hedges and tree'd ceiling. A pair of wood pigeons explode from a tree above me, battering out through the branches, their staccato machine gun wing flaps, the percussion instruments of fear.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br /></span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Winding steadily up, I cross the road that runs down to Gateside and catch an eyeful of the night-time Forth Valley laid out before me. Streetlights, house lights, floodlights, car headlights, beacons flash on pylons pinprick on the retinas before I dip into the Loan again, downhill now and then a final short climb up to the other end of this narrow and surely ancient way. I can smell cows and see on the right, at path's end, solid darker blocks in the darkness, betrayed by odour. Now it really is all downhill from here as I whizz, woohooing, down the Polmaise Road towards home. My tyres fling off the detritus of the offroad world, a shower of flashes flaring in front of my lights. I reach the motorway again and streetlights and the ride feels like it is already over, so I extend the magic a little longer by cutting through the community wood, scattering rabbits from the pathside verges and rousing a late night dog walker from his quiet thoughts. As we exchange hellos, I realise he's the first person I've seen since I passed the pub and that's the first word I've spoken since leaving the house... And then, I'm home.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What's so special about riding alone and off-road at night? Maybe it wouldn't be your thing but, in reflecting a little on my solo bike trip in the dark last Thursday night, I realised that it put my state of mind in a special place. The description that sprang to mind was... Mindfulness. According to Wikipedia, "Mindfulness is the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment" It's all about being in the moment, observing, focussing on the now. And although it was a ride of only 50 minutes or so, not long by typical training ride standards, it felt longer in a good way, a flood of simple observations, awareness of my bike, my body, the environment I was passing through, and no conversation (until I was two minutes from home), leaving me feeling refreshed and relaxed. And all that on top of the physical exercise that was my original motivation.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">P.S. What's a fatbike? This is mine!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-11070146540747221602014-09-10T22:31:00.000+01:002014-09-10T23:21:53.614+01:00Here comes the sun (spots and all)<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
Hello again world. Long time, no write!I thought it was time I reactivated my blog as there's work to do, thread posts to re-ignite and complete and a world of interest to be writing about again! Where have I been? Well, around the time I last posted, I became a parent and life became a metaphorical timey-wimey wormhole for my free, available time. Here I am resurfacing on the other side of the wormhole (and what a ride it has been!).</div>
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And what has brought me back today? Well, the autumn evening sun tonight attracted me to fix the long lens to my digital SLR and take a few shots as the Sun sank towards the western horizon, as seen from western Stirling in Scotland, UK, thus:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcHude_FNuXaFMkM5fDVUbj-DBLvlfvZEDtUTryz_xHLZ129sMdWTxHAnn2cgsJ_6d4fKfPXLlXiytIImy2ldvA7_qIYRbLXAOv_pF7cZS_6iX0I811k57mhi0nXO8CVIUhnzhO5LoGk/s1600/sunset+100914.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcHude_FNuXaFMkM5fDVUbj-DBLvlfvZEDtUTryz_xHLZ129sMdWTxHAnn2cgsJ_6d4fKfPXLlXiytIImy2ldvA7_qIYRbLXAOv_pF7cZS_6iX0I811k57mhi0nXO8CVIUhnzhO5LoGk/s1600/sunset+100914.jpg" height="308" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Quite attractive - but wait, what are those dotty, spotty things on the sun?</span></td></tr>
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Yes, looks like sunspots - I've never managed to photograph sunspots before, so I was quite excited!</div>
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<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunspots but perhaps you can't quite make them out so...</td></tr>
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I went and checked online - there are now some great websites showing the activity on the sun in near-real time. I went to <a href="http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/" target="_blank">NASA's SOHO site </a>- for their Solar and Heliotrophic Observatory - <a href="http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/" target="_blank">here</a> - which showed this entry for the sun today:</div>
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<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunspot activity for today, 10th September</td></tr>
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And with not very much squinting and little need for imagination, you can see two of the larger spots, numbers 2157 and 2158, ringed in the following copy of my photo:</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie5F4wXdEK7jHd5XukCJxYltauEgWXx58cgfHbdodyG32lTdeXE1vQvkrWzpxCz6Z61y-ittZvhDRtazLAU0_cj3CSwx1rS-ZlCKvaJDp_6sLaTZBS4qs2JSuHZYTGi8-7s92-xG3rfhE/s1600/sunset+100914+sunspots+numbered.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie5F4wXdEK7jHd5XukCJxYltauEgWXx58cgfHbdodyG32lTdeXE1vQvkrWzpxCz6Z61y-ittZvhDRtazLAU0_cj3CSwx1rS-ZlCKvaJDp_6sLaTZBS4qs2JSuHZYTGi8-7s92-xG3rfhE/s1600/sunset+100914+sunspots+numbered.jpg" height="617" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunspots</td></tr>
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Yippee - now all I need to do is find out how, safely, to take much crisper images of the Sun (and to find out how to make my photos show the colour of the Sun - the actual Sun I was looking at was a deep red - not the yellow colour it looks here). I'm afraid I am a bit of a lazy point-and-press merchant. I fear I need to read the manual for my SLR. Anyway, a fine end to a lovely day and one with a bit of added scientific excitement.</div>
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And what are sunspots? Read <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot" target="_blank">this</a> from Wikipedia.</div>
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Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-62124938532990019962012-12-25T08:56:00.001+00:002012-12-25T22:50:39.762+00:00Signs I Like #32: Christmas 2012 SpecialMy inexplicable near-six month absence from blogging notwithstanding, I emerge blinking into the dim midwinter gloom to wish all our readers a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. This sign found yesterday in Marks and Spencer's as we hung about waiting for the turkeys to be discounted!<br />
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<a href="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-dorsa2pOOTs/UNlqOzHYRVI/AAAAAAAABJg/DfAK1BUNZzs/s1600/IMAG2989.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" height="238" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-dorsa2pOOTs/UNlqOzHYRVI/AAAAAAAABJg/DfAK1BUNZzs/s400/IMAG2989.jpg" width="400" /> </a> </div>
Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-20742461888265799162012-06-16T08:39:00.001+01:002012-06-16T08:45:54.719+01:00A grasshopper's eye view?<div>
Continuing the grassland theme <a href="http://scottishnatureboy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/find-yourself-grassland-right-now.html?m=0">from earlier in the week</a>, I tried a wee photographic experiment with my phone camera, seeking a slightly different perspective on this grassland habitat. I set the auto-timer to 10 seconds, pressed the shutter release and laid the phone, lens-upward, in the middle of a bed of creeping buttercups and speedwells. I think the results are quite interesting and definitely the different perspective I was seeking! The second of the pictures was <a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2075322">one of my blipfotos this week</a>.<br />
Please let me know what you think!<br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY0vqvQEYOqTOilgES_BiVlOhlZUXEa4ETGFQITiZGwyJFgApMaAO1N2vQ6qe4vkqQaWDC0ypu6ACn8_FZSq7g-A54HP7MbCLrMy6W1FMDTc5vXYlZtmxiOrk3LVExshyphenhyphenUW3dEzdO_grM/" /><br />
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDcdibN8Em3AB3ZfS0AKIi5fWCQiHD4tTVH2_ll55GecNJiPoEG_auRzQAv-_xHknCxXHCXj6zoDZJvKjyElppJrzwHau5pg4SkpWvdY-Rw8zqYMtFVAVFMUBG1LwDIHViP4CwHOG46sE/" /><br />
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmAcLy7K_Y3OCFq1ZulRXS10mFT7pjWSiRDlcCw-Dl_i8wKJkPF_TpMhk9hyphenhyphenVXrYZEAhva7-mV6qGsg-hkXZFjYoSQ_gj61rZe0gSiWGsr4yFwi1JdbaTcL1D-gUorQn6hUeO97kJ37l8/" /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-63660264441011267492012-06-16T08:23:00.001+01:002012-06-16T08:23:51.967+01:00Signs I Like #31: Are all committee meetings the SAME?<div><p><a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2069770">Breathe In And Out... on Blipfoto :: Are all committee meetings the same? :: 12 June 2012</a></p>
<p>I enjoyed spotting this sign at the University of Stirling earlier this week, considering how many committee (and other) meetings I have sat in over the last 25 years!<br>
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<br/><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlllkaElWisqWmQURPpHuQbrzOzYM8o1kOrYwbM-XtZ-1HpYNKVrfkxH5MEhXCvQ6KHWffHSK_9OovwcGZwium-w8LbVuu2MOSWi9k2cc0nWYXEbNVArBuqwzzJjSNubJ8bxpqRs_0iaM/' /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-77798133379739867892012-06-12T20:34:00.001+01:002012-06-12T20:34:31.156+01:00Signs I Like #30: Once in a lifetime<div><p>Well, it probably will be once in a lifetime that the Olympic Flame is carried through the town where I live. And that is happening here in Stirling tomorrow, Wednesday 13th June 2012. And, despite all the corporate nonsense and over-commercialisation of the London 2012 Games, I refuse to have my excitement quenched. This road sign, foretelling tomorrow's rolling traffic restrictions and heavy-handed security blanket, was in Bridge of Allan's main street, where the Olympic Torch convoy will be going before coming within two minutes drive of my house in Stirling.</p>
<br/><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6ZOgYa8casT9YDEamgQHo-2D6x1ewrJ-S1Rjyy70X-f2v9PXe3YqfHlcfbGcnF5upwDmk9CBY_kzfxpjPV64mh-aZSaQN34lsoZbT42s_F16UWry_qckeZKLXpaE3R3zVczTquEjHERQ/' /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-27800895772014709512012-06-10T18:10:00.001+01:002012-06-10T18:46:13.969+01:00Find yourself a grassland right now<div><p>Yesterday, I was clearly feeling the love from contact with nature - it spilled over last night into <a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2061408">my blipfoto daily post, here</a>. Here's the story:</p>
<p>"This is a fantastic time of year to take a closer look at a grassland near you. Lots of plants in flower, the grass 'heads' all developing too, so much detail if you hunker down and take a good look! Today's blip was taken this morning in bright sun in Stirling's King's Park, well away from the bits where the ecology is ruined to suit the golfers. A beautiful mix of vegetation is on display: the white 'umbrellas' or umbals of pignut, the leggy stems and sunny yellow flowers of the field buttercup, the seed heads of wild sorrell and one of the plantains and the cobalt blue shining starlets of the speedwell flowers scattered throughout. And that's without starting on the grasses.</p>
<p>Go out and find some uncut grassland this week and give yourself a visual treat!"</p>
<p>Here's the picture of the scene that was floating my boat!</p>
<br/><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidz8WQUvhb6t6O-O0gMy4q131AtVL6i2SAp0F86DRuCytntL4MMUBAxd6Qjss69XXGifKu0uDfojZyLaR2kn2CcVXsTUxzRmQoG99hvDUJ1BBv0Ty3kjV3KaXWzvRu3czK3TlUhr0Nneg/' /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-28905106892841498582012-06-09T17:16:00.001+01:002012-06-09T20:54:51.010+01:00What a tongue!<div>
Last night's submission to blipfoto showed Ella Wonder Dog, exhausted after a tough frisbee session and exhibiting her magnificent tongue! Here's the original posting, followed by the picture and a bonus photo showing that wonderful canine tongue: <a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2058518">Breathe In And Out... on Blipfoto :: What a tongue! :: 8 June 2012</a><br />
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXEicb-3xfQb3gDBSbh5XGnjdD7Yn7PJaQo8aqtc8HWaTfhVfr-kY7vRv2sEMGKB2rOYZD7ZJVMrbT3KrFTPxpZwXgfy2UzvhEzCeyg2oP4W8vkXBIXeSv_apIwoWVaTYRSQv0msWR2xA/" /><br />
<img height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqglps-Mb7LvWpnmwEYGurExxKO74yYmF0S6GaKqfpvpzCNO02LUqbKwChwcCDj9oHz5ohWUvjD-OE4tzZRcmCci3qY0W866yueMgWNmhwqDSjtpA8o6-c8obddgZ7DxdNwbUnK_cTiJQ/" width="240" /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-60547531255671895472012-06-08T19:40:00.001+01:002012-06-08T19:40:37.681+01:00The heart of dreichness<div><p>For last night's blipfoto entry, I felt I wanted to share with you, especially if you live outside of Scotland, what the old Scottish word "dreich" actually looks like. "Dreich" means wet, overcast, cool and generally unattractive, particularly in respect of weather!</p>
<p>You can <a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2056094">read more here</a>.</p>
<br/><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii1T3xBOzeS9DloQjgjWFlICIKBE944kyBIEcQ9k2I9RufW7CdSgnV-nA9j3qvskRZo_DyAoAP8pa-SY69b9vnGeDOpjOzidcqtJVhCHMEgXQtxDq_dpXIam1fdLcFCSHUjGiyG-JsuI0/' /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-46582478445978125802012-06-07T16:13:00.001+01:002012-06-07T16:13:49.552+01:00It's a starling, darling...<div><p>Here's my blipfoto post's photo from last night. You can <a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2053264">read the story here</a>. </p>
<br/><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJNn_a6w86rGpRh1-n05oPL5cyVJTMFp8_yC_k5abUqu5eK3DRTOues2lUGATc82nLLXyR_hsV79YZd-jzp5Jg3QxLCeZUOkdOZmQ3HSK5_4o4396E6lS73Y2hjh-evNmC75R3Cfp7O2E/' /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-66367480505984243502012-06-06T13:06:00.002+01:002012-06-06T14:10:21.656+01:00Signs I like #29 - Ducks Crossing!<div><p>When it comes to road signs, I am, not surprisingly given the primary focus of this blog, quite interested in those related to protecting both wildlife and motorists from unwanted interactions. In most cases, this is primarily to protect the wildlife. In some instances, however, such as deer, there are potentially serious, even fatal, implications of accidental comings-together, both for the animal and the vehicle's occupants. In this series of Signs I Like" posts, I've previously included the funky signs in the Outer Hebrides, <a href="http://scottishnatureboy.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/signs-i-like-4.html?m=0">warning of otters crossing the roads</a> at "pinchpoints" such as coastal causeways.</p><p>Today, the sign I like is on the business park where I work in Stirling where it points out the likelihood of encountering ducks crossing the road. It is particularly important at this time of year as female mallards walk their large broods of ducklings from their hidden nest sites across the business park, down to the small pond at the entrance to the business park. We had a mother duck walking her family of eight suckling past the office window last week - very sweet!</p><p>I took this photo in the pouring rain - very appropriate weather for ducks!</p><br />
<img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbj4R1EW6Ar42C2Bcrdqjw1VlK7KA3XUD4ysq2lr7a2bblAhEZgKv-QYB_rYMgW2oPDL9lQCZPCbwu3LNOjUhpnW8icKrbzTPWZqVhktxnCMerX3wCcnkjGEEp41pWBavyo-7cE6aF_iA/' /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-19646758892113654042012-06-05T23:01:00.001+01:002012-06-05T23:01:43.786+01:00Tea for two!<div><p>Today's blipfoto <a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/ScotNatureBoy">Breathe In And Out... on Blipfoto</a></p>
<br/><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia2dRM7Y3m4fWXHDp_c5IQGy1P8COG4Cj6ppFz2frh_PFiLhyg2es7S6h8pLl6ECMVZlK-QTesg3S0H2s4pg1UxxeiVG_oNYBN_N8dIN2o3jJhCDJNjhq-loOINqYvmJgo5dwDrQVLWq0/' /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-45123654189441465942012-06-04T23:47:00.001+01:002012-06-04T23:47:43.392+01:00Britain's biggest buttercups - on blipfoto<div><p>Here's my blipfoto entry for today - it shows some globeflowers, magnificent giant buttercups: <a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2047624">Breathe In And Out... on Blipfoto :: Britain's biggest buttercups :: 4 June 2012</a><br>
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</div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-38295943396754084852012-06-04T18:45:00.001+01:002012-06-04T18:45:11.208+01:00Nothing more than a slight blip....<div><p>Here's a wee experimental blog post. As well as running (and recently failing to post in) this blog, I recommenced in May my submission of a daily photo to my account, named "Breathe In And Out" on the <a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/browse">blipfoto</a> daily photo micro-blogging site. As well as sharing it on Twitter and Facebook, as I have been doing to increase the number of hits, I'm going to share it here too, just see if any of you are interested. That way, at least I might avoid the month-long gaps such as the one that this post brings to an end! I'll experiment with the best way to share these, but for now, here's a link to yesterday's blipfoto entry: <a href="http://www.blipfoto.com/ScotNatureBoy">Breathe In And Out... on Blipfoto</a></p>
</div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-27374529816010203722012-04-29T14:21:00.002+01:002012-04-29T17:47:49.652+01:00Mirth, music, misery and 'monica<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtnNyiHqR-atXnJdN_jiDCtQbnfnIX1UGEJxK2_9S5vkObWF-0ROP77mthp3s_NMXr8zmfUR72WRGA4UCRnBLKEsw4mLYAe2wKVi0OzT6EdMxnrjzzEksHfWx7p2VwgLWtOGZw7VVwFQA/s1600/IMAG3141.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtnNyiHqR-atXnJdN_jiDCtQbnfnIX1UGEJxK2_9S5vkObWF-0ROP77mthp3s_NMXr8zmfUR72WRGA4UCRnBLKEsw4mLYAe2wKVi0OzT6EdMxnrjzzEksHfWx7p2VwgLWtOGZw7VVwFQA/s400/IMAG3141.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A stool, a box of harmonicas, two guitars and some mikes</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Sorry for the contrived alliteration of the title to this post but last night we were entertained mightily by a great gig at the Stirling Tolbooth by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Grant_%28musician%29" target="_blank">James Grant</a>, frontman for Scottish band <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Money_%28band%29" target="_blank">Love and Money</a>, songwriter, guitarist and collaborator with, amongst others, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Matheson" target="_blank">Karen Matheson</a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capercaillie_%28band%29" target="_blank">Capercaillie</a>. I've been a fan of Grant's work since 1988 when Love and Money released their "Strange Kind of Love" album which I regard, to this day, as one of the most perfectly conceived and performed sets of songs in modern popular music. I have probably listened to that album more often than to any other over the last 24 years. So, as you can imagine, a chance to see him playing live in our wee venue in Stirling would be enough of an attraction in its own right.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">However, while we saw him perform a great solo show last time he came here in November 2009, this time he wasn't travelling alone. He was joined last night by a long-term musical collaborator (and clearly great friend), harmonica player and virtuoso Fraser Speirs, a fellow Glaswegian who has played on many of Grant's and Love and Money's recordings over the years. I mumble along badly on the harmonica and, indeed, have played for several years with a bunch of folk in that very venue (in a back room rather than the stage, I hasten to add) and have wanted to see Fraser Speirs playing live for a long time. So, the chicken's entrails read well for an auspicious evening (a bit tough on the chicken though)...</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A solo set of three numbers by James Grant before...</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Speirs and Grant in full flow</td></tr>
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I won't review the night song by song but this was a much more varied set than the last time we saw JG play here. There were old Love and Money numbers (including one of my favourites, "Walk the Last Mile"), many tracks from his solo recordings, including, after some cajoling and banter, some fun audience chorus singing on "The Scarecrow Song", and some great covers (e.g. Angie, Tom Waits' Clap Hands and others). One great thing about James Grant's live performances is his funny (some would say dry) chat (definitely from the Glasgow school of mirth). I remember a TV interview with JG, maybe in the early 1990's - I can't recall its name - but I remember the discussion of the influence on his writing of a belief that most people live their live in a kind of quiet desperation. I now know that was Henry David Thoreau that said it first but a sense of that still percolates many of James Grant's more recent work. He claims the misery and gloom that are the usual subject of his material demands that he tries to amuse us between songs. But it's mostly gentle, and often self-deprecating, stories and he has a great rapport with his audience, many of whom (maybe most last night?) have been coming to his shows since the late 1980's. I guess it's part of what makes for a pretty intimate experience, one that's probably easier to foster too in a wee venue like the Tolbooth (150-160 seats, tops?) and we both came away last night feeling like we'd been part of something special (actually, that's not uncommon for gigs at the Tolbooth in our experience where you sit so close to the performers and we were in the front row).</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Oh, and did I mention that Grant is an <i>exceptional </i>guitarist - one of the things that attracted me to Love and Money in the first instance was the sheer varied musicality of his guitar lines, whether rhythm, picking or lead parts. And his style of playing and singing is complemented extremely well by harmonica.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4rYPMLu_a9VPCzHvtv7zmsudBQUhtsJgtrxOq8zGLdkMUXJ2Ig__zH2KE4gPZzvD95gwXotlcIa9Xe_dVoJ3xJjv45Y7RJKZN_YZuLR_45jzWRdy1J6zAspCpslCdr-keuzl9sxfxEwo/s1600/IMAG3145.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4rYPMLu_a9VPCzHvtv7zmsudBQUhtsJgtrxOq8zGLdkMUXJ2Ig__zH2KE4gPZzvD95gwXotlcIa9Xe_dVoJ3xJjv45Y7RJKZN_YZuLR_45jzWRdy1J6zAspCpslCdr-keuzl9sxfxEwo/s400/IMAG3145.jpg" width="238" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For a wee flavour of last night's show, here's a recording of Grant and Speirs live, taken from Youtube, a performance of a Love and Money classic, Lips Like Ether, which they also played last night:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fraser Speirs giving it large on the moothie last night...</td></tr>
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<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is what a proper harmonica player's gig box looks like!</td></tr>
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In case you've never seen or heard Fraser Speirs playing harmonica (although he has played with so many artists that you will almost certainly have heard his playing without realising - check out his r<a href="http://www.fraserspeirs.co.uk/" target="_blank">emarkable discography on the appropriate tab here</a>), here's a wee treat for you, with Speirs playing a version of 'Lost John' for the audience at Edinburgh Folk Club, The Pleasance, in January 2008 (and with a nice chatty intro too):</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Was there ever an instrument more designed to mimic the sound of steam trains? I doubt it. As I said before, I play harmonica (but badly!) and I can tell you there is amazing layer upon layer of technique and breathing control in this performance, and clever use of the mike! Oh and it's great fun too...</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And to round off this excitement-fest, in case you've lived a blighted existence and haven't heard Love and Money before (you poor old sod), here's a vintage performance (was this a promo video for the single? I don't know) from 1991's "Dogs in the traffic" album, a track which also features Fraser Speirs, "Waiting for Angeline":</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="304" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/v0KgHen2URs" width="405"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Incidentally, James Grant's <a href="http://jamesgrantsongbook.com/" target="_blank">own website is here</a> (where he has generously shared the chords and lyrics for all of his L&M and solo work), and <a href="http://www.fraserspeirs.co.uk/" target="_blank">Fraser Speirs website can be found here, including a harmonica tutorial</a>.</div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-5108997881002843312012-04-29T12:13:00.000+01:002012-04-29T12:13:13.807+01:00A machine of magic<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Yesterday's Guardian newspaper <a href="http://m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/apr/23/albert-winstanley-obituary?cat=lifeandstyle&type=article">carried an obituary</a> for one of Britain's great old cycling writers, Albert Winstanley, who had just died, aged 95. His contribution has been described thus, that it: "<i>evoked his lifelong love of touring on his bicycle in a series of articles that stand comparison with the very best writing about the outdoors</i>."<br />
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He seems to have been a remarkable character, who kept cycling until the age of 92, managed to remain living in his own home until his last year of life, and was still attending Bolton Wanderers football matches in his final weeks of life. We can only speculate to what extent his active cycling life helped him to maintain his admirably active older life (but it does seem likely to have helped, doesn't it?).<br />
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The title for this blogpost comes from a quote from his writing, used in the Guardian obituary, and a wonderful piece of prose. Reading this the day after two major cycling mass-rides (<a href="http://www.demotix.com/news/1179813/thousands-pedal-parliament-demonstration-demand-safer-cycling" target="_blank">Pedal on Parliament in Edinburgh</a> and <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/cyclesafety/article3398722.ece" target="_blank">The Big Ride in London</a>), campaigning for better, safer cycling facilities in Britain, I'm sure this lovely prose will ring a (bicycle) bell for many:<br />
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"<i>To me a bicycle is a machine of magic ... taking me on to the ways of satisfied happiness; giving to me the good friendship I enjoy with others, and to share with me the delights and ecstasies of the outdoors. It gives to me the pleasures of mingling the past with the present ... always discovering ... always learning. Above all it gives to me also, memories to cherish and store inwardly, as I wheel my ways on joyous days ... such a day has been today</i>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of a Winstanley classic</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBk-PUl9rZSAmU7wJMiRMw8GwIBMHLhjpwScXhJAMjqj04sf1z2uEoWUnZ8r0NcZAz2kWfptjGocwqxhSb55TJm0QYdT0Cl_MaRx90GRyrqpP5cgshl366IRBASjp3RElVMjlgvaOSufM/s1600/golden_wheel_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBk-PUl9rZSAmU7wJMiRMw8GwIBMHLhjpwScXhJAMjqj04sf1z2uEoWUnZ8r0NcZAz2kWfptjGocwqxhSb55TJm0QYdT0Cl_MaRx90GRyrqpP5cgshl366IRBASjp3RElVMjlgvaOSufM/s400/golden_wheel_2.jpg" width="278" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A great title for a cycling book!</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-86272305166019110452012-04-15T08:09:00.018+01:002012-04-15T20:28:03.892+01:00For those in peril on the sea...<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOC1JIKw6pL3eW-SlIUg3JjicDP-mnPhuTQzXkARlbJwkMVd975PBl4wzwAQe6wGzP2jwOocnN3-bXQGC3cYMjGsMOPUDf_5nieLCZM7B9PJmBV6mNjVMKcIU9DyD5bwjmMMfKcUvWPbk/s1600/titanic_memorial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640px" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOC1JIKw6pL3eW-SlIUg3JjicDP-mnPhuTQzXkARlbJwkMVd975PBl4wzwAQe6wGzP2jwOocnN3-bXQGC3cYMjGsMOPUDf_5nieLCZM7B9PJmBV6mNjVMKcIU9DyD5bwjmMMfKcUvWPbk/s640/titanic_memorial.jpg" width="380px" /></a></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last June, I blogged about </span><a href="http://scottishnatureboy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/signs-i-like-23-and-special-titanic.html?m=0"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a local link</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> to the Titanic disaster, namely a sign on a fence at a house around the corner in the King's Park area of Stirling, marking the former home of the ship's Sixth Senior Engineer, William Young Moyes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The date of that blog post, in June 2011, was the 100th anniversary of the launch of RMS Titanic from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. After several months of fitting out the ship, the Titanic's maiden voyage ended in disaster and tragedy following a collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic on 14th April 1912, </span><a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_RMS_Titanic#section_2"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the sinking of the supposedly unsinkable vessel</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> by the early hours of Monday 15th of April resulting in 1517 deaths among the passengers and crew, including Stirling's William Young Moyes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I find it sobering to think that, had the Titanic run head first into the iceberg, rather than steering around it and receiving a fatal blow to the side, she might actually have survived, with fewer of her watertight compartments ruptured, even although she was travelling at her top speed (was it 22 knots?) at the time. According to </span><a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_RMS_Titanic"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the Wikipedia article</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> about the sinking, liner collisions with icebergs weren't uncommon. Indeed, in 1907: "<i>SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, a German liner, had rammed an iceberg and suffered a crushed bow, but was still able to complete her voyage</i>." And that ship wasn't being claimed as unsinkable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've posted another photo of the Moyes memorial sign above, taken this week, with floral tribute. We'll raise a wee glass tonight to the memory of Mr Moyes and all the other poor benighted souls who perished 100 years ago today. </span></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-10759493757491005492012-03-27T11:48:00.001+01:002012-03-27T11:55:48.470+01:00Signs I Like #29<div><p>Oops! For various reasons, I haven't blogged since two months ago yesterday. That's a darned poor way to keep your readership and a terrible way to make friends and influence people. Received wisdom is that, if you've missed several weeks of exercising, the return should be brief and gentle to begin with. In order, therefore, to exercise my under-used blogging muscle in the recommended manner, I would like to share this fun blackboard sign from our local <a href="http://www.beanscene.co.uk/">BeanScene</a> cafe-bistro.</p>
<p>The place is staffed by lovely, enthusiatic young folk, and this chalked encouragement buzzed with energy (or is it just caffeine?). And the dinosaur skull looks anatomically accurate for a T-rex (or Saddosaurus if you'd prefer), which pleases me!</p>
<br/><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKwOoLEYx0BS3B-ue72LhRIfi7661qAGkp70OQ692Hj3R20cMld8X0KQa0SvzrZDgD6m_D4yYsXUXJUljH0v8E1wuYaahSitH3mee6hpNlwGbVhug90hMy9zkSEW_W8evtQgFveXGe6wA/' /></div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-28184889518837003142012-01-26T00:12:00.000+00:002012-01-26T00:12:33.648+00:00The Stirling Lines on Burns Night<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Today is, as many of you even beyond the borders of Scotland will be aware, the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, born in 1759 in the village of Alloway in Ayrshire (the county, too, of my birth). Robert Burns came to Stirlingshire (where I now live) on two occasions in August and October 1787. He appreciated the importance of Stirling in Scotland's history and reflected this in a number of songs or poems (for example, Scot Wha Hae, By Allan Stream). I'm indebted to a fine new leaflet on Robert Burns' association with Stirling, published by Stirling's Smith Museum and Art Gallery for the above details and for providing me the opportunity to post something appropriate for Burns Night:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcHQtH1nSDIcyAMsO8U4h0M84BxZtRKcvns00Jfllr35i8eJsCCP1K9rq8a6SVAA3JMdP-i_cxb6H-t27uy_X2vWtIf3Lhykc8ELJfL4MdBGPnk9dtTrGxAad1Dx7fdMtxUAYkrLY_WII/s1600/IMAG2630-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcHQtH1nSDIcyAMsO8U4h0M84BxZtRKcvns00Jfllr35i8eJsCCP1K9rq8a6SVAA3JMdP-i_cxb6H-t27uy_X2vWtIf3Lhykc8ELJfL4MdBGPnk9dtTrGxAad1Dx7fdMtxUAYkrLY_WII/s640/IMAG2630-1.jpg" width="304" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
On one of his visits to Stirling in 1787, Burns stayed at the Golden Lion Hotel (which is still in business today) where he (mischievous lad that he was) engraved a short poem (known thereafter as The Stirling Lines) on a window pane in the hotel:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Written By Somebody On The Window Of an Inn at Stirling, on seeing the Royal Palace in ruin.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Here Stuarts once in glory reigned,</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">And laws for Scotland's weal ordained;</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But now unroof'd their palace stands,</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Their sceptre's sway'd by other hands;</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Fallen indeed, and to the earth</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Whence groveling reptiles take their birth.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The injured Stuart line is gone,</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A race outlandish fills their throne;</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">An idiot race, to honour lost;</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Who know them best despise them most.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The Smith Museum leaflet describes the poem thus:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"<i>These ten lines summarise the ruinous condition of the palace and castle, where the ceiling with the Stirling Heads [carved wooden heads of royalty and citizenry, restored in 2011] collapsed in 1777. The town also lost its sense of purpose after the removal of the royal court to London in 1603 and was in a sad condition at the time of Burns</i>".</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">However accurate a description of the condition of Stirling was provided by this little poem, it also proved immensely unpopular with some locals, perhaps also for its criticism of the ruling regime, and Burns was forced to break the window! The controversy even dogged his path two years later while seeking government employment, when he was "<i>question'd like a child about my matters and schooled for my inscription on a Stirling window</i>"!</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">An interesting little side story bringing Burns to life with all his mischief and perhaps a little youthful lack of foresight (or lack of care) about the consequences of his actions, and interesting for us right here in Stirling and especially today, on Burns Night.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-56481899978821379282012-01-20T15:53:00.000+00:002012-01-20T15:53:34.074+00:00My 2011 in bikes<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;">"<i>I want to ride my bicycle</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><i>I want to ride my bike</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><i>I want to ride my bicycle</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><i>I want to ride it where I like</i>"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><br />
Queen (who else?): "<i>Bicycle Race</i>"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I’m a cyclist and I’m proud to be described so. I don’t really race much. I do the (very) occasional short-course triathlon and I take part in the odd organised sportive ride. But mostly, I ride largely for fun, commuting and convenience. I love my bikes and, traffic and the state of Stirling’s roads notwithstanding, I love to ride. I have a few of my own bikes, none of them very flashy or new but each with their own strengths and uses.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In addition to my normal cycling experiences, I had a few encounters with interesting, unusual or odd bikes during the past year.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Le velo de facteur:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We were in Morzine in the French Alps in March and, on our last morning, we wandered around the village before departure and came upon the Post Office. Rather fantastically, there were four old yellow French post office bicycles leaning outside with little handwritten notes stuck on each, offering them free to take away: ‘a prendre’</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIyHzsVUd1SpWnQmT99z1buWNdgm50rPfnsNT47JLuUyPw0VRAHnGgKGYUpX0UUXcnX11scAAmqt44p7fUR0mXuEbsG_Gu6Rz2rSyE0Vn-MoAs99n7e_JO8Z5dB_2j9PRNh3_ZKAYBza4/s1600/IMAG0200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIyHzsVUd1SpWnQmT99z1buWNdgm50rPfnsNT47JLuUyPw0VRAHnGgKGYUpX0UUXcnX11scAAmqt44p7fUR0mXuEbsG_Gu6Rz2rSyE0Vn-MoAs99n7e_JO8Z5dB_2j9PRNh3_ZKAYBza4/s400/IMAG0200.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Eh? What? No health and safety risk assessment? No cover-your-ar*e legal statement? But some of these bikes don’t even have functional brakes? Yeah. This is France. Refreshing, isn’t it? The coolest bike in Morzine? Darn right!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">These bikes were obviously custom-made for les facteurs! They have a great parcel basket on the front, and a very solid-looking bespoke front-wheel based stand with little wheels of its own. The stand folds up under the frame. The one I tried was a bit stiff but nothing that a bit of oil wouldn’t sort.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The rear end of the bikes were pretty solid too, with a very robust rack and official French post office pannier bags:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLYgpSoZnRhupjvb0zXfK4yxbDOb-ygFFeakhmuuZg6qYDuzZxbFC50fOLwcwcYH66fqrtCylx38QaWLEV2RlcsT8MWbrQdZ5kYGmOblQ2Ou_VMDrJTcWCRUMEIA-1Fp4lLvms4FUCnw/s1600/french+post+bike+pannier+rack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxLYgpSoZnRhupjvb0zXfK4yxbDOb-ygFFeakhmuuZg6qYDuzZxbFC50fOLwcwcYH66fqrtCylx38QaWLEV2RlcsT8MWbrQdZ5kYGmOblQ2Ou_VMDrJTcWCRUMEIA-1Fp4lLvms4FUCnw/s400/french+post+bike+pannier+rack.jpg" width="375" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Inevitably, the girls couldn’t keep their hands off the bikes:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf9cYN-D8hAgLb_ciTQBBt3qZH_TaCYKywaHTzYgRNpz6620rIdUW4PnHx7sSaNIwEoSUGvV3BM7SmIkMJaHoGdc18pJ21dm-eZJYgaEwjNBAn_L1aXZAPvKoa_yHbk1neC0ukrfJXbIo/s1600/IMAG0202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf9cYN-D8hAgLb_ciTQBBt3qZH_TaCYKywaHTzYgRNpz6620rIdUW4PnHx7sSaNIwEoSUGvV3BM7SmIkMJaHoGdc18pJ21dm-eZJYgaEwjNBAn_L1aXZAPvKoa_yHbk1neC0ukrfJXbIo/s320/IMAG0202.jpg" width="191" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Take one, get one free?</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">and it wasn’t long until they were test-riding them:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlS9p5b1vnPgQiVY-dsm8DOSqygrK3__3N-U4_kWMjn1Lqb34BCYtqlGpNyXokrJ9aE_wabUHSi5smjgzD7WhU2cJbzfLIvJ-eRzc1gt704U9U4y6MR2Xf3bjLHpsuwLwZtNtr6t_zkBQ/s1600/IMAG0203.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlS9p5b1vnPgQiVY-dsm8DOSqygrK3__3N-U4_kWMjn1Lqb34BCYtqlGpNyXokrJ9aE_wabUHSi5smjgzD7WhU2cJbzfLIvJ-eRzc1gt704U9U4y6MR2Xf3bjLHpsuwLwZtNtr6t_zkBQ/s320/IMAG0203.jpg" width="191" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiPXLQmiZB4oxJW5On0Q28aBJTLemjID2mRXN-Yx94pXh4yaXWVdXQ8DLCTsH86aVfowvGVL8buJtN_n1KJuDLmMZHCXnf19MLAOn9ilYZt71nZ7IzLrWIjO0NEIYY6RdyaQNS953ySts/s1600/IMAG0204.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiPXLQmiZB4oxJW5On0Q28aBJTLemjID2mRXN-Yx94pXh4yaXWVdXQ8DLCTsH86aVfowvGVL8buJtN_n1KJuDLmMZHCXnf19MLAOn9ilYZt71nZ7IzLrWIjO0NEIYY6RdyaQNS953ySts/s320/IMAG0204.jpg" width="191" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> I think if I’d been travelling with my own van, I might have brought one home. They were extremely solid and heavy machines (not one for the long climbs, I suspect) but one of these would definitely have been a unique bike for Stirling...</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The recumbent tandem trike:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaja_CANQHD0hyUlHISb_h6GXIoR_qGXSP84UmPKqqqiuBR9HnfK6H2Fkt-A1s45PcQEd0Jj0kX5T0MCWSha3thdmOKWpTwrkchgKxblDTkfEBVCe2y4ogoor2sI_9BTX7bUv8r02vks/s1600/IMAG2151.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaja_CANQHD0hyUlHISb_h6GXIoR_qGXSP84UmPKqqqiuBR9HnfK6H2Fkt-A1s45PcQEd0Jj0kX5T0MCWSha3thdmOKWpTwrkchgKxblDTkfEBVCe2y4ogoor2sI_9BTX7bUv8r02vks/s400/IMAG2151.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">On our way home from helping out at our pals’ Apple Day in the South Lakes area of Cumbria in early October, we came on this recumbent tandem tricycle (not three words that you commonly see together) in a cafe car park. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4mamV2mBqtZUY4Cv1_vKSczfZPpeUjnQeY4g23dsG_M-LiLKkkVw8EbfpGKEOa9bHnzRkwjYvXPsoxuFDZFxWQLaK3W_R6mTVNECCnvkqFv62wRJuLZq2-ly7OaHIuL7kHW7OYBcXoLY/s1600/IMAG2152.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4mamV2mBqtZUY4Cv1_vKSczfZPpeUjnQeY4g23dsG_M-LiLKkkVw8EbfpGKEOa9bHnzRkwjYvXPsoxuFDZFxWQLaK3W_R6mTVNECCnvkqFv62wRJuLZq2-ly7OaHIuL7kHW7OYBcXoLY/s400/IMAG2152.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">From the decals, it appears to be a Greenspeed, not a manufacturer I've encountered previously. It was being ridden by a (fit-looking) couple who may have been in their 70’s and it had a Land’s End to John O’Groats sticker on it – that must have been an epic trip. It looks very stable and is probably very comfortable to ride but it is SO low down - I just can’t get over my feeling that British drivers are too uneducated in their dealings with cyclists for me to be attracted to riding a recumbent on the roads in this country.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>First encounter with an electric cargo bike:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The low-carbon city project here in Stirling, Going Carbon Neutral Stirling (GCNS), has invested in a number of electric cargo bikes (trikes in reality) which it will lend out for people to use, attempting to replace some car trips in town with cycle trips. The large box at the front can carry a considerable amount, including a couple of children (a common sight in Copenhagen, where cargo bikes and trikes, electric or not, are very popular and widely used).</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrFkuMUesZEctzOwRAjzmLQVHplggACzEyTBR05CbNrLbhv7eblYDzbmqEAOZpMuxrbfn72q7zFezian_kwj_KP1OGNOLIDh7CMEHcQ0UFNjQKfrZQho5vYIsx6igTpKj-0fUdVaaS12I/s1600/IMAG0491.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrFkuMUesZEctzOwRAjzmLQVHplggACzEyTBR05CbNrLbhv7eblYDzbmqEAOZpMuxrbfn72q7zFezian_kwj_KP1OGNOLIDh7CMEHcQ0UFNjQKfrZQho5vYIsx6igTpKj-0fUdVaaS12I/s320/IMAG0491.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">GCNS held a come-and-try event in the quiet residential Riverside area of Stirling on a rare warm summer evening. My wife O took one of the bikes for a spin and reported it as quite difficult to steer, especially around corners but this was her first attempt and I’ve seen the project staff riding one with relative ease on a gentle group ride around the town’s newer cycle paths. A friend, A, a massively experienced cycle racer, took one for a spin with his children in the cargo box at another open day at Stirling University and nearly turned over while cornering on a gentle downhill bend. He was probably going too fast but he did recover magnificently after cornering on two wheels. His children seemed to love it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>My wife’s old German racing bike:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC5SiKIibCo9KaC5DmvtmhiQURsTwLL7fX_H0GRm1RxppnWBloVHBlTUyNTw6rATYGqf73AwFB_rJxZzYFIPh7q2q4En771xA6I_K_XTsKnmmBRpBdAjcwRPHa__iqLgNpWcNUVQNOWrc/s1600/IMAG1312.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC5SiKIibCo9KaC5DmvtmhiQURsTwLL7fX_H0GRm1RxppnWBloVHBlTUyNTw6rATYGqf73AwFB_rJxZzYFIPh7q2q4En771xA6I_K_XTsKnmmBRpBdAjcwRPHa__iqLgNpWcNUVQNOWrc/s400/IMAG1312.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> My wife bought a bike in Switzerland in the 1980’s which I’d never seen as it was stored at her mother’s. When we visited this summer, we dug it out of the shed to take a look at it turned out to be this splendid old Rudi Altig roadster. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudi_Altig" target="_blank">Rudi Altig </a>was a German professional racing cyclist who, as well as lending his name to a range of bicycles, also won the green (points) jersey in the Tour de France, won the Spanish equivalent to Le Tour, the Vuelta a Espana, and became World road race champion in 1966, reflected by the addition of the World Champion colour rings on the bike’s down tube. You have to agree that they add a certain caché:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTUt5hCRD7pumRDOykbZV24Jlfj81pHf67KhN8EEcYukUJTfnLmp-NQ8E4SGksA2UmFZImvQu8S7-V-3soURCaz8kbanvlER1qmy8fkWt3WoizEAIA6DqodytynRQLIgY4yHQl42NaP3M/s1600/IMAG1314.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTUt5hCRD7pumRDOykbZV24Jlfj81pHf67KhN8EEcYukUJTfnLmp-NQ8E4SGksA2UmFZImvQu8S7-V-3soURCaz8kbanvlER1qmy8fkWt3WoizEAIA6DqodytynRQLIgY4yHQl42NaP3M/s400/IMAG1314.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Note the unusual location for the early example of indexed gear shifters on the headset:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjKJqoqopAB-K78AR-OwbvIxFwJUYyh4oAGP5yRhG7A_hM8QgrsbenS5ZnJAn7qdR5IwRTtm6P434z95eLrEnDP4AmSue2flUnvbUN8-a9cnJENN626YRwRBKm_fkXrmxa0spRaTg1miw/s1600/IMAG1315.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjKJqoqopAB-K78AR-OwbvIxFwJUYyh4oAGP5yRhG7A_hM8QgrsbenS5ZnJAn7qdR5IwRTtm6P434z95eLrEnDP4AmSue2flUnvbUN8-a9cnJENN626YRwRBKm_fkXrmxa0spRaTg1miw/s400/IMAG1315.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">O rode this bike all over Berne, then brought it home to Blighty and it ended up in a shed. I just pumped up the tyres and oiled the chain and, despite the bike having sat in the shed for over 20 years, everything else on the bike (gears, brakes) worked so I took it out for a spin in the really hilly vicinity. I rode it for 30 minutes before, fearing that the old chain was going to snap under the strain of hill-climbing (they were REALLY steep!), I put it back in the shed again!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And as well as encounters with weird and wonderful cycles in 2011, it was also an unusually busy year as regards making the most of the bikes I already own.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Making do and mend – revamping my winter bike and my old hybrid:</i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I’ve had a lot of good experiences this year dealing with the guys at <a href="http://www.stirlingcyclerepairs.co.uk/" target="_blank">Stirling Cycle Repairs</a>. Not the least of these was their advice and then hard work to help me reclaim two of my old bikes back into more active service. For the first seven or eight months of 2011, I was thinking about and researching possible option for buying a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclo-cross_bicycle" target="_blank">cyclocross (CX) bicycle</a>. It’s not that I particularly fancied having a go at cyclocross racing (though if I had one, I might have had a go at a race or two as well), but it is more that CX bikes have become the new do-it-all road bikes in the past couple of years – tough, well-equipped, often for pannier racks and mudguards, they make for great general bikes for winter riding and there are many more on the market now.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I’ve been riding a bottom-of-the-range Giant OCR3 road bike as a winter bike for five or six winters and, having washed it conscientiously after most rides, it hasn’t rusted away or seized up as winter bikes often do (they are generally effectively bought as ‘sacrificial’ machines, to allow road racers, triathletes etc to preserve their expensive lightweight racing bikes for summer riding.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">My Giant OCR3 has the most lovely light blue paint job and a very comfortable frame geometry that makes for quite relaxed road riding. But most of the original components had worn out. I’d already upgraded the brakes to Shimano 105 a couple of years ago. I was contemplating replacing this (and a mountain bike I never ride) with a cyclocross bike. But, given the current financial conditions, my dislike of disposing of perfectly sound equipment, and the fact that I do love that old OCR3 frame, I decided instead to investigate a refit. As I wasn't aiming for top-end components, the cost was less than I feared and so I went for it. Craig and Grant at <a href="http://www.stirlingcyclerepairs.co.uk/" target="_blank">Stirling Cycle Repairs</a> did a great job of refitting it with basic Shimano SORA components (the gears, cranks and shifters), and finished it off with a very fetching and matching blue bar tape:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TCy-QDQT6bZf4yeWqcSEYJRcizYAxbo4AGjk7IN5yVaXQP-sEPhiXrsRmZzVLGP8s_7qAWCYUsoo08ISQzsv0PaTqqEws8AdoIDmi8t4bQukTXUzelqqeqMU8PknDwQx1vfAj-BhlNk/s1600/IMAG2157.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TCy-QDQT6bZf4yeWqcSEYJRcizYAxbo4AGjk7IN5yVaXQP-sEPhiXrsRmZzVLGP8s_7qAWCYUsoo08ISQzsv0PaTqqEws8AdoIDmi8t4bQukTXUzelqqeqMU8PknDwQx1vfAj-BhlNk/s400/IMAG2157.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaStCgBhivhX_90cxW1RN6mbCT2j0KwEHNAUEWDdMH-UrqY2uTT-QoraxiCPz7IyqYY6uAdjvXw-tpdFaLLbM4GiAZe_OsqA3c2j23wXVp3BJSrt-gQZToRJ09QodzQZqvSKT03gwQQUw/s1600/IMAG2160.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaStCgBhivhX_90cxW1RN6mbCT2j0KwEHNAUEWDdMH-UrqY2uTT-QoraxiCPz7IyqYY6uAdjvXw-tpdFaLLbM4GiAZe_OsqA3c2j23wXVp3BJSrt-gQZToRJ09QodzQZqvSKT03gwQQUw/s400/IMAG2160.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh-mSHrAMFbhYpDQDpwNSi_01xvuZu-Yb_S1BXAB1ETgCZDCE-Gmp2n60otwLYHgiTOsZ95XZ01c5MdNfYBi8bkL9Hboc8TnCKoAJFuP79ix66UcWxe0eXyZx0Jds-ghgC1Q_UkcPgTL8/s1600/IMAG2163.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh-mSHrAMFbhYpDQDpwNSi_01xvuZu-Yb_S1BXAB1ETgCZDCE-Gmp2n60otwLYHgiTOsZ95XZ01c5MdNfYBi8bkL9Hboc8TnCKoAJFuP79ix66UcWxe0eXyZx0Jds-ghgC1Q_UkcPgTL8/s640/IMAG2163.jpg" width="382" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXJfl8TcE-9BPG4rqUT658sXk0nk5xMkW5W5-EPAcGI-ShQbey6c1VqZKZQaccghGiHLNmW92Z17fkMpgYYsEFHLifHW0OEu2MThDcLgTgMvP-z1wz3b9x5LgI80kO9jgBdY2yIwS0J74/s1600/IMAG2167.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXJfl8TcE-9BPG4rqUT658sXk0nk5xMkW5W5-EPAcGI-ShQbey6c1VqZKZQaccghGiHLNmW92Z17fkMpgYYsEFHLifHW0OEu2MThDcLgTgMvP-z1wz3b9x5LgI80kO9jgBdY2yIwS0J74/s640/IMAG2167.jpg" width="382" /></a></div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyEvXdC86YBhhkIxa_y4nkP8Z9L1LqEGIoXKX7SBq7IO3MvKOn4LCpf9KdLQyEaVKsanGoeO_ZA431N8vZjT2FkHL0uBkigo6AhqTJJkvzJXt9zlBw6PEsHK7uOKICaFYYaaM0NBqyeBU/s1600/IMAG2168.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyEvXdC86YBhhkIxa_y4nkP8Z9L1LqEGIoXKX7SBq7IO3MvKOn4LCpf9KdLQyEaVKsanGoeO_ZA431N8vZjT2FkHL0uBkigo6AhqTJJkvzJXt9zlBw6PEsHK7uOKICaFYYaaM0NBqyeBU/s640/IMAG2168.jpg" width="382" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Look at the shiny-shiny! Didn’t the guys do a great job?</span></td></tr>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The wheels were still the same old wheels that originally came with the bike though and, after a week of riding, it was obvious that they were knackered (accentuated by how well everything else was working!) so I decided to replace them with a pair of <a href="http://www.stirlingcyclerepairs.co.uk/mainservice.html#handbuiltwheels" target="_blank">Craig and Grant’s lovely hand-built training wheels </a>– not so expensive, maybe not the lightest but light enough for winter training, pretty bombproof and likely to be usable well beyond the life of the Giant OCR3. And they are aesthetically pleasing too, with beautiful, curvaceous, silver Ambrosia hubs with Ambrosia rims. Look!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ7esvjJ0JgpeIEsRfYG-00GqzqrdexfkxuQdigMkv2NmMNJwOJ8ByBhYX8ITmpYHGLtr1o2YiVaThyU4caW_4Q0mb-zwdk5kUAZzMrqXQSozBrZGxzLauS5m6Dl5cNQ_I2jWaJNnaOvM/s1600/IMAG2227.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ7esvjJ0JgpeIEsRfYG-00GqzqrdexfkxuQdigMkv2NmMNJwOJ8ByBhYX8ITmpYHGLtr1o2YiVaThyU4caW_4Q0mb-zwdk5kUAZzMrqXQSozBrZGxzLauS5m6Dl5cNQ_I2jWaJNnaOvM/s400/IMAG2227.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilL9oPfaA-O4FmDhvgzxMFfqtBYJH4BSj-K2EK6yl2-mLZW01BfPDEXbAKb7gbXRS4FWtNZCzFnSFJmra69wZkOXmkt9E6Q64kQp2CrIAg8c5WiOxqRYWc7f3a5hGabUfM9q_qLfXZlPU/s1600/IMAG2228.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilL9oPfaA-O4FmDhvgzxMFfqtBYJH4BSj-K2EK6yl2-mLZW01BfPDEXbAKb7gbXRS4FWtNZCzFnSFJmra69wZkOXmkt9E6Q64kQp2CrIAg8c5WiOxqRYWc7f3a5hGabUfM9q_qLfXZlPU/s400/IMAG2228.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The final touch was a new pair of Continental Grand Prix 4-season road tyres with Continental inner tubes (funky yellow dust caps) to provide a durable partner for the new training wheels, and the package was complete for about a third the price of a decent new CX bike.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7dVhqm4_O_mp4AguVfJbZfsld93nZugPi0QYxWB5ezVzWUFoPTvtnQiksUtDxHz0wHIIrz8Rg1I8KNdVTlNE9HvNksjt77OD7A1hOn3fEDD5FS7sNAjOxSp3pEme69U211riklM0yR8/s1600/IMAG2226.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7dVhqm4_O_mp4AguVfJbZfsld93nZugPi0QYxWB5ezVzWUFoPTvtnQiksUtDxHz0wHIIrz8Rg1I8KNdVTlNE9HvNksjt77OD7A1hOn3fEDD5FS7sNAjOxSp3pEme69U211riklM0yR8/s400/IMAG2226.jpg" width="238" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapeau to <a href="http://www.stirlingcyclerepairs.co.uk/" target="_blank">Stirling Cycle Repairs</a>!</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The final pleasing bike experience of the year was renovating, with my brother’s expert bike mechanic skills, my old Specialised Expedition hybrid, which has been stored in my brother’s garage roof for four years.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It was initially a disappointing insurance replacement for a much loved Marin Stinson hybrid that fell off a car bike rack. The replacement bike always felt heavy and clumsy in comparison to the Marin, was fitted with fairly cheap components (I constantly had to adjust the brakes, for instance) and I could never keep the wheels in true. They kept buckling and developing wobbles. I subsequently discovered from Craig at <a href="http://www.stirlingcyclerepairs.co.uk/" target="_blank">Stirling Cycle Repairs</a> that the spokes had been incorrectly laced up when they were built and that there was no sensible way to correct that.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Luckily, <a href="http://coastkid.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">my lovely brother</a> donated a spare pair of used but good quality Cannondale 26x1.75 wheels (thanks <a href="http://coastkid.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">lovely bro</a>!). We fitted a new Shimano 8-speed cassette (that’s the rear gear cogs), a new 8-speed chain, and <a href="http://www.stirlingcyclerepairs.co.uk/" target="_blank">Stirling Cycle Repairs</a> replaced the rubbish brakes with some good quality Shimano v-brakes.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Q84wvyzQFuFmSEGJLdc9qn5jJbCH_BJ5tGiW5FPGSHbaV8py9Xas8iyOTOuatYFIhEy-r5-ckLlqaRL_K8JZLnMkb-bn2TEaa6GPYFSZGFwNv0WaixtG2mLMr-ppv5eZePOwMwghLhU/s1600/IMAG2033.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Q84wvyzQFuFmSEGJLdc9qn5jJbCH_BJ5tGiW5FPGSHbaV8py9Xas8iyOTOuatYFIhEy-r5-ckLlqaRL_K8JZLnMkb-bn2TEaa6GPYFSZGFwNv0WaixtG2mLMr-ppv5eZePOwMwghLhU/s320/IMAG2033.jpg" width="191" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Old Specialised Expedition hybrid undergoing a facelift</td></tr>
</tbody></table> <br />
I stuck on a set of Shimano SPD mountain bike pedals, Continental innertubes, a pair of Schwalbe Marathon touring tyres and some funky and surprisingly cheap <a href="http://www.wiggle.co.uk/sks-beavertail-clip-on-mudguard-set/" target="_blank">SKS Beavertail mudguards</a> (which needed some amendments with a hot needle and some zip ties) and I now have a tough utility bike with a rack(which I had fitted previously) and mudguards that’s ready for most of my non-training cycling needs – unglamorous maybe but helluva useful.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Oh, and it is in British Racing Green which is, as you know, very cool (like bow ties). Resurrecting and finally making useful this old Shimano Expedition bike was a fine end to a year of unusual and satisfying bike encounters and experiences.<br />
<br />
Enjoy your own bikes in 2012!<br />
</div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8639752794702412001.post-80561474227720629482012-01-13T00:16:00.001+00:002012-01-13T00:17:03.653+00:00What the Dickens...?<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It may have escaped your notice (but probably only if you live in a cave) but 2012 is the 200th anniversary of the birth of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens" target="_blank">Charles Dickens</a>, perhaps the greatest creator of fictional characters in English literature (sorry Shakespeare). The BBC is gearing up to celebrate the Dickens bicentennial in style, with new dramas breaking out all over the place at present. </div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We, however, had the chance earlier tonight to enjoy a more intimate and special Dickens experience in this most Dickens-laden of years. We were privileged to see a great great grandson of Charles Dickens, the fine actor <a href="http://www.geralddickens.com/" target="_blank">Gerald Dickens</a>, re-create An Audience with Charles Dickens at the McRobert Theatre at Stirling University:</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9uSDObUsbrJvnMbO4jIkvU6GRVgwIyO5vLLYHzFF8Qr-zKBh0-reraHVyVWtjH_Q9RH7G05Pxiv99nxwtxgNaTgiIVw_h2Xl2eCMAuJY-pbCuDXd9vw_XHawrM7mzkoJRcX01x64P-xk/s1600/Dickens+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9uSDObUsbrJvnMbO4jIkvU6GRVgwIyO5vLLYHzFF8Qr-zKBh0-reraHVyVWtjH_Q9RH7G05Pxiv99nxwtxgNaTgiIVw_h2Xl2eCMAuJY-pbCuDXd9vw_XHawrM7mzkoJRcX01x64P-xk/s400/Dickens+1.jpg" width="306" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The New York Times described the show as: "A once in-a-lifetime brush with literary history" and so it was, at times breathtaking, moving, funny and highly entertaining. No spoilers from me but, as the information is widely available on line, I'll add that we were treated to a one-hour long version of Nicholas Nickleby which, if you know your Dickens, you'll know has a cast of 40+ characters, most of whom featured! My enjoyment was even enhanced by knowing that some strand of the great Charles Dickens' DNA was down there on the stage (there is even a family resemblance to my eye and not just down to the beards!)</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I can't recommend this highly enough. It was fantastic. Enough said, go and see it if you can. <a href="http://www.geralddickens.com/events.htm" target="_blank">Here's a list</a> of upcoming shows.</div><div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />
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</div>Scottish Nature Boyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02020233132563195888noreply@blogger.com2