View of city from the top of a hill.
View along a range of green hills. White concrete trigpoint in foreground.
A broken bike chain
Nice start to the ride yesterday, but it turned very wet and cold. Lots of hail and sleet. Then my chain snapped. Had a chain breaker and spare quick links so it was fine. I was pretty frozen by the time I got back home! 😆 #mountainbiking
And old stone tower in a woods. Bike leaning on tree in foreground.
Track road stretching out over desolate moorland.
Sun shing through trees, moorland beyond.
Biting cold wind, but nice out today. Good to be still dry when I got back home!! #mountainbiking
Gate lock with bolt marked
Pedestrian gate with additional 'hidden' bolts marked.
On a cycle and again the gates are 'locked' by obfuscation on the Bavelaw estate. This happened a lot before. The bolt has been tightened so much the lock is immovable. On the second pedestrian gate they have added 2 hidden bolts to the hinge so it can't be opened! #landaccess #scotland #pentlands
Ah sorry I found out elsewhere. I should have updated this..vape cartridge plugs! The new cigarette butts I guess. Just chucked on the ground.
Inside church. High walls. Lots of chairs.
Diamond shaped stained glass window.
Outside of church atrium sticking out like a trunk.
Grey concrete building
Rode down the coast and on the way took a look at the modernist Royan church. Made of concrete in 1958 after the heavy bombing of Royan in 1945. Apparently the concrete In the walls is only 10 cm thick. Surprisingly nice inside.
Old water fountain with old iron flower lights hanging over top.
Some nice art. With bike leaning on it.
Darwin sign in between old warehouses.
Bridge with interesting glass towers.
Bordeaux seems pretty cool. Loads of proper cycle paths and pedestrianised areas. Passing through on way to visit my folks here for first time in 8 years! Had lunch in a interesting old warehouse area full of cafes and art stuff.
A newt on a road.
View along the top of a dam. Reservoir on one side.
Mist foggy forest valley.
Still water with trees around and heather. Foggy.
Had an excellent ride in the Galloway forest. Cold foggy start, but it brightened up later on. Saw a quite big newt hanging out on a track road. Some really fun trails through the woods at the end! #mountainbiking
A newt on a road.
View along the top of a dam. Reservoir on one side.
Mist foggy forest valley.
Still water with trees around and heather. Foggy.
Had an excellent ride in the Galloway forest. Cold foggy start, but it brightened up later on. Saw a quite big newt hanging out on a track road. Some really fun trails through the woods at the end! #mountainbiking
Small plastic great plugs.
Anyone know what these things are? See them all over the pavements around town for months. Reverse image search not coming back with anything useful.
View of city below. Harbour in distance. Firth of forth inlet and Fife on the other side.
Close up of ship with big yellow crane equipment next to long white wind turbine towers on the ground .
Picture of daughter having trouble standing in the wind. View of city from top of hill. Sun set behind.
No cycling today as I've got cold. But did climb the nearby hill with my daughter. Crazy windy up there! Interesting activity in the harbour where there's a big ship with towers and wind turbine towers ready for the wind farm being built nearby out at sea.
Waterfall surrounded by trees covered in ice and snow. Cold mist covering everything.
Waterfall at left. View up gorge with ice and snow all around. Old trees hanging over the river. Misty white.
Beautiful up above the snow line in the forest today. #walking #Aberfeldy
Hair ice on a stick
Wobbly icicles on a rock
Hair like ice growing up from a bit of wood.
Hair ice on a branch. River in background.
Loads of hair ice around on a walk today. Never seen it before. Apparently temperature has to be just right and a specific type of fungus has to be in the wood. #winter #hairice
Rosilin chapel. Pointy architecture. Grey sky.
Tall Scots pine trees in the mist. Mossy moorland in foreground.
Grassy track road with old signpost saying public path. Mist making visibility poor.
Temporary footbridge made from scaffolding pipes. Small stream in gorge. Track road in distance.
Another lovely foggy weekend ride. Saw almost no one else. Took lots of new paths. A fair bit of pushing over moorland. Stopped in a remote foggy woodland for lunch and listened to an owl hooting. #mountainbiking
Leith Walk cycle lane blocked by two separate articulated lorries with all four wheels on the pavement.
Yay! Cycle lanes.
Tree down across a path. Room to go underneath if crouching. Bike lying on ground.
Low clouds obscuring hills on either side of a valley. Muted winter scene.
Green field behind a mirror for car visibility on a tight corner. Me on a bike in the mirror.
Bunker with heavy concrete and metal door. Burried in mound of grass. On top is a old phone box.
Some photos from a misty ride. Nice to to do a proper day long ride. Found an old bunker. Weird old BT phone box on top of the grassy bunker mound with some old mechanical equipment installed in it. Maybe a disguise? #mountainbiking
Mushrooms on toast
Mushrooms frying
Baby mushrooms
Medium mushrooms
My home grown oyster mushrooms are ready. Ready for my lunch!! #mushrooms
Snow covered track road climb. Snow in surrounding trees. Lots of bikers in front of early lap.
Me on a bike with two people in pig costumes either side.
Strathpuffer skeleton riding a small bike. My bike on ground in front. Snowy woodland scene.
Slushy trail through the woods with 3 bikers coming along with lights on.
Rode #strathpuffer 24. Snow and Ice made the trail tough at times but the forest was beautiful! Did 11 laps which I'm pretty happy with given the conditions. 2 punctures, one out on a lap so had to run the rest of the lap 😆. Great atmosphere!
/cont (changing London terminus,no of platforms etc), massivly pushed the costs up. People compare to Spain where most of the land for routes is very cheap; desert or poor quality farmland. So it's not really comparible. (3/3)
The tech is not the expensive part. Inital cost was because England is relativly densely populated and it costs a lot to buy the route, plus some tunnels. Sure a bit of dodgy stuff in contracts (as always), but mostly delays by government indescision (somtimes prompted by anti-hs2 folks) (2/3)
Nope, it was always about capacity. HS was just a bad marketing term, if I remember right, choosen by the government. You are right they should have marketed it as a capacity boost. It's also just built to modern rail standards which happen to be, faster. (1/3)
Double decker would only work a bit by enabling fewer passenger services which isn't great for users and doesn't really fix the main problem. Not doing HS2 is a disaster for UK transport.
Freeing up this capacity would have also had a significant effect on increasing capacity on connecting lines, some quite far from HS2. They basically all get backed up due to the current line capacity being maxed out. It's almost as if the engineers who designed knew what they were doing.
HS2 was entirely about capacity. Moving a lot of long distance passenger trains off of the main line, freeing it up for local and freight trains that currently have to get out of the way of the 'intercity' passenger trains.
Track curving up foggy hill
Track junction on top of hill. Fog. Bike lying on ground.
Boggy path leading over moorland.
Rough path leading into fog.
Foggy Solstice ride. Was nice out, despite the lack of sunlight. No wind, not much rain. Climbed the big hill. #biking #scotland
Some translucent jelly sitting in som heather and moss.
A big blob of translucent jelly in some heather.
Found some "Star Jelly". According to legend, dropped to earth during meteor showers. Some think it's a type of fungus. Others think it from predators who have eaten frogs regurgitating the same chemicals used to create frog spawn. Tales of it dropping from the sky! Thought it was ice at first.
A giant boulder with some trees growing on top. In the mist.
A lochan in the mist. Some rocks emerging from the still water.
Some pixie cup lichen with red edges.
A view down a steep stream. Forest and Luke in front. Waterfall. Mist.
Great walk up the hills behind Balqhidder. Aborted our original plan as the weather looked bad. Did some off-path exploring and climbed/slid long way down a steep stream side to return. #walking #scotland
Some mushrooms living on a log
The underside of some mushrooms showing the gills
Yellow staghorn. Bright orange fungus shaped like the horns of a stag.
Some mushroom photos from a bike ride last night and this morning. Sulphur Tuft I think. Yellow staghorn. #mushrooms
Bike on ground. Moorland leading up through a gap between hills. Wooden bridge in foreground
Small icy path leading off into moorland. View of brown hills around. Blue sky with bright low sun.
Track road over the hills. Brown heather moorland. Hills in distance.
Frost and ice covered track road leading though green fields of grass.
Cold ride over the Theives Road, an old drover road often used to move stolen livestock. Frozen mud made the trails fun and faster in places. Nice to see the low winter sun. #biking
Close up of serrated break in rear axle.
Broken rear axle sticking out from cassette.
Broken rear axle inside wheel.
Broken rear axle.
Well this is a new one! Broken rear axle. Weirdly serrated break as well. The pedals were stuck and suspected a seized crank bearing but..nope. Weird as I last rode this bike a few weeks ago (down the West Highland way) and it felt fine. Anyone seen this before? #mountainbiking #biking #cycling
