30 mile sprint at Innerleithen!

Today's ride at Innerleithen turned into a 30 mile sprint in order to get Clive home in time to take his 4 year old daughter to the Edinburgh Book Festival. He said he could only manage today if he was home by 11 am and both Baz and myself solemnly promised that would be the case, but to be honest I was extremely sceptical that we would manage! However I reckoned without my intrepid cycling mates who somehow or other dragged me round our 30 mile course in record time and made it back to the house more or less bang on 11 am! The conditions were much drier than the last two times we've been at Innerleithen but even so an average speed of over 8mph on our torturous course is going to take a bit of beating. There was hardly even time to take a picture today but I did get one which I'll use for Skywatch Friday this week.
P.S. I even managed another 7 miles late in the afternoon, but that was at snails pace!!

Skywatch Scotland 10

Is it a Stealth Bomber taking off? No, it's the Red Bull tent at a mountain bike event in North East Scotland!

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Ten More in Moray.........some more!

The results of Saturdays race were on the Internet last night and we did not too bad! In our class, which amusingly is senior vets pairs, due to our combined age , we came 2nd out of 6, but more impressive was the fact that in the overall pairs category we came 17th out of 80 entrants.


There was a short video made of the event, in which Baz stars, well not really but he does walk past as someone is interviewed near the beginning of it! Click here and then on Ten More in Moray video for this illuminating experience of Baz pushing his bike, unaware he's on camera!
I hardly think we're in the running for Olympic selection but it was at least an improvement on our last outing!

Lead off rider Baz before the race

Me trying to look cool, calm and collected...........and failing miserably.

A caped crusader awaits his chance to right a few wrongs.

Baz finishes the final lap.

Ten More in Moray, the event itself.

Arriving late on Friday night having had to drive by Blairgowrie and Glenshee due to an accident closing the A9 we had to erect our flimsy little tent in semi darkness. Having little knowledge of tent erecting, especially these modern things with collapsible poles we ran into problems right away, in fact there was a thing like a big top for the circus put up quicker next to us by, obviously, a couple of experts! However they very kindly gave us the benefit of their expertise and eventually we got the damn thing up.

The event itself was the best we've ever been at, the weather was brilliant, not too hot, not too windy and no rain!!

We eventually finished second in our class and as yet not too sure where we came overall, but that will be up on the Internet in a few days.

The course itself was roughly ten miles long and was a really good mixture of climbs and descents, the final descent being a classic. Terrific day!

Is this weather exclusive to North East Scotland, it's certainly not what the rest of us have been experiencing?

This modest abode was our home for Friday night, £15 out of Matalan, cheap at twice the price!

The mass start to the event led off by two motor cyclists.

Skywatch Scotland 9

Rain clouds gather over Roslynn as a cow on a lush grass field questions my motives for taking its picture.

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Final training for Ten more in Moray

The training's more or less all over for our next event, Ten more in Moray, being held at Fochabers near Elgin in the North East of Scotland this week end. Like the last one we did at Fort William in June it's a ten hour event in which each team tries to see how many laps of a roughly ten mile cross country course they can complete in ten hours. Last time we came third in our class so the aim is to try and improve on this. By 8pm on Saturday night we'll know if we've been successful............

The family mountain biking seems in good hands.....

Not much chance to post this last week due to family visiting, but much fun was had with my two wee grandsons aged six and three who wanted to go out on their bikes at every opportunity!

They've gone back home now and the silence is absolutely deafening! Their bike skills are pretty impressive for their age and I cant wait for them to reach their teens to see how they develop.

Mr Cool on his wee bike!

Big brother pretending he's big enough for the Giant VT

Father and number one son get ready to race!

Skywatch Scotland 8

Sunset at Glentress near Peebles tonight, Thursday the 13th August.

For more skies around the world go to http://skyley.blogspot.com/

Skywatch Scotland 7

The ultimate outside toilet! Some wag had dumped this toilet, (in immaculate condition by the way), at the roadside high in the back roads of Midlothian. I came across it while out road biking last weekend and while the view was certainly terrific I resisted the temptation to make use of it and enjoy the beautiful sunny morning sitting down!

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Open for business to all and sundry!

Biking, but not on mountains this weekend!

For various reasons there was no mountain biking up mountains this weekend but we still managed some 37 miles on a mixture of tracks and roads albeit with slick tyres instead of knobblies. Saturday's ride was from Musselburgh to Port Seton and back and the weather behaved itself after an indifferent start to the day. Sunday's ride began with a flat tyre on Baz's bike and then after a mile and a half he discovered he had another. Luckily it was in a deserted wood as the air turned distinctly blue when he found out he had another flat! That was patched up however and we did another 20 miles or so with no more trouble.

Annoyingly this was Baz's 3rd puncture in 24 hours!

Tide's out at Musselburgh harbour where we started from on Saturday.

A "sair fecht" back into a stiff headwind!