[theflycatcher]

The month of July suddenly seemed close enough to ring an alarm bell. We had postponed almost every serious discussion around the logistics of travel other than the broad dates. Everything else was TBD

One morning in June, I served Son the ultimatum before going to work "Set an itinerary today or else!". By evening, an itinerary was served. He declared it would be a Scottish bicycle ride through interesting castles. That was worth a thought, but there were many things to work through:

Logistics

1. Where do we source bicycles? We could have taken ours from Bangalore to London, but that would be an added layer of complexity and planning.

Finally, we zeroed on: https://www.onyourbike.com/london-bike-rental.php

They had many choices. I not going to choose a road bike - thin tires can easily puncture and will require you to top up pressure every once in a while. It needed to be a hybrid bike which I finally chose. And it had to take Panniers like these to hold a few clothes and essentials during the ride.

The pannier I had was an old one picked from decathlon some years back:


2. How do you take bikes to Edinburgh?

It occurred to us that we could have rented the bikes in Edinburgh instead of London. But that would have required us to return to Edinburgh, which we didn't want to.

https://www.scotrail.co.uk/ has a neat way to pre-book your bicycle slot. Usually coaches come with a few biking slots, or sometimes a different kind of coach accommodates staff and bicycle slots.




Bikes location in Avanti Trains:




Bikes when packed. On whether they needed to be locked, he said "I'd suggest you don't!"



3. How easy is it to get around on bicycles?

Google Maps will give you bicycling routes. They also skew to prefer bicycle only lanes.

This is when we discovered the National Cycle Network, which is a comprehensive site listing cycling routes across the UK - and even better - they number them. Google's directions call out these NCN routes!

4. What route would we take?
Google suggested NCN754 which was to take us from Edinburgh towards Stirling.



5. Where would we park bikes?

UK has a wonderful culture of bicycling. You will spot people across all age groups commuting in London on utilitarian cycles. You will occassionally spot some really fancy bikes (which I would excitedly point out to my son) that could cost as much as a compact car in India!

But bicycle thieves are everywhere. A big fat lock is a must. Fortunately, the bike rental company gave us a lock/key for each bike. But locking is insufficient if the vehicle is away for more than a few hours. Our hotel host on day 1 told us to bring the cycles in and park it inside the pub after hours

We ended up (story coming up further down in this post), parking the bike in the university. University campuses are thought to be safer.



On the final day we parked it in the (gasp!) Kings Cross Railway Station on one of the platforms. But that was also thought to be safe given that it is right under a CCTV's watch.


6. What about the rains!?

We both carried a rain jacket to keep dry in case, though it would have never been sufficient if there had been a downpour. But my past experience had prepared me (mentally) for very wet rides which would have been a bit cold and challenging.

We just got lucky! It rained all over in London, but Scotland was relatively dry on the days we were there.

7. My brother and nephew, who live in London were joining, but without a bike. How would we plan to merge our agendas?

Scotland is very well networked with train stations. It's very easy to hop in/out of trains and change your plans on a jiffy. We ended up doing this a few times to get around.

8. Getting in and out of Scottish castles can be expensive. Is there a way to find a "season ticket"

We stumbled on these during the travels. The explorer pass allows you to visit a number of castles on the route over a 14 day period. It doesnot cover every location. For example, a private castle which is still resided in, would not come under the scope of this pass.

https://www.historicenvironment.scot...ses/#section-1

The actual trip

We set off on our bikes from London.


Riding through the city was a challenge, with some cycling paths vanishing every once in a while. It is also common to have routes closed on the way. Google Maps is usually a dear friend for all things local navigation.

The bike also needed a train ticket! (free, though!)



After a night's halt at a hotel (where we parked the bikes in the Pub), we spent the morning at Edinburgh Castle. Note bike lane markings - very generous accommodations given. (Will our Bangalore traffic planners ever catch up!?)

Edinburgh Castle: https://www.edinburghcastle.scot/



The castle was a delight to explore:





After refreshing with some lemonade, we set off to ride on our 80km route for the day.

Cycling route 754 is a delight. You'll ride along a water canal that will see the occasional leisure boat or even an odd canoeist practicing as sport.



Common to see pets on the trail. All of those dogs were trained well to not bark/chase us cyclists/strangers.


You'll see many aqueducts and bridges on the way. Not a single car encountered so far!



We encounter Falkirk which as it turned out is an engineering achievement to link two canals at different elevations. The two canals being linked are vertically 35 meters apart. I've known that the Panama Canal deals with height differences between the two oceans. But in a "small" canal?! Impressive.

Their website describes it as: "The world’s only rotating boat lift, The Falkirk Wheel links the Forth & Clyde Canal to the Union Canal 35 metres above, allowing vessels to sail through the sky thanks to a unique fusion of art and engineering – and the same power it would take to boil eight kettles"

A picture from the internet shows how cool this is:


We then proceeded to reach Stirling where we stopped for the night.

The hotel was housed in Stirling University which has an impressive sports facility. It looks like Andy Murray (the twice Wimbledon champ) was a local. Was fun to see the tennis connect here (as club level tennis players ourselves).



I got to hear that this facility was busy training some of its athletes destined for the Paris Olympics 2024 - like this swimmer.
Note the "No Cameras" sign! This pic was taken with permission


Stirling Castle was quite different from Edinburgh's.


Attachment 2629823





Queen's garden


King's Knot. An octagonal stepped mound rising to 3m high. The scale of the gardens is best appreciated from the Ladies' Lookout in Stirling Castle.









As we proceeded, we joined my brother & nephew. That evening we did a lovely hike with a mild drizzle in the open grassland/meadow.


Wild flowers and ...


... grass swaying in the wind



(Contd.)

[theflycatcher]

The next morning, we headed off through some picturesque railway stations. I've always enjoyed remote railway stations (in India). These don't disappoint (in summer at least!)





Interesting to see AED equipment stationed in public places like train stations




Note reference to the "Great War"!


A Bagpipe shop!



We move to a town called Dundee and head to the "Glamis Castle". Glamis Castle isn't as well known in Scottish brochures and it one of those private setups on display.

We discovered that this castle has special appeal to those who like all things Royal - as the childhood home of the Queen Mother: https://www.glamis-castle.co.uk/cast...-queen-mother/

For the rest of us who are not as clued into Royal trappings, this castle is a bit different in that it is still a residence for some in the family. The east-wing is cordoned off, while a portion is open to public. The guides there were so energetic that they made some medieval history come alive through stuff on display. I was particularly amazed that a bed on display was much shorter than typical. The reasoning was that those noblemen "drank themselves silly along with consuming copious amounts of food before going to bed". Many who died asleep were said to be cursed by the devil who mistook them for corpses. The solution that was thought to work was to force them to sit up straight - as this would fool the devil. Science later explained the root cause of death, though that was discovered centuries later.







Attachment 2629921

This was a Sunday, and we discovered an annual event that was in action which will be of special interest to Team BHP-ians

Link to event: https://www.glamis-castle.co.uk/even...-extravaganza/















Note the Penny-farthing bike on display!!



(Contd.)

[theflycatcher]

On the final day, we take the train to St. Andrews, which has a few castle ruins and is famous for hosting the famous St. Andrews University. In fact, the town's economy runs on tourism and the university ecosystem.


Dundee train station:







At St. Andrews Castle (ruins)










No wildlife Seen! But who drew that butterfly?!


I can't help but notice no one can be very certain about what is found/seen. The language here suggests openness about this being guesswork


Do castles ever exist without intrigue? Mines and counter mines!



View of the St. Andrews Cathedral Ruins (https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/st-andrews-cathedral/history/)

Epilogue

And with that, we had to head back to London. Since we ended up leaving the bikes at Stirling, we had to return back to that place and get the bikes onto London. So, in hindsight, hiring at Edinburgh would have been ideal after all !

And to make matters comically complicated, we managed to lose a key for one of the bikes. So an exercise to hire a locksmith became an all-consuming hour's work before we could ride these bikes back to the station

Not surprisingly, the Locksmith's arrival triggered some alarm at the University, which caused a chatty policewoman to appear out of nowhere and probe!


With that sorted out after some explaining, we were on the way to Stirling station to catch trains: Stirling -> Edinburgh --> London.

Thats all folks! We'll repeat a variant of this ride some day! (For those of you who find this interesting, you should visit this for plans: https://www.visitscotland.com/

Later that night, I dodged probing questions starting with "Did you really have to lose the key?!"


(Concluded)

[Aditya]

Thread moved out from the Assembly Line. Thanks for sharing!

[Vijay T]

Absolutely wonderful bikelogue.

Very beautiful photos.

One particular photo I was intrigued by, shows Red flowers in hanging pot in foreground and castle in background.
Both are in sharp focus.How?.Really brilliant.

Parts of Scotland is very scenic.

Also very rare to see father son duo doing bike trips & bonding like this in modern times.

Kudos to both of you.

[theflycatcher]

Thanks Vijay. Now that you bring this up, one of the questions on logistics that I should have covered was "what camera to carry?". To that, I would have sprung for my Fuji X100V (which is very nice) - but the big downside was that I could not whip it out in the middle of a ride. Cycling jerseys have thin pockets behind and it's easier to slide a phone in. So, yeah - I used a phone camera. Also when walking about, it's one less thing to make sure I didn't lose

On to your other question about how I got the pot and the castle in focus together - this is by itself an interesting topic. I made the camera focus a bit ahead of the pot so as to maximize sharpness on distant objects. This is also driven by small sensors on the phone in addition to plenty of daylight - the chosen aperture must have been small. Another topic (for another thread maybe!) is that many of the better phone cameras probably build in focus stacking automatically - Computational Photography has truly arrived!

Originally Posted by Vijay T

Absolutely wonderful bikelogue.

Very beautiful photos.

One particular photo I was intrigued by, shows Red flowers in hanging pot in foreground and castle in background.
Both are in sharp focus.How?.Really brilliant.

Parts of Scotland is very scenic.

Also very rare to see father son duo doing bike trips & bonding like this in modern times.

Kudos to both of you.