My bike -vs- Saturn V

Every morning when I start cycling, in my back pocket of my cycling jersey I put my mobile phone and my camera.  I clip in a GoPro camera to the front of the bike – those are the pictures you can see from the handlebars.  And I clip in my Garmin cycling computer, which provides navigation and information about the ride (such as time, distance, distance to go etc).  I hardly think about these things.  This morning, because I was going to be riding about 40 miles straight out with not a lot of things to look at, I put Jo’s iPad Mini in my back pocket as well, and listened to some music on the headphones.  It was a bit of a clunky thing to do, but I didn’t want to use up the battery in the phone in case I needed to use it to make calls or look at maps.  Once the iPad was there I never noticed it.

I had an awesome morning cycling largely on cycle paths (which I’ll come to later), listening to music in on a beautiful Saturday morning.  (Thank you, Above & Beyond for saving me from more Paul McCartney…).  It then dawned on me that on my back and handlebars I had

• six cameras (2 in the phone front and back, 2 in the iPad (ditto), a ‘real’ camera and the GoPro).  At least one is full (1920x1080) HD quality, and three are 720HD
• 74 Gb of solid state memory on me (16 in the iPad, 40 in the phone, 16 in the GoPro and 2 in the Garmin)
• definitely more processing power than was required in 1969 to put a man on the moon
• an order of magnitude more than was used in the Space Shuttle, even when it had its computers upgraded in 1990 (it had five computers, each originally with 424Kb of memory and later upgraded to 1Mb!)

At a guess, I had more computing power on my back this morning than existed in the entire world until probably 1960, and more storage capacity than existed across the world until say 1965.

I don’t think about stuff like that very often, but I did this morning, and I think it is truly astounding how the world has moved on.  I’m not even counting my MacBook that was in the pannier at the time…

Going back to the cycle ride, I left Moffat early and was back on the long and boring roads of yesterday – hence slipping the iPad in my back pocket of my jersey to listen to music.  It was a lovely morning…

With some good tunes the miles passed really quickly.  I did a total of 83 miles today, and, at a guess, all but 10-15 miles were either on cycle lanes or dedicated cycle paths. 

I came across this sign. 

Question – do you know the difference between these two signs?

The one in the triangle means ‘cycle route ahead’, the one in the circle means ‘no cycling’.  I saw the triangle one last week on a dual carriageway in Plymouth, I wasn’t sure whether it meant yes or no to cycling so I had to stop and look up the highway code on my phone.  Now I am an aficionado, but I did think it was very confusing – surely you’d expect a cross through the sign like this one that I just found?

I made really good progress on the cycle paths, and came across a big wind farm…

  

Throughout I was riding alongside the east coast train line and the M74, which looked just like the M25 in rush hour…

Quick stop for a break and then back on the bike and the scenery was beginning to get a bit more interesting.

I unclipped the GoPro and took some pictures as it has a much wider-angle lens.

It's interesting to see how the rolling shutter in the camera distorts the bicycle spokes as they were spinning - it almost looks like they are curved spokes.  Anyway then it was a stop at a service station for a sandwich and coffee, and load up some more tunes on the iPad!

I went through a few towns and they all either had bunting all over the place or lots of Union Flags.  I’m not sure why that is – if anyone knows please drop me a line / add a comment.  It wasn’t an isolated village, it was lots of places this morning that has decorations everywhere.

Finally I hit the outskirts of Glasgow…

 … where the cows like to live underneath electricity pylons…

I managed to get myself caught in the middle of a wedding procession, which was a bit embarrassing.  There was a cavalcade of about five cars and I somehow got slotted in between the leading Bentley and the following cars, and even though I tried to slow down and wave them past it took embarrassingly ages to do so!

From cycling on cycle paths or lanes for the first 30-40 miles or so, I rode on normal roads coming in to Glasgow, but then hit the amazing Cycle Route numbers 7 and 75.  This took me from about 5 miles outside of Glasgow, all the way to the city centre, and then all the way out again until I reached Loch Lomond this evening.  Glasgow has truly got it right for cyclists.  I went over disused bridges and cycle paths along the canals and River Clyde.

You don’t go very fast on the cycle paths around the city, so you end up looking around a lot more.  I saw some really strange housing developments where all the houses were cubes. 

It was whilst gazing sideways at one of these, and at the same time eating a cereal bar with one hand, that I clearly wasn’t looking where I was going and ended up cycling into the bushes and falling off!  Unfortunately just before the bushes I grazed my arm.

Thanks for asking, don’t worry, I’ll live.

This one’s for Jo: past a load of rowing clubs.  First Glasgow Rowing Club…

… then Glasgow University Rowing Club…

… and finally Clydesdale Rowing Club.

As I was going through the city centre, there appeared to be an ‘oil rig lifeboat testing centre’ in the middle of a bridge.  It was a bit of a surprise, but they had about five lifeboats all ready to be launched into the river.

I got to the old docks where there were some interesting bridges over the Clyde.

A massive crane from when it was a working dockyard.

And this one surprised me – the Sydney Opera House.  It is the Clyde Auditorium designed by Forster but it was not what I was expecting to see in Glasgow.

They were clearly building a new stadium.  It is the new Hydro concert arena, again designed by Norman Foster.

The Glasgow Tower and the IMAX cinema.

And BBC Scotland.

I cycled past this bridge, which started to be raised…. 

… I waited ages to see what was going through, until they just lowered it again.  I think the bridge operator was just showing off to his friends.

I then cycled along a pathway, which went between the Clyde and its dockyards on my left, and the housing estates on my right.  Eight days ago I went through the Devonport dockyards in Plymouth, today I went past the BAE shipyard.  I’m not sure whether this was Yarrow or the old Kvaerner yard, I need to look at the map.

On the path I kept coming across these unusual looking huts.

Out of the top of each of them was a long wire to the bottom, with a handle like a spade-handle at the end.  I must have seen about ten of these and didn’t know what they were, until I asked.  They are pigeon lofts!

I then ended up in a pretty rough part of town.

There was quite a lot of broken glass on the cycle path, and was concerned that this was not the place to get a puncture, so I left the cycle paths and headed for the main roads for a bit.

Eventually back on the paths and following the canals.  This path took me all the way out of Glasgow to Loch Lomond, almost 20 miles!

A few days ago in Runcorn I saw some police with a stinger.  Clearly the scallywags had hopped in a sailing boat without knowing how to handle it…

Back on the cycle path, past a bridge and a tractor spreading muck…

… when I came across this road bridge, which had a load of cows resting underneath it!

The last hour was a very leisurely cycle to Loch Lomond…

…. And a relaxing couple of beers.  Whilst it was a long day with reasonably high miles, it was a really enjoyable day on the bike.  The first third was spent covering the miles at a good pace, the next third was very interesting going through Glasgow, and the final few hours was spent cycling along canals leaving the city.  I still find it amazing that most of today’s 83 miles was on cycle lanes or paths – that is a real lesson to other cities.

Here’s today’s route.

Tomorrow I push further north to Glencoe.  It will be fewer miles but more hills.

Finally a short video from the morning - a happy ride!

June 2013 - Lejog day 10 - cycling in Scotland on a sunny Saturday morning from Zub on Vimeo.