hightide trails...

loving having a weeks holiday at home...chill time...enjoying just going out halfday cycles locally,and spending a bit more time in each area with no rush to keep moving,
so hightide is midday, other trails are still soggy from all the rain last week so where to go to ride dry trails?, no probs...the closet beach to me `as the crow flies` is peffersands on the edge of the old tyningame estate (pronounced tin-ing-ham)
1/4 mile from home on the road and im soon into the woods of binning wood...a flattish and quite wet woodland planted in the 1700s on what was tyninghame moor...
clear felled for the WW2 war effort it was replanted in the 1950s...
regaurded as boring,wet and unintresting by one mountainbiker i spoke to i actually like it as its quiet and shelterd when windy,also has no signs anywhere..even at is roadside carparks... lots of boggy holes with marsh grasses and rhododendrons and a few drainage ditches between the scots pines and beaches,lots of paths..some well walked others not...the paths are wet this now but its a good wood to ride on the pugsley...


has ray mears been here?...

a clearing circle in the wood with monument has rides radiating out like spokes on a wheel...2 smaller circle clearings are nearby... one is named `bruces circle` i imagine after robert the bruce...


it was nice in the woods out the cold easterly wind and the low winter sun beaming through the pines...
across the mainroad and into tyningame estate, pine cones fallen onto a wall?...

an hour after hightide and there was quite a big surf up at ravensheugh...


riding down from the cliffs into links wood theres a nice line of WW2 coastal defence anti tank blocks that run nearly all the way to the tyne estuary at john muir park...




onto the winding trail above the coastline that now in winter is visable but quite hidden in summer...

the WW2 coastal defence machine gun pill box is clearly visable during winter, still full of sand it needs dug out...


the trail winds through the anti tank blocks to pop out at a track onto the coast with a checkpoint...i followed the blocks along the coastline towards the tyne estuary...






theres paths through pine woods here alongside the anti tankblocks,there hidden in summer but easy to follow today,it was silent riding through here..only the noise of the sea 1/4 mile out on the coast...

in `old binning wood` there are old crumbling walls through the woods from when sheep would have been grazed here on the rich links grasses before the woods were planted,
a gate still standing to a wall long gone...funny how folk still close it...




onto the coast at fir links wood-though the coast is lined with scots pines...



the coastline and the anti tankblock line meet at mosshouse point above the river tyne just at the opening into the tynes estuary of john muir park,lovely blue skys today give a great view east across to john muir park...


starting to head home we ride through the pines down into old beach trees...


back towards the coast...

and follow the track along an empty coastline...


riding home..heres a pic of tyninghame house,once an earls home,now split into flats,with its pointed towers it looks like its out of a walt disney cinderella film...

back through binning woods and a lovely low sun...

a chilled out trailride...