Friday 2 November 2012

Friday Affy Beach Ride at John Muir Park...

Half day at work today, Friday and straight from work down to John Muir Park with the Surly Moonlander at Midday and just gone Low Tide.
A biting cold wind and forecast is hard frost tonight, perfect for beach riding and how i like it, no sweating, no bugs flying about, and usually quiet beaches...

It could rain for seven days and seven nights and the sand based trails here would still be dry the following day, some nice single track through the Scots Pine woods...


Across Hederwick Sands...


Out over the real soft sand to Spike Island...




Biting cold wind today, rain moving across to the coast from the West...




Along the tide line for a bit towards Belhaven Bay...



Then through the maze of soft sand paths through the Marram grass...



Spike Island is a sand spit with a saltmarsh between the strip and the woods of John Muir Park. It is only about 2Km Long but growing in height. There are loads of paths through  the dunes.
Here is the point on on Google Earth, Hedderwick sands on the left around the Pine platation, Belhaven Bay on the right...

From above and North to South...





So with all these paths it would be easy to miss something nearly hidden in the engulfing sands that we used to go into as kids, something i looked for last winter but could not find, but today i stumbled upon it, can you see it?...

A WW2 Coastal Defence Machine Gun Pill Box...

Two lines of fire North and East...

Which shows how high this point has grown in the last 70 years with continuing blown sand bound together with the Marram Grasses you cannot view the beach at ground height, and the gun slits are about two feet below ground level...



Back onto the coastline...




Down to the waters edge and some relaxing `Wave Therapy`...





A grey seal washed in, sad to see this, seen another one at Gullane beach last Saturday...

If you wonder who pulls a lot of the creels and lines and nets washed in up above the tide line and also bags up litter it is often a gentleman i have met a few times doing a good deed...

I helped out and we dragged some creels up onto the dunes after we pulled them out of the sand and cut the ropes....
If people should get Honours for good work it should be folk like this Gentleman who does voluntary work on our coast...


Spits of rain before a down pour, time to head home, a nice couple of relaxing hours ride...

Soberish Friday evening and just 2 bottles of this lovely single variety Cider as doing a day trip tomorrow to a famous East Coast Scottish beach...


4 comments:

  1. I love the look of that track through those pine woods...Great post as always.

    -Trevor

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  2. Hi Trevor, i should do a film of that track as it is good...

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  3. Well done finding the pill box again. That bull seal looks healthy apart from the peck marks. Was there any sign of big injury?

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  4. No signs on the seal at all Ped, the same at Gullane last weekend where there was another washed in

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