Friend Craig has been wanting to get in a good ride on my Surly Krampus 29+ for a while now so i suggested we head up into the Lammermuir Hills for the day.
I have been wanting to do some exploring west of Lammer Law on the western fringes towards the A60 road for a while, also i wanted to revisit a Cold War bunker so worked out a rough loop on the map and we would use the Hopes reservoir to get up into the hills, starting in Gifford...
Pic by Craig...
Yester trails...
Pic by Craig...
Famous sign at Longyester...
Along the road we road up into the hills via the Hopes estate...
Gravel grinding...
Today's ride should be ideal for the plus bikes, We would be mostly riding gravel for varying smoothness,
I was riding my new Pugsley with the KramPug wheels...
Low cloud up on top...
Pic by Craig...
The rough stones came from the famous Calton Jail in Edinburgh when it was demolished to help build the dam...
This was fun riding along above the Aqua duct...
Need to follow it another time and see where it goes...
We rode SW and up into the clouds...
Steepest climb of the day...
Into the cloud...
Lunch!
pic by Craig...
Up through the clouds and around Crib Law...
Pic by Craig...
Through a shooting club firing range around Hog Hill...
Kelphope hill and down to the wind farm...
B17 must be west of the A68!
pic by Craig...
And today's destination near the A68, see it on the horizon?
A relic from the Cold War, Clandestine activities of the Royal Observer Corps...
OXTON Observer post...
Pic by Craig...
In my bag i brought something we may need to get in but did not need as open, was locked last time i visited around 10 years ago, this is a Scottish T Key...
pic by Craig...
Pic by Craig...
`Down the hatch`...
pic by Craig...
A great find!!!, a Tommy`s Cooker...
`USED BY EXPLORERS, BIG GAME HUNTERS AND BY THE MOUNT EVEREST TEAM`...
Pic by Craig...
Pic by Craig...
A nice explore,
Here is a good 6 min film on the history of the ROC during the Cold War and a restored post...
Back out side and time to get rolling back to Gifford...
Last big climb of the day over the shoulder of `Widows Knowe`...
Then the long descent to Stobshiel farm and tarmac...
And back to Gifford, 7 hours out, 38km with some serious climbing-ace descending, great banter and company from Craig
I shot some Go Pro footage, not having the chest straps on the chest mount tight to let the lungs breathe on the climbs meant for some shaky footage on the long fast descents so had to edit most of the best fast stuff out...
Song is `Rhubarb Bagel` by Lester...
Lammermuir Hills 29+ exploration west side... from coastkid71 on Vimeo.
More soon...
No comments:
Post a Comment