It always goes back to the beach....

 

This blog I mean... it started  about beach riding when I got that first Surly Pugsley (the 1st one in Scotland) what 13 years ago now... at the time no one else was making wee films cycling on the coast except the odd Alaskan coast film by Eric Parsons and the like on those early bike packing / Packraft inflatable boats...

I do like cycling elsewhere but my heart is on the coast, its where I grew up and spent many happy childhood days around our coastlines of East Lothian with my late father as I accompanied him as Countryside Ranger in that well known big blue Landrover as he visited the coastal car parks and went on a patrol along the beaches and out across the exposed sands at low tides....

You can read about my Dad and his job as Ranger on a previous blog post Here...

And while the coastline maybe visually changes little to people who visit say once a year on holiday here it changes massively seasonly with sand movement, wildlife, and things to find along the shoreline... and cycling a fatbike allows you to access it all easily...

It was back to basics today with G on nightshift - So I  go to ground, either in the Man cave or cycle to the coast and today it was along to my backdoor at John Muir Country Park (JMCP) and it was a fine spring morning with 9am 1 meter low tide and not a breadth of wind, even at Seafield Bridge - it's official name - not Belhaven Bridge or `Bridge to Nowhere` - that last name seems to upset locals!, 

I could already hear the Skylarks singing their hearts out across at Spike Island where they make there home in the Marram grass dunes...

Today I was on my go to beach bike - Surly Pugsley 2.0 - which takes the biggest available wheel rims and tyres, previously made for the Surly Moonlander, This frame is just so good  and typically human behaviour this was made for one production run then axed from the Surly range! why? 

Well I know why because like every bicycle manufacture these days they want to sell you 3 frame sets or 3 complete build bikes to do different cycling roles, but I will let you in on a secret... this bike can do all rolls perfectly! 5" Fatbike wheels, 29+ wheels, 29er, touring, expedition, drop bars, Gravel - if you follow fashion....

Granted it has a 100mm wide bottom bracket that if your not used to it (or a die hard roadie/touring cyclist) will feel a bit strange at first, but abandon the thoughts of knee damage caused by a wider BB on Fatbike frames, as many folk myself included have been riding them for over 10 years with no knee problems!....

Anyhows i was out to get some point to point filming today as well as enjoy the quietness of a mid week (well Friday actually) pretty much free to people coast so easier to film with no one in shots...

Today I brought the older Go Pro HERO 8 - it on the same settings as newer HERO 10 - which is `Activity`, `1080`, ` 240fps` (24frames per sec), `boost on` for stabilisation,  and had them mounted back to back on home made mounts on a selfie mono stick pole, to get more footage cycling to and away from the camera in one ride by... it makes for a more flowing film without trying to hide stop start and circling back round tyre tracks - see I bet you never think about having to do that when watching my films!

It takes a bit more time to edit two cameras though as the iMac back home does not load the camera film files in timed order - usually with the one camera  I edit a 3-5 minute film in under 30 minutes and it saved as a file to my pc it is then uploaded to YouTube in about half an hour - so all done under an hour,  nice and quick and simple...

With sky clearing out to sea and a thin layer of cloud inland it made for interesting light today and a kind of silhouette image of me riding by...

The point at Spike Island is closed now until late summer for ground nesting birds in the furthest dunes...

The path crosses before the point to Hedderwick sands to the Tyne estuary and it was all the way to here and here in the dunes I was greeted with Skylarks in full song, a lovely bird to here...

Cycling on your own out on a coast with no one else about and zoned out it does not get any better cycling  than this for myself...  well maybe a day doing some technical rock crawling!... 

Dune system at its best here, growing yearly...

Around past the driftwood and Matilda tank wreckage between the dunes and salt marsh to return to the Bridge and all the way to Skylarks singing overhead...

No one at the Bridge is a rare thing, just people sitting in cars parked behind me on their lunch break...

Here is another wee film, today I managed to leabe the microphone turned up editing as hardly any wind so you can hear the Skylarks, using some chilled Boards Of Canada tracks,

Songs are `Olson` then `Open The Light` from the Album `Music Has The Right To Children`  by Boards Of Canada

More soon...