Best thing about weekends on at work is the sunrises, and this winter has been superb for sunrises...
Work done and it was home and stick a Pugsley on the car and head for a half day ride- today around where i grew up at Aberlady...
The coast has so much variety despite having next to zero hills....
Someone who found inspiration for many of his books while taking walks here from his nearby house...
Here at Aberlady Bay the salt marsh is a sensitive area, so ideal to cycle the path through it to Kilspindie on a fatbike...
I first cycled along here on a mountain bike in the autumn of 1987 when aged 16 when i rode a Raleigh Maverick SE home from North Berwick i swapped a 26" wheel Raleigh road bike for, and after climbing up Gullane Hill amazed at the ease of this with the (then) latest 18 speed triple gears with a (then) tiny 26 tooth inner chain ring!, i descended to the Reserve then along through the salt marsh and home to Craigielaw. The worm had turned for me right then, cycling off road away from traffic, and the circle was complete when i got my first Surly Pugsley 7 years ago...
And i love to cycle here on our coast even more now as i get older and appreciate what is on our doorstep here in East Lothain... The Surly Pugsley is my inspiration...
You can still see where the old road crossed the bay here, old road you say?, you can read about it here on a previous
Blog post...
And about this stone here on that blog post...
The Bay is known for it`s old fishing boats, moored in the bay and left to rot for artists to draw and paint- well so i read once somewhere...
Here is some old pics of the boats from around the turn of 19th Century...
Like the other large area of salt marsh at Tyninghame this area was all sand too...
And not that long ago as this 1930s pic shows when Aberlady Bay was described as a bathing beach in the 1934 AA road atlas!...
Birds still come to the coast here, though mostly feathered types, like Curlew...
and Shellduck...
If your a resident of the old Customs house at Kilspindie, dating from when Aberlady was the port for Haddington then you may want to copy this old pic of an early motorists gathering!...
Other remnants remain visible in the mud from the days of the port here like 2 sets of cartwheels...
Anyone any idea what this is?. kinda looks like bones, and a metal object?...
Here is a wee film i made while riding to Kilspindie using the Go Pro...
Song is `Sick Times` by Boards of Canada
I rode along the coast below the golf course...
Kings Kilt rock...
And a boat mooring ring on a nearby rock...
A lot of sand has covered a lot of the rocks here making it a lot easier than normal to cycle over...
What a fantastic day!, been a great winter for blue skies!...
Crab Isle...
From here i headed around Shell Bay for some beach combing, always something to find washed in here...
And there is some amount of driftwood washed in, i need to do some shuttling down here with the Fat Bob Trailer soon!...
Some is ready to burn!...
Hee hee!, the 1970`s iconic Tonka might truck toy has been trumped by the Pugsley!
This is off one of the original Tonka trucks. I have a minted one in my living room shelf for books!...
Quite a lot of sea coal washed in too...
And here is why we call this `Shell Bay`....
I could go on along Gosford Bay but got other stuff to do today before Francis is home from a ski trip!...
Great to spend sometime along the coastline today below Craigielaw where we grew up and played as kids...
More soon...
