Winter,
Dark evenings, cold, sometimes damp, er sometimes cold and damp and overcast...
Miserable right?, well not always. I love all the seasons for there own unique skies, temperatures and light.
Maybe you commute to work in the dark and return in the dark and see little of the daylight. I guess then you could indeed moan about winter.
I love it as working out doors i often see sunrise and sunset and in clear weather lovely low sun skies that change through the day as long afternoon shadows draw the day to an end at sunset, often with amazing glowing red fiery skies. Cycling most days to work i get to ride into work behind a light that only shows the way ahead. by mid winter it is dark on the cycle to and home from work.
Often in my bikes light i see Barn Owls, Roe Deer - Released Fallow Deer too, Hares, Rabbits, the odd Fox, and sometimes Badgers. You never know what wildlife you will see.
I have road bikes for commuting, better into strong winds with drop bars and with cyclocross tyres ok on rough, often mud covered country roads.
I have ice Spike tyres for an old MTB. no slip on iced over roads.
I also have my fatbikes if the need arises and we get snow as we did in the Apocalyptic winter of
2012
So winter commuting by bike can be fun if your wrapped up warm and on the right bike for the conditions.
The papers are saying were in for a real hard winter, but they always say that!, we will need to see...
We have certainly got a cold blast this week!. It has been Baltic at work with chilling NW light winds and often strong gales.
Tuesday cycling into work it was -3 Celsius when i left home and cars and pavements were all white with a hard frost. At work it was a wind chill of -4 Celsius, it definitely felt like it!
Into the dark at 6.30am...
I took the old Pugsley so i could go for an offroad detour home after work before sunset...
The Moon set as the sun rose around 8am, it seemed to get colder!, but it was the wind increasing...
What do Green keepers do when it is so cold the ground is frozen?, loads of work!,
We are thinning out Gorse this week. Choose an area out of the wind and once working with the loppers and loading the tractor trailer you soon warm up.
You can enjoy the views too under a clear winter sky. lovely light blue sky and pink/orange clouds, often this colour because of the cold. There is bound to be snow further north today. It was -2C at 11am when i took this pic. Felt colder once up in the wind. Cold hands when idle even with sheepskin lined leather gloves!.
Home time and fun time. And some off road around the Hill...
Through the woods, warmer feeling out of the cold wind...
And back out into the bitter cold winter up on top of the hill...
North via Becky`s Strip...
And then field boundary's and here via an old road to North Berwick Law...
It gets a bit overgrown...
Then stops at a new field fence with a Pedestrian gate...
But the old road once continued on around the base of the Law and down to the present track to the old quarry from the car park. Here it is on the six-inch to Mile OS map of 1908. Notice the long gone Curling pond on the north side of the Law....
Fatbikes are good on trails, loads of grip, slower steering- from being snow biased in design, and loads of grip, make trails like this narrow single track around the Law really easy to ride...
Half pedal to stop pedal strike on the hillside slope and they make light work of an easy looking trail that can be quite tricky to `clean` feet up...
Exmore ponies, plenty for them to eat!...
East off of the Law...
If your new on here you may not know what this concrete object is, now inside a Telecommunications Ariel Mast compound. It is a relic of the Cold War, One of 3 `Posts` as these bunkers were called, remaining in East Lothian. Manned by volunteers of the Royal Observer Corps....
The hatch is welded shut to this bunker...
Built during the dark days of paranoia and possibility of Armageddon, the clock was ticking...
But there is another in East Lothian you can access. Now it has a few inches of standing water in it but here is a film i made of the bunker a few years ago, and what they were constructed for...
Here is a more informative film of these bunkers roll in those dark days and the main HQ bunkers...
If you want to live the Cold War experience then how about this Nuke Silo complex converted to a house that was up for sale a few years ago in the USA. The Ultimate `Man Cave` -)
Do you like your privacy?, i know i sometimes do, would you like a secluded house miles away from prying eyes and curtain twitching nosey neighbours?, or maybe a weekend retreat to get away from it all?,
Or maybe you suffer from mass paranoia and just need to feel secure and safe...
Well folks this just may be the place your looking for, this was for sale to the north of Albany, in the Adirondacks a few years ago.
In its 230 Acres of surrounding land within its own perimeter security fence it has its own 2050 feet airstrip...
Inside the house has lovely warming features...
Want more privacy than this?, ok then head to these doors and punch in the code on the wall key pad...
Through the doors and then down and down you go...
To a 2000 lbs nuke proof blast door and then you enter into a
9 LEVEL COLD WAR MISSILE SILO!...
Check out the underground luxury rooms...very 1960s James Bond/ world domination villan...
Marble bathroom? -:)...
Further below more tunnels and blast doors eventually lead to the Missile Launch Silo...
Here is where the SM - 65F Missile would have sat, this Silo was never armed with one...
This facility opened in 1962 and was closed in 1965 due to being made obsolete with the introduction of Titan 2 rocket. The Silo cost around 18 million dollars in 1958...yep!
It could have been yours for a snip at only $1, 750,000...
Back to todays cold, and the light of the day was fading...
And the temperature dropping. time for some cider from Tesco, and ride home by LED light again offroad on the John Muir Way trail...
