A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea

Over the course of this year I've been hearing about audaxes and thinking about trying one. Finally, one came up which was reasonably near home and a manageable distance: 114 kilometres. I took my twelve-year-old Raleigh Record Sprint, which is not really a very good bike in a lot of ways but is fast and comfortable for long distances. It was pretty much standard apart from a Brooks saddle and Shimano SPD-R pedals.

An Inauspicious Start

Start was at Coldingham Beach at 9.00am. I arrived at 8.30, unpacked
my bike from the car, assembled it (carefully, I thought), walked
over to the control table and signed my name on the sheet. Sitting on
the grass by the control table was someone with a long black ponytail
who was clearly Jon Senior, so I greeted him and we chatted a little
and then I started organising my gear - again, carefully, as I
thought. Finally nine o'clock rolled round, and Bruce Lees (the
organiser) said his bit, and the whole bunch - about twenty five
bikes, including one tandem - set off. Up the first hill was fine.

As soon as we started the descent the back of my bike started making
seriously unhappy noises - noises that sounded like an imminently
failing rear wheel bearing. I stopped, got off, and messed, and Jon
stopped to offer support. I couldn't see anything (apart from a
sticky rear brake caliper, which I knew about) wrong. After a bit of
fiddling we set off again. By now the peloton was out of sight. I was
pretty doubtful about my fitness to complete seventy-five miles, and
really didn't want to be dropped - I wanted to stay with the bunch
for the morale advantages that offers. So I sprinted for a mile or
so, until I'd caught the rear of the peloton. And then I noticed Jon
wasn't with me, so I eased up, and he still wasn't with me, so I
circled back. I found Jon with a broken front deraileur - the bolt
holding the band had pulled out (Shimano 105: cheese, or possibly,
given its provenance, tofu). Jon screwed the bolt back in and we
continued on a mile or so, by which time I had become aware that my
computer wasn't working... because I'd put my front wheel in back to
front, so the magnet wasn't on the same side as the pickup. And I
hadn't got my mitts on.

Jon's front deraileur band failed a second time and I used the
opportunity while he took it off to turn my front wheel round. From
this point on my computer was working, athough I had to add five
miles to the distance it showed to get our true distance. We set off
again, by now a long way behind the main pack. Jon navigated, and I
was glad to let him. We carried on at my best pace (which was clearly
less than Jon's) for some miles until we caught up with another
straggler. I told Jon to go on and not wait for me, and for some time
I and the straggler (a serious looking cyclist with a good audax
bike, but looking ten years older than me) carried on together for
some miles. As we crossed the Tweed on an old suspension bridge she
said to me to go on ahead, and I did so, arriving at the village of
Horncliffe.

Before leaving home I'd printed out the route sheet (which had been
emailed to me) several point sizes bigger than the official one so
that I could read it without reading glasses, and I'd tucked it into
my map slieve behind the map I'd printed out and marked as best I
could. Here, though, the map was ambiguous, so I looked behind it for
the crib sheet... and it wasn't there. I remembered I'd tucked the
hotel booking in with it and I assume I'd pulled it out there and
then left it. Panic! The straggler caught up with me, and, as we
consulted her sheet, Jon (who had taken a wrong turning and got lost)
caught up with us too. We went on, and I stayed with Jon, cycling
through gently rolling countryside towards our first control point at
Etal. At Etal we found that we were not, after all, last - three
riders were still awaited. I was given a new route sheet, but found
that, without reading glasses (which I'd purposely not brought) I
couldn't really read it.

This was the point at which a sensible person would have given up. I
couldn't read the directions, I had an undiagnosed but serious
sounding mechanical problem with the bike (and suspected it was the
drive side rear wheel bearing), and I was clearly not fit enough to
stay with the main group. However, we'd done OK so far, and so I
decided to carry on at least until the next control.

A Senior Moment

At this point I should stop and say what an excellent riding companion
Jon Senior was. I had never met him before. He was a lot fitter than
me and climbed much better - he could easily have left me on any of
the climbs, and probably on the flat. He waited for me again and
again when he could have gone on with other riders. And he took the
full burden of navigation. Of course I physically could have
completed the course without him. But I would not have. By myself, my
morale would not have been good enough, particularly in the last
twenty miles, when I suspect I was probably pretty whiney and not at
all good company. Jon stuck with me, and I'm very grateful to him.

Straight On at Crossroads

The next few miles from Etal were very pleasant riding. The wind,
which was clearly sturdy, was at first a crosswind and then
increasingly a following wind, and the terrain, although rolling,
tended downhill. Soon we crossed a ridge and could see causeway to
Lindisfarne ahead of us. The minor road we were on descended fairly
steeply towards it, and the wind was helping us down at a good 35
mph.

The next guidance on the cribsheet was 'SO at Xrds'.

Well, I knew my brakes were pretty much crap. They're old Weinmann
single pivot calipers, and the return spring on the rear caliper has
lost most of its spring. I had been planning to treat myself to a
really good set of new brakes for the trip, but it hadn't happened.
And anyway, there was probably some flat land at the bottom of the
hill to slow down. And anyway, a crossroads, 50-50 chance we'll have
right of way, and if we don't, these little country roads don't have
much taffic on them...

Hang on, that's the A1!

I found that my brakes were a little better than I had thought they
were, if you really try. Across the A1, across a level crossing
over the East Coast Main Line, and out onto the sandy, open littoral.
By this time it was clear that our tailwind is really sturdy. We tore
down the road and out across the bottom of the sea at a steady, easy
27mph - on the dead flat. The surface on the causeway itself - which
I'd been anxious about, since the tide sweeps across it twice a day -
was excellent. Across onto the island, and the wind still with us we
continued to tear along. Now we met the leaders of our audax heading
back, and exchanged greetings. At the post office we had our brevet
cards stamped again, and I asked Jon what he planned to do. We agreed
we'd head back more or less straight away.

Blow Wind and Crack Your Cheeks

Well, we knew we had a wind to face. Out across the island towards the
causeway I worked downwards through all the gears I'd got, one at a
time, until I was in my lowest (which, at 42x21, is still 56" so not
very low), and the speed was down to under 10 mph. On the causeway it
was clean, laminar wind, very steady; but blowing at least force
five. It was frankly a battle. Ahead was a yellow jacket, which we
were gradually chasing down. Finally we caught up to a much older
rider on an old but good tourer, exchanged a few words, and passed
him. Back across the railway, back across the A1, and back up that
long hill into the teeth of the wind.

It felt like too much. It felt like I couldn't do it. The old
gentleman on the tourer passed us, and before long the newspaper that
had been in his saddlebag came drifting back to us one sheet at a
time, as if he was throwing out ballast. As the hill steepened Jon
was creeping away from me. Finally I cracked. I could not do it. I
got off and pushed up to the top. And at the top, Jon was again
waiting, cheering me up and urging me on.

At each bend the wind seemed to move with us, making each turn of the
pedals a struggle. Even the downhills were hard work. We reached the
50 mile point, and I was very much aware that my legs were now in
uncharted territory - I hadn't ridden so far in one go for at least
ten years. But mostly I felt OK. I wasn't feeling too tired, and,
apart from one thing I'll come to in a minute, I wasn't really sore.
I was, however, aware that I was slowing Jon down quite a lot, and
that I should tell him to go on - and also aware that if he did I
would probably give up.

Yo' Feet's too big

The real problem that was sapping my morale was a very painful left
foot. I have short but wide feet. I had only one pair of cycling
shoes which are extremely comfortable - my winter SIDIs. But the
weather forecast was for sun and gentle winds, and I'd assumed they'd
be too warm. So, in Edinburgh on Friday, I'd gone to look for a pair
of summer shoes which would fit. The only pair I could find that were comfortable were a
beautiful pair of don't-look-at-the-price SIDIs. But they didn't have
an adaptor for ordinary SPDs, so I'd had to buy a pair of pedals as
well (I bought SPD-Rs, mainly because they were cheaper than any of
the other pedals which would do, and the bill was looking very
scarey).

Obviously it isn't sensible to go for a long ride with new shoes and
an unfamiliar cleat system, but...

At about fifty miles my left foot was really hurting - very painful
indeed. Eventually at an information control I got off the bike, sat
down and took my shoe off. For five minutes I wiggled my toes in
bliss, and then faced the issue of putting it back on again. I
loosened off the ratchets, slipped my foot in, and... comfort. I'd
obviously just overtightened it before. We rattled down into Berwick
and caught up with some other riders at the control there, and things
started to look brighter. But then the route took us inland again,
once more climbing steadily into the wind. As we came to the A1 the
routing instructions were ambiguous. Jon and I got lost, and then
just about caught the tail of the bunch at the crossing of the A1.
From the A1 the route climbed on, and Jon was keeping with the group.
I couldn't. Once more I was being dropped.

I must go down to the seas today

I struggled on up the hill, and at the top Jon was waiting again. I
was getting slower and slower on the climbs, and recovering slower
and slower at the tops of them, still fighting into the wind. Finally
the route turned from northwest to northeast, and we started to
descend again towards the coast, and once again the wind was with us.
I didn't exactly feel tired, and I wasn't any longer uncomfortable,
but my legs seemed to have lost their ability to clear lactic acid.
Fortunately the climbs got fewer and shorter and the descents longer.
Eventually we descended through Coldingham village, down to the
beach, took our shoes off and wiggled our toes in the sand.

At the end we didn't do badly. We finished at 4, seven hours on the
road. It was an hour longer than I'd hoped. We averaged 12.1 miles an
hour while we were rolling, and 10.7 mph (17.2km/h) over all. That's
not a good time for an audax, of course, but even the experienced
audaxers had found the wind tough going. Control was, I believe, still waiting
for another twelve riders (out of about 25 starters) when we loaded
the bikes into the truck and left. So that counts as mid-table
respectability.

I did enjoy most of it and I'm glad I did it. It was much tougher than
I expected, and I'm not certain I'll do it again. Certainly not
without a good riding companion, and probably not without knowing the
route.

Lessons learned? Prepare. Jon and I were the only first-timers and the
only people (so far as I know) to suffer mechanical problems. My
mysterious noise appears to be something to do with a mis-adjusted
front deraileur; in addition the cable clamp bolt on my rear
deraileur was slipping through the day, but fortunately not so far
that I couldn't select all gears and the joy of non-indexed
deraileurs is they don't go out of indexing. My front inner tube also
had a slow leak which necessitated three or four pumping stops,
although I was able to do all but one of these at controls. Finally,
doing an audax on a bike which is really not set up for climbing was
a mistake. I should have fitted much wider range gears.

Fixing the holes in Sun's APIs

   
      I've spent another week fixing a lacuna in one of Sun's APIs - in this
      case, the fact that JDBC lacks a database neutral means of manipulating
      user accounts.
   
   
      Unlike MaybeUpload and the Servlet API, JDBCUserKluge is not even nearly
      seamless to use for users of JDBC API. It's written very much as an
      integral part of Jacquard. It's something I've known I had to do for -
      literally - years, and which I've been putting off because I knew it
      would be hard. And now I've done it.
   
 

Happiness is a Filthy Bicycle

It's been one of those weekends. Saturday the weather was too horrible
to go sailing, so in the end I worked all morning and half the
afternoon. And then the weather was still horrible so I stated playing
a computer game, as you do. And, as you do, I went on playing it late
into the night (and then it crashed just as I was about to achieve
something), and the consequence of that was I overslept my tide this
morning. Although in all probability I'd have got down to the marina,
looked at the weather and thought, nah... It was gey dreich. So I was
determined to get a bike out but what with one thing and another the
day was getting by. Finally about four o'clock I stuck the Mantra on
the back of the truck and headed up country.

I left the truck at Stroan Loch and cycled up the Raiders' Road. The
wind, which had been easily force six down on the coast, was pretty
blustery out of the west but not too bad because it was at right angles
to my direction. By the time I got to the Otter Pool it was raining
quite sturdily, so I stopped, peeled off my jersey and pulled on my
waterproof. Then on up the Raider's Road. I've cycled it before; it's
an interesting but not altogether pleasant surface to ride on being
essentially a dirt road but much better graded than most dirt roads, so
the surface finish where it hasn't been chewed up is almost as smooth
as tarmac. Unfortunately it had been chewed up a bit by the Galloway
Hills Rally which was through there a couple of weeks ago... It's a
filthy surface, though, and the bike was covered in a fine dark grey
grit.

You're also climbing steadily but noticeably along the whole length of
the Raiders' Road, mostly running close alongside the Black Water. And
it's pretty scenic. The Black Water is gorgeous, particularly in the
long sections where it runs over beds of flat rock. Towards the
Clatteringshaws end the road swings away from the water quite steeply
up the hillside, and as the sun had now come out (the weather improved
steadily) I stopped at the top to change my waterproof back for my
jersey. Then a blast back down almost to river level and another short
climb and I turned left onto the tarmac of the A712... for all of fifty
yards. And then left again onto the track up to Loch Grannoch, which is
signposted as part of NCN7.

Somewhere in Galloway this summer there is an osprey nesting. The RSPB
are, very carefully, not saying where. It's probably on one of the
really inaccessible lochs up in upper Galloway, but short of going into
serious wilderness the most remote lochs are Loch Grannoch and Loch
Skerrow, so I was half hoping to see one. Unfortunately you see very
little of Loch Grannoch because of the trees, although in one section
of clear fell there was a marvelous view out over it. It's typical of
Galloway, really. Here's a loch about the size of Coniston and at least
as scenic as Coniston and there's actually no public road which is even
in the same glen - has even a view of it.

The track up to Loch Grannoch was mostly cycling down corridors of
spruce forest. Initially the track was uphill for two or three miles
and sort of average landrover track quality, but halfway down the loch
it was being used by harvesters and forwarders and was a bit chewed up,
and as it started to descend past the lower end of the loch it was very
loose and rough indeed. My Mantra has an enormous amount of good smooth
travel at the back, and four inches of not-very-good suspension at the
front, and it was just about able to cope with going down that track at
a reasonable pace, although it was a jarring experience. I would hate
to try it on a fully laden touring bike, or even a hardtail mountain
bike. And this is THE SAME national cycle route - NCN7 - which meanders
down gentle country lanes not five miles from my home. Sustrans are
crazy. A bike that could cope with the track down from Loch Grannoch to
the Big Water of Fleet Viaduct is not going to be suitable for gentle
country lanes, and vice versa. Still, it was a glorious, fast, bumpy
bash down to the viaduct, and there the first minor problem with my
plan manifested itself.

I hadn't known for certain whether you could get up from NCN 7 onto the
old railway line, but I'd assumed I'd find a way when the time came.
When I got there, there I was on the west bank of the Fleet. And there,
leading up from NCN7, was a nice landrover track up onto the railway at
the west end of the massively sturdy viaduct. And there, neatly across
the viaduct was an eight foot high barbed-wire-entanglement-topped
barrier.

Whoops.

Oh well, not going to get across the viaduct. What now? I did think of
cycling down into Gatehouse and getting a taxi back to the truck, or
even cycling the long way round by the road. But it felt so wimpish.
Instead I turned round and cycled back up towards Loch Grannoch,
crossing the Fleet on a low bridge, to where I'd seen a track off to
the south east. I can't actually focus on a map without my reading
glasses, which I didn't have with me, but it seemed to sweep round and
run parallel to the railway. So I thought I'd try it. Initially there
was a long curving climb on an atrociously loose, rough surface -
although to be fair the Mantra coped with it fairly well and I was able
to keep up a reasonable speed. After a bit it levelled out and ran
straight and I could see by the sun I was riding in approximately the
right direction. I kept thinking that the railway couldn't be more than
a few hundred yards south of me, and kept looking down firebreaks to
see if I could see it. None of them looked ridable. And in any case the
track was now impressively straight and with a nice easy gradient -
impressively well engineered for a forestry road -- and then suddenly I
was in a cutting.

Oh, well, that's alright, then.

After a couple of miles or so of this well engineered (but still quite
rough) track, the track started to twist downhill and I realised I'd
come to the now demolished Little Water of Fleet viaduct. They've made
an impressive job cleaning up. I couldn't see any of the piers - it's
been dismantled completely, almost as if it had never been there. Only
the ends of the old embankment give it away.

In any case the track crossed the Little Water of Fleet and came to a
junction; one branch climbed back up towards the railway line. I
followed this, and to my surprise the second minor problem with my plan
appeared. The track went straight across the old line, and disappeared
off south down the glen. The old line itself was thickly overgrown with
broom and willow. It looked as though I would not be able to get the
bike through.

Whoops.

By the old line I was about five miles back to the truck. By the way I'd
come, about twenty. Down by the road and round, probably the same. I
pushed for fifty yards through thick vegetation, and then suddenly the
track cleared again, and was just the ballast of the railway track
exactly as it must have been when they lifted the sleepers. I got on
and started to ride.

Looking on the map it's about a mile from the Little Water of Fleet
viaduct to Loch Skerrow. However that mile was definitely the most
interesting and most adventurous of the whole trip, and it felt like
more. There were alternately sections of more or less bare clinker,
sections which were partly overgrown with mosses and grass, and
sections which were heavily overgrown (one or two more where I got off
and pushed through). Then (this is Galloway) there were two sharp
granite ridges that ran across the line. What has they done? Blasted
through, of course. Absolutely vertical sided cuttings. There must have
been no more than inches to spare on either side of a standard railway
carriage - it must have been spectacular when the railway was in use.
It's still pretty spectacular.

Then there was a short section where the track ran in a slight cutting,
and it had been flooded for some time. The trackbed was still there,
but under about 200mm of evil greeny-black ooze. I pedalled _very_
carefully through that. Then a quick lift over a gate that clearly
hadn't been opened for a very long time, and there was Loch Skerrow on
my left. The west end of Loch Skerrow - which I'd never seen before -
is even more spectacular than the east end. By this time my headset was
feeling decidedly loose and unhappy. I stopped to try to fix it, but
didn't achieve much. Part of the problem is that so long as you're
cycling the midges can't keep up, but as soon as you stop IT'S
DINNERTIME!

On, despite worries about the headset, through Loch Skerrow halt, and
then bombing down the last couple of miles with Stroan Loch glinting
ahead of me on my left and a rainbow (it was raining again, out of a
clear blue sky) ahead on my right. Brilliant.

Happiness is a filthy bike.

As an afterthought - in the whole trip I saw four cars moving, and two
cars parked. In the carpark at Stroan Loch where I left the truck there
were six people looking at the view; I didn't see any other people at
all. Not bad for one of the most scenic places in Britain, in the
middle of summer.

When we have independence we can...

Well, John Swinney has resigned as leader of the SNP, and I've applied to renew my membership. Perhaps now the SNP can turn itself around. But Swinney was not the problem (or at least I don't think he was the problem); he merely served as a figurehead for the problem. The problem is political caution and negativity.

The SNP, if it is about anything, is about recreating and re-energising Scotland as a nation. We can't do that by endlessly knocking the party in power. We can't do that by endlessly bleating 'the minister must resign'. We need positivity, we need positive policies, and we need a slogan which unites those positive policies into a coherent message.

So what's the coherent message which differentiates a party which at it's core is about Scotland's nationhood from one which is not? Ah, yes.

When we have independence we can...

That slogan has sort of hit me in the face twice in the current week. The first time was about immigration. The BBC news was carrying a story about a young woman who's application to settle in this country was turned down, despite the executive's 'Fresh Talent' initiative. And the underlying reason, of course, is whatever the executive's aspirations, immigration is a reserved matter. Scotland needs immigration, England doesn't.

When we have independence we can set up our own immigration policy.

Of course, as usual in politics, it isn't as simple as that. We're in the EU, and the EU has mobility of labour, so if we give people the right to settle in Scotland we're actually give them the right to settle in the EU, and the bright lights of London (or Frankfurt; or Paris; or Prague) may still beckon. But it is still an area where a distinctively different policy depends on independence.

And then I was looking with disgust at the council's new, blue, recycling bin and the hill of packaging that came from the latest supermarket delivery. You can only put cleanish paper into the recycling bin, but virtually every piece of packaging was anonymous plastic of one sort or another, so it will have to go for landfill. The Germans have their grune punkt scheme for returning packaging to the shop; the Irish have their tax on carrier bags.

When we have independence we can tax packaging.

Of course, we could tax packaging within the UK, and, indeed, other, more overcrowded parts of the UK need to reduce their landfill even more than we do. But no UK party is making much of a push on this, so we can. Yes, I know, it doesn't differentiate us from the Greens. But we need to be making common cause with other parties if, in the new multi-party Scotland, we are to achieve our aims, so I really don't see much downside to that.

"When we have independence we can..." should be a slogan around which the SNP should be able to unite. Regardless of factional stupidities, everyone in the party has a vision of independence. Every positive policy we can put forward is possible given independence, and it's the ones which are more possible given independence which will differentiate us from all Scotland's other vaguely soft left parties.

But the language is important. When, not if. Can, not will. 'When' is confident. It's positive. It says we will get there. 'Can', too, is confident and positive. It says we have the ability, we can make our own choices. Some of those choices (for example, immigration) are hard, and making firm policy commitments about them now will alienate some voters. But so long as we say 'can', we're offering positive, true, hope. When we have independence we can. Whether we will or not is up to the voters then. But we can. And it's that positive true hope which makes us different from other parties, so we should say so.