CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
And British of a certain age....Generation Crossover. I didn't have to learn to do sums in £,/- and d, but I did learn about poles, chains and furlongs as well as metres and kilogrammes.
I still use Imperial conversationally and metric for anything technical. That said, I regard anyone using the Farenheit system as borderline crazy. Same would go for anyone I heard using Kelvin socially.
I'd prefer to use miles but 5/8s is a fairly easy conversion to make so I'm happy working in Kms.
When working precisely I'll use metric but if I'm estimating length I'll jump to inches as I was taught that skill by my dad rather than the government.
My full list:
Miles ( trip distance)
Metres or feet (short distance or height!)
Metres (height. Usually)
Stones or pounds (weight)
Celsius (temperature).
Shoe sizes depend on cycling (continental) or regular (UK)!
I converted from Fahrenheit a few years ago and now find it easier to make plans based on °C.
As a follower of American football and ice hockey, I am used to lbs and °F still dominating.
This is getting ridiculous - a couple of seconds after greeting 'John with the Intense Eyes' on the towpath I came within inches of running over the Kingsknowe Court Rat. IWRATS kills rats shock. Poor thing was all whirring little legs as it tried to flee the approaching humanoid.
The thought of disentangling a large, injured, angry rodent from my spokes is not an appealing one.
Maybe it's one of these -
http://www.itv.com/news/story/2014-06-26/invincible-super-rats-sweeping-across-the-uk
We need more rat predators. I favour the introduction of eagle owls to Scotland. And lynx.
Waiting at the end of Brunswick Road waiting for the lights to change, a "fly" drifted lazily past me and I managed to reach out and grab it. Opened my palm to find a spider in it, floating on a "sail" formed from a length of silken web. Not sure whether it jumped or blew away from its previous lodgings but I let it go off on its aerial adventures.
@kaputnik
This is a known spider behaviour. The young of some species disperse like thistle seeds, borne aloft by a single strand of silk;
http://www.european-arachnology.org/proceedings/17th/23Duffey.pdf
Flyder
Spy?
Another run in to work today, another male bullfinch fluorescing in a shaft of sunlight in the Hermitage.
The school of perch were present again in the canal at Hailes Quarry park. This time the Big Daddy perch was visible in the midst of the tiddlers - it would make a good meal for two.
Unlocking the ratty nineties hybrid this morning I was a bit startled to disturb an enormous insect that turns out to have been a poplar hawk moth;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laothoe_populi
Gothic looking thing - reminded me of this;
http://www.wwiaviation.com/popup/Siemens-Schuckert_R-VIII.html
A childhood spent memorising the AA Book of the British Countryside and building Airfix models clearly not totally wasted.
The Kingsknowe Court Rat has now wandered as far as Hailes Quarry park. Does a wild brown rat count as a wildlife? As a highlight?
The four remaining mallard ducklings at that point on the canal were basking in a fluffy heap last night. Sickeningly cute!
Vermin Fawlty of the flying seaside variety on Lyme Regis beach yesterday - one seagull took the ham from my youngest daughter's piece. She was less traumatised than my sixteen year old daughter who had some very good luck deposited on her from above. My suggestion that she run into the sea and wash it off met with scorn and derision until it became clear there was not going to be an alternative.
Apart from the seagulls very well appointed seaside spot. Further along the coast into Devon village of branscombe also a cracker tho getting down to it better by bike than car.
Caterpillars! Nettles!
Watched some very hard working cormorants up and down the bay at a place called Beer. Yes there really is a place called Beer.
Is it A Town With No .... ?
Cheer.?
This tiny Victorian rhubarb
Kept the watering hole open for 65 years
Now it's boilin on a miserable march 21st
Wrapped the hills in a blanket of paterson's curse?
Actually very nice fishing village in east Devon. Had duck race down the high st today as the stream through the valley becomes a gutter with constant running water. Hard to explain but good for rubber ducks in aid of the lifeboats.
Lot of cycling, as these small Devon villages all on sustrans route 2
Also bizarrely A tram running up the river axe from seaton to colyton. Old fashioned stylee
Wildlife lowlight...a mid-sized toad, very neatly squashed on the tow path to look like it had just vomited up its own intestines.
I did have the fleeting thought that it might be a David Shrigley installation.
Small rat / huge mouse ran across the path infront of me just before the bridge on the NEPN that carries Telford Road over the trackbed (the grafitti bridge).
A large rat scuttling along the very narrow ledge on the far side of one of the canal bridges at Wester Hailes last night. It was also being 'admired' by a couple of pedestrians, for whom I had slowed down, but their two small dogs seemed to be pretending not to have noticed.
Can't think of anywhere better to share my delight in discovering the name of the mystery wildlife that has been biting me and Madame IWRATS in the back garden this year. I wondered if the semi-feral cat that has adopted us (its name is King Julien) might have a flea or two, but I was able to observe the culprit in action and photograph it...and it is...a minute pirate. Seriously;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthocoridae
I let one bite my hand briefly in order to get the picture and I'm now regreting that decision. Really quite painful still.
A mole, crossing the road near the Whiteadder Reservoir.
@Cyclingmollie
Why did the mole cross the road?
To infiltrate the structures of other side in order to be able to supply information to the intelligence agencies back home?
That's not a road, it's a shared-use moleway. Was the mole going too fast?
Why did the mole cross the road?
Well a few miles further on someone has strung lots of them up on a fence. So maybe that.
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