brian - June 2005

once the rain cleared, the directeur sportif and i pedalled off round loch gorm today. but why, oh why have they 'repaired' the roads with apple crumble and done so in such obscure places?

what's wrong with tarmac?

working on the perhaps mistaken assumption that a bicycle tour for two should be somewhat of a sociable endeavour, why is it that cycling couples always seem to be separated by about 500 metres?

and it's always the bloke that's in front. get it together folks.

as befits a cycle club with the stature of velo club d'ardbeg, the directeur sportif and myself are currently formulating (ie, making it up as we go along) a code of conduct for visiting and resident cyclists.

rule of conduct number 1: always wave to passing cyclists, even if you are a roadie with italian leanings, and they are on mountain bikes with knobblies. remember that the revolution will not be motorised (slogan courtesy of edinburgh bicycle).

since it is nearing holiday time and the resultant influx of cycle tourists, here's a handy tip based on the most frequent repair every year.

buy at least three spokes of the correct length for your bike's wheels, tape them to the left chainstay, and carry a suitable freewheel/cassette remover.

since any rear wheel spoke replacement necessitates removing the freewheel or cassette, you can always find a garage or somesuch with a vice to hold the remover and take the sprockets off, even if you can't find a cycle repair shop.

oh, and don't forget a spoke key

according to a recent source, it would take about £25 million to bring islay's roads up to an 'acceptable' standard.

assuming this to be indicative of similar (pro rata) cost for other argyll and bute island roads, and allowing for the fact that i believe argyll and bute's roads budget for the year to be around £17 million, it looks like we're all in the sh*!? for a number of years to come.

nothing better than a fast evening cycle in the summer after a loooonnng day in the office.

unless you suffer from hay fever (which i do) and the farmers have started cutting for silage (which they had) and there are squillions of bugs in all the shady bits (which there were).

still, better than having to watch 'big brother'

the guy round the corner from me goes canoeing at the weekends and we were wondering - why is all the sun concentrated on weekdays when the office beckons?

what about the weekends?

this, however, has to be tempered by island winter weather when it's quite nice to be indoors in a warm office while others have to work outside. but what else is there to moan about (apart from the roads, the council tax, cost of postage/carriage to the islands etc. etc)?

minor gripe about this island blogging: since the messages have to be vetted prior to publishing, nothing happens at the weekends.

but just to keep this on topic, based on comments to a previous post - cycling rule of conduct number two: on a single track road, if there's a group of you stopping for oncoming traffic, all stop on the same side of the road. it's not that difficult.

glad to see from comments on yesterday's blog that the cyclists on singletrack remark is well received. had thought of contacting calmac to see if they would be interested in sponsoring an 'etiquette of island cycling leaflet', because a minority of visiting pedallers are spoiling it for the rest of us.

this could be forcibly given to cyclists on the ferries and read out over the tannoy (btw, can anyone actually make out what they say over those things?)

and just to round off on a high note for today, our roads department was actually laying tarmac (yes, real tarmac) on the bridgend/bruichladdich road yesterday. you don't suppose they were reading this stuff last week do you?

off topic for once to publicise the fact that chaps form the islay distilleries are pillaging their way around the island collecting single malt from each distillery.

in case you think that sounds easy, they're rowing a clinker built skiff from bunnahabhain to caol ila, to jura then ardbeg, lagavulin and laphroaig. tomorrow they're off to loch indaal and bruichladdich and bowmore before crossing the sea to bushmills distillery in ireland.

rather them than me. the bottled concoction will be auctioned in a limited edition to raise money for charity

much of the damage done to islay's roads is due to the pot ale tankers transferring waste from the distilleries to caol ila. since the roads were never designed to take that sort of weight on a regular basis, they're just falling apart.

sepa have just removed what wasn't a problem to anyone to a problem that affects everyone.

one of the worst parts was up near whin park, the very bit now acquiring a new layer of tarmac. here's hoping it survives long enough for a few decent bike rides