Cycling Britain: Day 12

Edinburgh → Dunfermline → Kinross → Perth

The Firth of Forth rail bridge is stunningly beautiful and massively overengineered. It is difficult to comprehend how much steel went into the construction of this monster. Victorian engineering at its finest. These days we use wind tunnels and computer modelling to optimise designs. Back then they just added more steel.

Clever readers will be able to determine which of the two frames making up the above collage was photographed first...

Scotland is synonymous with sheep. They outnumber us. The fields are full of them. But this field had something I hadn't seen before; the sheep had formed a skirmishing line. All the sheep were parallel to each other, facing the same direction, in a straight line, and were slowly working their way from one end of the field to the other. Definitely an Alfred Hitchcock moment.

The dot-com boom of the 1990s left us with "dark fiber" as Internet companies built capacity that was soon abandoned. The railroad boom of the 1890s left Britain with abandoned rail lines as railroad companies built tracks that were soon abandoned. In this case I was cycling through a valley that was transected by an elegantly designed viaduct, almost hidden by the lush vegetation. Unused for a hundred years.

My first thought: "I wonder if that sign is executable."

Sorry, geek humour.

After a week at work, it felt good to get back on the trip today. Unfortunately my left ankle had other ideas and grew increasingly painful as the day progressed. I'd intended to reach Pitlochry today, but had to cut it short at Perth. With luck a good night's sleep will cure all.

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