TartanTed

BridgeWalk saw 585 folks participating in our monthly event at 8:30 am.

Followed by creating a prototype candy cane – coming to a “Peppermint Lane” near you soon!

Another 17 miles in Rockport navigating flooded areas of Memorial Park. It feels a bit like a hamster wheel so I cut out onto the open roads to take my chances amongst the pickup trucks and minivans.

I was going to call in at my favorite coffee shop, “Dough-liciously” , but thought it wiser to race the thunderstorm home.

I made it home dry, parked my bike in the garage, and then the heavens opened. I am feeling quite smug having got my miles in ahead of the weather.

As I was riding along in 86F high humidity, buzzed by enormous butterflies, and avoiding various lizards I noticed my maximum speed was recorded as 16.1 mph. For whatever reason that made me think of an occasion when I was cycling on the A68 at Carter Bar, the border between Scotland and England, and achieved a remarkable 48 mph downhill whilst overtaking a fifth wheel whose driver apparently had more respect for life than younger me.

Well we flew to Washington DC, spent a few days there, met up with my DC cousins, and then drove on to Mount Vernon, Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg.

Andrew and I then walked the New River Gorge bridge in West Virginia before visiting with friends in Lexington Kentucky on our way to Tennessee.

Cleveland, Chattanooga, and Franklin all got our attention and then it was back on a plane from Nashville to Corpus Christi.

So I still have not set foot in Nashville proper; maybe it’ll be third time lucky.

Photos from our epic adventure are in the Photo Gallery but you’ll need to guess where each one was taken because I haven’t got around to captioning any of them yet.

• The public transport system in Edinburgh is superb.
• Vehicular traffic regulations are ridiculous and insane.
• Drivers are angry, inconsiderate, and crazy.
• Gas is over $5 per US gallon most of which is tax. (See above bullet point)
• A horrifying number of people, of all ages, still smoke
  (Not only is this a personal gripe of mine but it just isn’t healthy – where has common sense in the face of evidence gone? Out of Scotland that’s for sure.)
• Even given the climate of Scotland there are so many young women who dress inappropriately. You’d think the cold and damp would encourage a little more modesty but then I guess folks have their own individual concept of self image.
• On a positive note – dogs wear raincoats. What can I tell you, they do, and I guess it helps keep the house dry!
• A good percentage of conversations overheard on the streets are not conducted in English, or Spanish for that matter. I don’t remember Edinburgh being quite so multi cultural. Maybe BREXIT will return the Edinburgh I knew?
• I’ve been gone for 12 years now so perhaps I’m the one out of step here.
• … and puddles – I’d forgotten that huge oceans of water lie on the sidewalks in Scotland when it rains. In South Texas it no sooner rains than the water evaporates off the hot sidewalks. In Scotland you can get wet feet for days!

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[ezcol_1quarter]August 6th, 2017 saw a return to the Corpus Christi BridgeWalk for Emily, Andrew, and Alan.

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[/ezcol_3quarter_end]We waited patiently for around 700 folks to make their way onto the bridge before following on after them so that we could take our photo at the top of the bridge without holding up the masses.

Better late than never.

Photographs from our Thanksgiving visit to Scotland, with side trips to England and Ireland, are now uploaded to the website and can be viewed HERE.

On our boys side trip to Dublin, which took place on a dull day in Edinburgh, I missed the opportunity to get a photograph of the bridges over the River Forth as we took off in our little puddle jumper and flew parallel to the river for a few minutes.

I just wasn’t quick enough to figure out which direction the plane would take off and once airborne the opportunity had past before I could get the camera out.

Today, as we taxied down the Edinburgh runway on our flight to Newark, I was a little more in tune with what was going on and I spotted the bridges from my side of the aircraft; the wrong side for take off!

However Andrew was in the window seat on the right side so I passed the camera to him and the result is shown below. He made his Daddy very happy 🙂

Bridges over the River Forth

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Looking back at my itinerary, I call it mine as no one else paid much attention to it, we have checked most of the boxes against things we proposed to do.

Not many of my suggestions for places to eat came to fruition but that’s fine. Eating was driven by necessity rather than convenience  and we were not on a culinary tour anyway. I say we were not on a culinary tour but there was the small matter of fish and chip shops; Andrew developed a passion for these British institutions on our last trip to Scotland and so we did manage to fit in at least four meals from “chippies”

Our last day in Edinburgh was supposed to consist of three parts:

• Chambers Street Museum
• Holyrood Palace
• Shopping

National Museum of Scotland

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Our Grand Tour is almost at an end and we have a few “must do” items to take care of before we start to pack for the journey home.

Tomorrow we will still have some fun stuff to do but today is the last day for out of town traveling.

Tantallon Castle

Tantallon Castle, built in the 1300’s, was  home to the Red Douglas dynasty. It is located close to North Berwick and commands spectacular views of the Bass Rock with its’ Gannet colony. For my wife and I it can probably be claimed as the site at which we mutually decided to throw caution to the wind and get married. That was 18 years ago and it has worked out pretty well for both of us. Unfortunately no amount of romantic nostalgia would persuade Patty to scale the ramparts again to take a commemorative photograph.

North Berwick

North Berwick, the location of my childhood summer vacations, was a must visit site. We used to take a bus down the coast to this small seaside town on a daily basis for a week during the school vacation. More often than not it was cool and damp; Scotland is not known for hot summers!

Gullane

Gullane, home to a least 3 golf courses, was another place we used to visit. My Mother, Grandmother, and I would sometimes get off the North Berwick bus early and spend the day on the beach at Gullane.
My mother was very fond of Gullane and that is why, 2 years ago, I scattered her ashes somewhere that I know she would be happy to “live”. Today, as a family, we went to visit Granny.

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