Dunfermline Abbey

Another Wednesday cycle run but I didn’t really have the opportunity to go wide for this week’s challenge, even though the rules are somewhat lax; not that I have any complaint about that. There are not a lot of Blippers that enter so the easier BobsBlips makes it the greater is the likely support.


The main Blip is of Dunfermline Abbey which is bound for the Christmas competition if I’m invited to run it again. If nothing else it does give me a theme for the cycle runs when I find Blipping difficult. Mrs TD and I did explore the Abbey a few years ago and had the intention of returning; perhaps we’ll do it sometime.
 
The excitement of the day was arriving at the Forth Road Bridge and finding it closed. The last time it happened we were told to go to Kincardine and cross the river there. The bridge staff were not popular but they relented and arranged transport for us. Today, it happened without any fuss, the bikes (and trike) were easy, just throw them on the back of a truck, but the vehicles they have to hand can only take a few bodies at a time and there were twenty five of us. Fortunately, a bus arrived in the nick of time and those of us with bus passes (most of us) used public transport. The more experienced of us would have been o.k. cycling across had we been allowed, but the rest were already having problems with the wind and would not have been able to do so safely.


The first extra was outside the old Crammond Brig, presumably someone recently celebrated a birthday there. The second shows just what the Dunfermline local authority thinks fulfills their commitment of encouraging cycling. The cycle path is on a wide footpath, which is fair enough, but every few yards there are stop signs; presumably the cyclist is expected to stop and wait until the bus shelter, or pedestrian traffic lights, or whatever the obstruction is that's confronting him, moves out of his way. There are several miles of this and, quite apart from the street furniture, there is no attempt to provide crossings at of the junctions that are as safe as using the main carriageway. There are books published with photographs of stupid cycle paths from all over the country, so there is nothing special about Dunfermline.