Scotland, Day 10, Thurso to Muir of Ord

Since the eastern coast of Scotland is a boring plain, I followed the advice of my friend HaggisChorizo and returned west via Thurso before turning south down the A897, B871 and A836 to Lairg. Single track roads through bleak, sparsely populated sheepfarming and deerhunting country. I rode over 30 miles (50+ km) without seeing a single soul :-) If you fell off there and ran off the road, you wouldn't be found for weeks if not months! At the turnoff B871 to B873 there is a lone tiny church, wooden, with corrugated roof, the church of Syre. It is very nice and simple inside, and with a HUGE graveyard with just 3 graves, so sparse is the human population there.

Passing the posh hunting hotel at Altnaharra (which has a petrol pump, should you need it) I dropped in for a tea-break at the Crask Inn (miles from anywhere ;-) before passing through Lairg (very easy to do ;-) on my way south to the Falls of Shin. Interestingly, these Falls show a rare example of subsurface cavitation which you can just see in the centre of this photo. Otherwise they're not very spectacular at all.

Continuing, I turned south at Bonar Bridge to my next stop at the spectacular Strue viewpoint. that's Dornoch Firth in the background, and I'm looking up at the Beinn Clach an Fheadain hills. Bonar Bridge is back at the end of the Firth. Midges though :-(

Continuing through Dingwall and turning west again for 6 miles there, I went to see the Falls of Rogie. Because the 14 foot leaps there would be too much for the salmon, a salmon staircase has been built to let them get upstream of the Falls (photo right).

Just a short ride southeast brought me to the Muir of Ord, where I went on a guided sampling tour of the whisky distillery there. For some reason my diary stops there ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 30, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 9, via Tongue to John O'Groats

As a contrast to yesterday, one of the people I met in Ullapool was walking up to Cape Wrath (that's on the NW corner of mainland Scotland). A wiry, nut-brown, little old man, knobbly knees, big hiking boots, and fit as a fiddle (more so than I). His tip against those damned midges? Avon skin softener, a cosmetic whose pleasant smell nevertheless keeps the midges off for several hours. Head, hands and any exposed pieces (such as e.g. genitals and backside , should you need to 'go' whilst hiking ;-)

My route for the day was first up the west coast tourist route A835 to Elphin, there to take a look at the Highland and Rare Breed Farm, then on (A837) to Ardvreck castle (near Inchadamph). Despite recurring showers, there were a lot of bikers on the road, it being a sunday. Many even from the east coast (e.g. Aberdeen); Scotland is quite narrow here, from Dingwall on the east coast to Ullapool on the west coast can't be more than 50 miles, I guess. The road up from Ullapool to Tongue is a favourite amongst scottish bikers, I was told; scenic, curvy and NO speed cameras ;-)

Continuing via Scourie to Durness, you can admire the beauty of Ben Uidhe :-

Alas, in Durness there was no petrol, due to the tank-truck drivers' strike. No problem for my 250 mile tank, but the Harley riders with their pitiful 100 mile tanks must have had a problem :-( I'd been warned that the sole pump in Tongue only opens between 12:30 and 1:00, when people buy their newspapers at the village shop, so I poured on the coals past Loch Eriboll and just made it there as they were closing. But the village shop owner filled my tank and told me he had had over 80 bikers on the saturday!
He also sold me a popular (& saucy?) sticker for the wife's car :- "I love Tongue" ;-)

I was now heading east along Scotland's northern coast, which includes such inviting places as Strathnaver Museum and Bettyhill beach (I had it all to myself!) :-

Before reaching Thurso, my next stop was at Dounreay, where Britain used to make their nuclear weapons. The reactor there is now being decommissioned and there is no longer a visitor centre. The Ministry of Defense still has a base there. Interesting to the classically educated, the base is named Vulcan. Through the god Vulcan's cultural identification with the Hephaestus of Greek mythology, Vulcan came to be considered as the manufacturer of arms, iron, and armour for gods and heroes, including the thunderbolts of Jupiter. The runway is closed now too, no more V-bombers arming.

The pair of pictures below show the ends of my ride across the north coast. The photo on the left shows the signpost at Durness with great circle distances to major places of interest. I'm pointing home ;-) And, no, I'm not really that fat despite all those Full Scottish breakfasts etc; I'm just wearing the oversize rain gear on top of my leathers. The photo on the right shows Dunnet head, the most northerly point on mainland UK.

Taken from Dunnet Head, this photo shows the Orkneys. They are much closer to the mainland than I had imagined and I now regret not taking the ferry over, but my time schedule didn't allow it. On the far left, I could just see the Old Man of Hoy peeking up.

Eastwards 5 miles after Dunnet Head comes Castle Mey, the Queen Mother's home in Scotland. Save your money, it's not worth visiting. A further 5 miles east brought me to John O'Groats, the point furthest from Land's End in Cornwall. The local profi photographer does a good trade at 'his' signpost. He can add a sign for your village - as he did for mine - and then looks up the shortest road distance to there in a book. The distance is so short for me because it ignores the ferry distance across the North Sea from Aberdeen, only counting road miles. And the sign points the wrong way :-(

I then rode on aways and visited fellow-blogger HaggisChorizo who was kind enough to put me up for the night. I invited him and his lovely wife out for a pub meal and we managed to down a few pints of the foaming ale before retiring to Victory Mansions ;-) He was the only male blogger I encountered in Scotland, it seems to be mainly a ladies' hobby there. And they all blogged anonymously, something pretty rare here at home.

Commenting on my account of dropping it, Anne Christmann - she of the GS500 - said "Your problem is, you never could ride slowly, Stu ;-)"

Off Topic : Tomorrow morning at 07:14 will be the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska meteorite. Here's a short SF story I wrote about it some 24 years ago (but in German).

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 29, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 8, via Gairloch to Ullapool

"Jings, crivvens, help ma boab!" quoth I to Arthur, looking around the bar, "but there are an awful lot of fat-arsed wimmen in Scotland ;-)". He replied "... and they're not all american tourists either :-(" We thought it might be the 'chips-with-everything' diet and all those full Scottish breakfasts (fat, fat, fat and fat, covered in greasy fat). ^**

"If they bent over, you could park a bicycle in their bums ;-) he joked. "Yeah", I replied, "and when pulling it back out, you might even find out it was a tandem ;-)"
I'd noticed this in Oban, Stirling and Fort William too. Must be the junk food there.

Anyway, enough of that, let's get back to the aesthetics of natural landscapes...

I left Skye via the bridge at Kyle of Lochalsh and , resisting the temptation to ride Bealach na Ba again, rode in the pouring rain via Torridon and the Victoria Falls (sic!) to Gairloch, where the rain actually stopped. So I took the opportunity to go for a walk on Gairloch's magnificent beach; had it almost to myself, just 5 people & a dog there.

Continuing along the very scenic coast road, my next stop was after the tiny hamlet of Second Coast. Blink and you miss it ;-) But I'd stopped to take a look at the nearby offshore island of Gruinard, used by the Brits in WW2 to test potential biological weapons (viz. Anthrax). The island was out-of-bounds for 48 years , Gruinard remaining infectious for a looooong time. Of the ABC weapons, B is the worst, I think.

Continuing, now in bright sunshine, the view across Loch Broom was magnificent :-

Afterwards, I stopped just about where the road joins the A835. The sight to be seen there is the Corrieshalloch Gorge. It's about a ten minute easy hike down from the road, and there's a convenient parking lot for us tourists. Two busloads of them. And would you believe it, some of those fat-arsed women I was talking about earlier stayed in their bus rather than take a 20 minute walk. Came all that way and then missed this beautiful gorge 'cos they were too lazy to get off their fat arses :-( Jesus H. Christ!

The mile-long gorge is a box canyon, 200 ft deep. The river plunges 150 ft over the Falls of Measach. There is a suspension bridge and a 6 person viewing platform which sticks out over the edge of the gorge (to use it you'll need a head for heights ;-).
Look carefully at the right photo, top, rightish, for the platform; here below, in white.

From Wales, Liz Hinds comments :- "Oh your photos are wonderful. It is such a beautiful country. I’ve never been there but would love to go. We planned a trip before we had children but the car died at the very thought of it and we never made it. Still I feel as if I’m there now! Especially that hotel near the sea eating scallops."

From England, Manic Street Preacher comments :- "The pics are superb and I'm extremely envious of you. Glad you made it home in one piece - that Highland Cow looks like it could do a fair bit of damage! I could move to a cottage like that tomorrow if I had the £'s to survive. Ta for showing us around the place."

^** Full Scottish Breakfast : Porage^*, Kipper, then fried bacon and eggs with black pudding, a sausage, mushrooms, baked beans, half a fried tomato and a slice of fried bread. Doubtless the ladies mentioned today would have fried Mars-bars for dessert ;)

^* Yes, Porage is spelt like that in Scots; lowers your cholesterol too :-) Eat it with salt, not like the English, who do porridge (sic ;-) with namby-pamby milk and sugar.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 28, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 7, still on the Isle of Skye

On my final day on Skye I was riding down the NE coast when I spotted a bog where someone had been harvesting peat from the bog and had left it out to dry. So there must still be crofters who heat their cottages traditionally by burning peat like this.

Continuing through Portree, we headed down south into Glen Brittle to get to the Cuillin Hills (shown below). Parking at the Memorial Hut near the end of the glen, we walked a little way up the hills to see the first waterfall (about ¾ mile). For anything more adventurous you would need proper walking boots & rope. The Cuillin Hills are not as innocent as they look in the photo. Just a few days prior to my visit, a 61 year old man, experienced climber but climbing alone, had been killed in a fall off the hills :-(

Coming back out of the dead-end glen to the main road we turned south again and visited the original MacDonalds place which is just a ruin now. But yes, there is a clan restauraunt there, and yes, they will serve you a dear burger, albeit a deer burger ;-)

We split up then (thanks again, Morag) and I rode back roads via Uig to Duntulm, paying my respects at the grave of Flora MacDonald on the way. She was the woman who rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie to safety. Remember the song? Over the sea to Skye.

Spent another pleasant evening at the Duntulm Castle hotel (see their postcard below), dining on Peter's excellent fresh scallops and chatting to Arthur, Kevin and Di. Kevin says you can often see Mink Whales and Basking Shark in the Sound between Skye and Lewis/Harris (Outer Hebrides). But the next morning all I saw was one of the Royal Navy's submarines on the surface heading north to the torpedo testing range.

Commenting from Hong Kong, Wendy wrote :- ".. photos of Scotland look wonderful and make me want to just jump on a plane and get away from this craziness... "
And just in case Jimmy got the wrong impression, let me say that most of the roads in Scotland are in very good condition, it's just that the bad ones stuck in my er, mind. Commenting from Wales about the 3-wire bridge across the Nevis river (see my last monday's blog), Dai points me to this crazy guy WALKING on a ONE-wire bridge. When yours truly uses a one-wire bridge, it is only for abseiling across ( see photo here).

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 27, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 6, Isle of Skye

A couple of you ladies have been saying nice things about my photos of my Scotland tour, so today's first photo - of my second favourite scottish redhead - is for you two. You two being Morag - my favourite scottish redhead - the biker who showed me her Skye, and Cowtown Pattie, to show her scottish cattle not unlike Texas longhorns ;-)

But I must admit - as regards the photo above - to wishing there had been a fence between us (OK, OK, I admit to zooming out to tele-lens ;-) As it is, many of the roads are unfenced with just a cattle grid every 10 miles or so. Did I mention the suicidal sheep already? They graze at one side of the road and then decide skittishly at the last possible moment that they'd be safer on the other side. It's a bit like chicken-running for them, I suppose ;-) But you have to hover over the brakes all the time :-(

The photo below - taken on the way to Glen Brittle - shows a great example of the power of water. The waterfall is (oh so slowly) cutting its way back uphill, neat huh?

This shot shows the typical shape of traditional scottish houses. Just a wee cottage, with fireplace & chimney at each end (2 rooms), a central door and small windows. The roof skylights are not typical though, and the slate roof is new, otherwise unchanged for hundreds of years. And almost all are painted white these days, agin the weather. Nowadays most will have electricity and running water, but maybe still a septic tank.

My choice of hotel was the Duntulm Castle Hotel which had been recommended by a German biker magazine. I can recommend it. It is run by Kevin (a real character and hillwalking guide(like Arthur)), but the cooking is done by Peter, who excelled himself at every evening meal I had :-) One of Morag's good tips was to visit Skyeskins, a nearby tannery, which makes splendid sheepskins (see workshop photo below). I bought one of their white sheepskins and they should be shipping it to us any day now :-)

Further on down the same road, Morag & I visited Dunvegan castle, ancestral home of the Macleods (shown left). Well worth a visit. There is also an interesting little museum at Skye's Piping centre; the photo (right) shows a manual siren from the cold war period. the village polis (yes, that's how you spell 'police' in Scots) would have wound it up in the event of a nuclear attack by the Russians on the remote wildernesses of Scotland ;-) Presumably you then duck-and-cover yourself under the nearest ewe ;-)

Still in the north of Skye, one thing that must be seen and heard! is Kilt Rock (photo below). Kilt Rock is a sea-cliff which is made of vertical basalt columns. When the wind is blowing, the whole rock howls musical notes at you. If it is raining too, folks like Arthur would pull tourists' legs by claiming it would be playing 'Singing in the rain' ;-)

Commenting on my remark yesterday "The Bealach na Ba pass climbs over 2000 feet in about 4 miles, with 1 in 5 gradients and tight hairpin bends on a single track road" fellow blogger Doug Alder, who lives in Trail, halfway between Calgary and Vancouver, Canada, tells us about his home territory :- "The road from Trail to Rossland climbs over 2000 ft in 6 km, couple of hairpins but fortunately it's not singletrack (4 lanes) anymore because coming down it in the winter, even with 4WD can be a nerve jangling experience, particularly at night when it's snowing hard".

Ina comments :Pictures are breathtaking! And- I like the look of the menu :o)))

Malcolm wants more info on the bike(s). Mine is a Yamaha FJR1300 - a so-called supertourer - 4 cylinder inline, 140 bhp, 250kph, 280+ kg, shaft drive beast with 2 integrated detachable luggage cases. It's designed for the open road, and proved to be a real handfull on the small gravel trails as I've already mentioned. Local Morag rides a smaller, lighter, BMW 650GS. Single cylinder enduro, about 50 PS I guess, much much lighter and much more suitable on the rocky trails. After-market pack-rack. There's a photo of mine linked behind my signature at the end of this blog-entry. No photo of her, as she blogs anonymously, and I'm respecting that for her.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 26, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland 5, Eileann Donan & Bealach na Ba

On Day 5 I road(sic ;-) west along The Road to the Isles (the one that Bonnie Prince Charlie took) and took the ferry from Mallaig to the Isle of Skye. Then I rode up the south side of Skye and recrossed temporarily onto the mainland using the bridge to Kyle of Lochalsh. Did this to see the sights shown below. Most blogreaders will recognise the castle of Eileann Donan, even if only from movies such as Highlander :-) Yours truly in red on the right of the footbridge, just so you can see the scale. Busloads of (American and Japanese and Sassenach) tourists of course, but I paid my entry fee and did a tour of the castle , which is actually a 19th century restauration of what the original might have looked like ;-) . The effect is quite authentic though.

After Eileann Donan, I decided to go to Applecross for lunch, so I could get to ride across Bealach na Ba. Bealach is the Gaelic word for Mountain Pass, and this bikers' secret tip is probably the most spectacular pass to ride in all of Scotland. It is impassible in winter, and a notice at the entrance prohibits buses, lorries and learner drivers, all of whom should take the longer coast road around the peninsula. The pass climbs over 2000 feet in about 4 miles, with 1 in 5 gradients and tight hairpin bends on a single track road. However, the surface was good and there are now even some safety railings :-) There is a video of the ride up the pass on YouTube shown here. Photo below shows the view back east from ½ way up, coming from Loch Kishorn.

After the summit, the road west down to Applecross is not quite so steep, but still affords spectacular views, this one is of the empty, sandy, beach at Applecross.

I can recommend the Applecross Inn for lunch (turn left for about 200 yards at the end of the pass), their menu is shown below, and the seafood is succulently fresh.

I found Bealach na Ba so good that I re-crossed it the way back instead of following the coast road. There are snowpoles showing they expect 6 feet of snow in the winter, but in the summer you just have to watch out for suicidal sheep on the unfenced roads, where the lambs run across to their mothers when they hear you approaching!

Please do STOP to admire the scenery, don't try to look around whilst riding, because if you go off the road you may not stop until you land in the river! Ride safely, folks!

Jenny has asked what map(s) I used. It was(sic!) Collins Scotland Touring Map, ISBN 0-00-721798-6. Chosen because it (just) fit into the transparent map display pocket of my tank-top bag. However, it did not stand up well either to the folding and refolding in the wind nor to getting damp in the rain. In fact it only survived by virtue of being on a different facet each day; I can/will throw it away now. It'd be fine for a user in a car though, who could refold it out of the wind when needed and keep it dry.

Photoblogger Peter Harris has sent me a link to his own Edinburgh holiday photos.

Thomas wants the gory details of picking the bike up again (see yesterday's blog). Well, I took off the luggage which makes it top-heavy, then the jeep driver helped me heave the bike upright. Of course I'd put it in first gear to stop the rear wheel rotating and had used a spare luggage strap to bind the front brake lever on, because we didn't want the bike rolling away down the hill as we heaved it upright :-) Now, whenever I buy I bike, I annoy the salesman by laying it down on the (level, dry,firm, unslippery) shop floor and making sure I can pick it up on my own. But that was 5 or 6 years ago, and this was on a 1 in 5 steep slope covered in loose wet gravel itself covered in almost frictionless sheepshit. NOT ideal conditions ;-) And to make it worse, the jeep driver then drove off in a hurry ("'cos I'm already late"), leaving me standing on the slippery windswept hillside on the adverse camber downside of the beast. NO WAY I could get back on board! So I unbound the strap on the front brake lever, and walked it 300 yards down the hill to a level spot by slipping the clutch (I'd left it in gear). Then I walked back up the hill to collect the luggage. Two trips for 4 pieces of heavy luggage. Then I refitted the luggage and climbed aboard to resume my trip. All this, whilst keeping the helmet closed to keep those bloody midges out, it was like a turkish bath in there! OK, Thomas, I can laugh now, but I really sweated then!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 25, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 4, Glen Etive & Rannoch Moor

There is a very good compact (96 page) pocket guide to Scotland which I can really recommend. It is called "Scotland, the best", published (in 2006 by Collins) under ISBN 0 00 773557-X. One of the chapters is entitled Great Glens and so I followed their tip to one of the less well known but spectacularly beautiful glens, Glen Etive. I rode back SE from Fort William through Glen Coe. There was a lone piper playing laments on the site of the massacre there. Photo opportunity for 4 busloads of tourists, so I gave it a miss. Just after passing the summit of the Glen Coe pass you'll see this lonely house on the right. The next little turn off to the right is the entrance to the dead-end track through Glen Etive, bikes and jeeps only, no buses, caravans etc (thank the gods).

The road into Glen Etive is a single track - some of it even in good condition - which meanders through the spectacular scenery before ending as a rocky way on the lake.

The views on the way back are just as spectacular, as the road climbs back up towards the Glen Coe pass. You pass through fernland and forest where I even encountered a huge stag (larger than I am). I don't know who was the more surprised! With one mighty leap he cleared the 5 foot fence, landing on the road barely 5 yards in front of me, inspected me fearlessly, and with another majestic bound cleared the other fence to disappear into the forest, all before I could get my camera out of my leathers :-(

Turning SE again on the main road, one proceeds across Rannoch Moor (beware of the hidden speed cameras on the long straight!). Rannoch Moor is a complete contrast. It has recently been brutally deforested, no sign of any new planting either. Shame :-(

Leaving the A82, I followed the book's tips again and turned off right to follow a narrow lane through the Strath of Orchy. Pleasantly wooded, with gloriously yellow outbursts of gorse along the way, the river Orchy shows us a riverbed spectacular in places such as Allt Broighleachan, shown here. Go on the rickety bridge for a photo!

As the road mellows out at its lower end, more but smaller deer warily follow my progress from a distance. This time I even managed to get a tele-zoomed photo :-)

Annoyingly, this was also the day I (had to) drop the bike :-( I was following a single-lane mountain track in the highlands where the surface had deteriorated to rough gravel. Wet rough gravel. Then the road went steeply downhill, a 1 in 5 steep slope. On gravel. So I dropped into 1st gear and proceeded merely at a walking pace, being careful to use only the rear brake. Unfortunately, in one of the hairpin bends, a local jeep driver came charging up the hill, seemingly hoping to make it through the gravel on his momentum alone :-( I instinctively grabbed the front brake. Stupid, stupid me! The front wheel locked of course and - although I was at a standstill - it continued to slide sideways across the adverse camber :-( So I put my feet down. Now let me record for the purpose of science, that the coefficient of friction of fresh, steaming, sheepshit on a wet gravel downhill 1:5 adverse camber hairpin is nearer to absolute zero than superconducting liquid Helium II is :-( So my boot slid away and all I could do - besides a gentle version of the splits- was to lay that 280kg bike down more or less gracefully. No injury, but a couple of cosmetic scratches on the fairing. Dammit!

Oh, and did I mention those pesky bloodthirsty vampire midges? Even when sweating to pick up this heavy 280kg++ FJR, I kept the helmet shut, lest I get bitten to death too!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 24, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 3, Loch Ness south side

Originally, I had intended to climb Ben Nevis on day three. There are no chair lifts, funicular railways or anything similar, so most of the tourists are discouraged by the prospect of a 5 hour climb and a 3 hour descent. Well, it's an easy hill-walk rather than a climb, but tiring. However, day 3 turned out to be stormy, howling gales on the mountain and rainstorms, so the Nevis range had been closed to climbers. The rain also discouraged me from riding the M/C any long distance, so I just did a short tour along the little-used hill road going NE from Fort Augustus (see first photo, at top).

Half way along the SE side of Loch Ness there is a beautiful waterfall, the Falls of Fyers.

The incessant rain and blustery winds discouraged me, so I just rode up to the parking place at the lower end of Glen Nevis and went walking up the Glen in my rain gear, despite the 'encouragement' of the warning (right, above) at the start of the Glen. After about a ¾ hour walk, the Glen opens out and you can see the 340ft high Stean waterfall. It's well worth the climb, although you should take great care as there are NO safety rails and precious few handholds. In fact many people chicken out when they encounter the bridge across Glen Nevis, which consists of just three taught wires. Hold on to the top two, have a good head for heights, and don't look down as you balance your way along the bottom wire ( photo here). Else go back and ford it lower down ;-)

On the way down, the cloud lifted and the rain lessened, so we got a glimpse of Ben Nevis itself, the water by now just streaming down its wet and slippery stony sides.

Back on the bike, I went to Fort Augustus for a ' Haggis on baked potato' late lunch, a look at the Caledonian Canal swing bridges and the old Bridge of Oich (shown below).

BTW, both rain and wind have one advantage in Scotland, both force those pesky blood-sucking midges to stay down in the grass and the heather. The midges are a real plague! I deliberately went in June, the midges usually being there in July and August, but they were early due to a mild May. How do those campers and walkers cope? Poor bastards, must be being bitten to an itchy death; that's why I went B&B.

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 23, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 2, Isle of Mull

From my B&B on The Road to the Isles, I rode down the peninsula and took the short ferry ride across the Sound of Mull. Ferries are expensive in Scotland, obviously we summer tourists are subsidising the fact that they run for the locals during the other three seasons too. This first photo is of the sea-front at Tobermory; the black building is an old haunt of mine, the great Mishnish pub, still going strong (like their beer :-)

The pub hasn't changed much over the past 20-odd years, my same old leather wing-chair, but the table has been scrubbed. Bad idea : loud TV and jukebox been added :-(

Sat for a while, just watching the ferries from Oban to the Isles plying their busy way through the Sound of Mull. Great weather too, only day without some rain :-)

This shot is taken from the peninsula, looking across the Loch (a fjord) to Fort William. That's Britain's highest mountain, Ben Nevis, in the background. Still snow on top!

Tip : the road south from Salen is beautiful with great views of the Summer Isles, etc.

BTW, Jake wants the answer to the voting puzzle in this blog on June 6th. Just take a single voting slip from the urn marked 'Mixed'. Assume it's Republican. Since ALL urns are mislabelled, this one must really contain 100% Republican votes. Now, since ALL urns are mislabelled, the one labelled 'Democrat' must be the real 'Mixed' one. So the remaining urn holds the 100% 'Democrat' votes. QED. The situation is symmetrical :-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 22, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Scotland, Day 1, Newcastle to Fort William

After a boring trip across Holland, I took the overnight ferry from Amsterdam to Newcastle-upon-Tyne (N.England), then rode (about 600 kms/375 miles) up to Fort William via tiny little back roads, often only single-track, even passing Hogwarts :-)

Meggett reservoir, along an empty switchback single-laner between Selkirk and Moffatt.

The graves of Rob Roy MacGregor, Scots freedom fighter, his widow and their sons.

Riding through lanes bordered by 20 feet high Rhodedendra made me feel oh so tiny.

Craggy Glen Coe, as seen from the National Park centre. Only 3°C over the pass!

PS: Grounds for another wee tot of Single Malt Whisky? Whilst I was gadding about on the bike in bonny Scotland, this website took its 2 millionth page view :-) Hoots Mon!

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 21, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Off to tour Scotland :-)

Today I shall be mounting my trusty steed (a Yamaha FJR1300) and be charging off to tour Scotland solo for a couple of weeks. The wife is looking after the bulldogs and vice versa. And so, blogging will be non-existant for a while and then I'll bore you with the inevitable vacation photos and a daily trip log. In the meantime you can mail me your suggestions for a postcard remark to go in the speech balloon shown below ;-)

To shorten your wait, here's a puzzle for our american voter friends...

The next US election will as usual be fixed by Karl Rove et al. Assume that after the election you find three voting urns. One is labeled 'Republican', another 'Democrat', and the third is labelled 'Mixed'. Rove has ensured that ALL the labels are deliberately wrong. You are allowed to sneak a look at one voting slip only from an urn of your choice. You then have to re-label all the voting urns correctly. How do you do that?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 6, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Jules Verne's Moongun deemed infeasible

Was talking to some students majoring in literature a while back, who had been reading Jules Verne's "Voyage dans la lune". One of them commented "Why do we use those complicated rockets? Verne's way of shooting a big bullet from a gun would be a lot easier", so I butted in sarcastically "But it wouldn't work, obviously!". Well it turns out that it wasn't obvious (to them), so I'll repeat here the explanation that I gave them too.

My school maths teacher (Jeb) had a special way of teaching us. He rarely answered questions directly, but answered with another question back at us. He was teaching us to teach ourselves, a great help later at university and in life, as it turned out. So this was his nicely pedagogical method I used on the literature students too.

Me : "How fast do you need to go to leave the Earth?"

Them : "Escape velocity." [about 11 kms/sec (Mach 34). About 7 kms/sec to orbit].

Me: "What pushes the bullet out of the gun?"

Them : "The hot gases behind it."

Me : "So can the bullet go faster than the flame front of the exploding gases?"

Them : "Obviously not!"

Me : "And how fast is the flame front of the exploding gases in the gun?"

Them : "Dunno?"

Me : "Tip : a fast M16 rifle bullet has a muzzle speed of under 1 km/sec."

Them : "So you can't get off this planet with a chemical explosives gun. QED :-)"

I then went on to point out that any passengers would be crushed by the acceleration in the gun-barrel. So the bullet could at best carry rugged freight, but not a crew. And that you'd need some small rockets on board anyway to manoever in space. Otherwise Kepler's laws of elliptical orbits would have you smashing back into your starting point at the speed you left. I hadn't even mentioned that you'd need a braking capability to ensure a soft landing, let alone building another Verne gun on the moon to shoot you back ;-) But then Dorte interrupted (she had been listening very carefully) and said "You merely excluded chemical propellants. What about using a little atomic bomb in the gun barrel?". So I told her about the americans' accidental Verne gun of the 50s :)

The americans' Pascal-B underground nuclear test explosion on 27 August 1957 (atmospheric testing) was done at the bottom of a 500 foot vertical hole. They plugged the hole near the bottom with 2 tons of concrete and sealed the opening with a four-inch thick steel plate weighing several hundred kilos. When the (300 ton yield) atomic bomb went off, a hypersonically expanding column of vaporized concrete hit the cover plate, lifting it off the hole at high speed. Calculations (and high speed cameras) showed it taking off at 56 kms/sec, that's about 5 times escape velocity!!! But, not being aerodynamically shaped, the steel plate probably burnt up in the atmosphere within the first few miles, never reaching space. Remember, meteorites weighing less than 8 tons burn up on reentry, so this is the same ablation, in the other direction.

The acceleration to 56km/sec would have squashed any passengers flat. So, seems that atomic guns wouldn't work either. Are there any other types of Verne guns ?

Let's first ask ourselves : What accelerations are bearable? When flying an aerobatic plane I limit myself to +6g, 'cos I'd black out at 8 to 9g. Jet fighter jocks in inflatable pants might manage 50% more. The average person should be able to cope with 3g = 30 m/sec/sec. That implies just over 5 minutes at 3g to get to escape velocity. Correspondingly, that implies a gun barrel 1800 kms long (sic!). Straight, not following the curvature of the surface of the Earth. I'll let you work out the height of the muzzle supports yourselves ;-) Not really feasible, is it? So forget Jules Verne's moongun.

We were just getting into the physics of railguns (electromagnetic accelerators), which can currently propel their bullets at 9km/s, when the pub shut and we were chucked out. But I think I've got those literature students reading some science fiction now ;-)

PS. The type of gun that Verne proposed is a Columbiad, and the command module of Apollo 11 was named Columbia. Just so you know where the name came from ;-)

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 4, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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Goodbye, Bo Diddley

Musician Bo Diddley - never to be forgotten - passed on yesterday. He was nicknamed 'Bo' at school by his classmates, who - presumably - could not spell 'Beau' ;-)

HooDoo Ya Luuurv?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 3, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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On the Road again @ Kathi Bräu :-)

Been motorcycling touring in Bavaria recently with our club, the SNI'ce Riders.

One of the places we visited was a beer garden for bikers, Kathi Bräu. Yes, folks, those are non-alcoholic drinks when we're in the saddle! The food (e.g. pork shoulders with crispy crackling) was delicious, and Simone says the desserts were too :-)
Interesting customers too, from the ZZ-Top fan to the M/C club based on a Tolkein LotR song, to the guys with their tuned specials. We were based in picturesque Pottenstein, just below the ancient castle there, so we had a nice ride north through the Wisenttal (=Bison Valley) to get to Kathi Bräu which is in a hamlet near the village of Aufseβ.

I'd recently bought a 100% solid-state video-camera, basically a ruggedised and waterproof webcam with an interchangeable 2GB SD chip and a USB port in the back, as shown here. It runs off two AA batteries and 2GB translates to an hour at 640*480 with 30 frames/sec. I mounted it on the left handlebar, and this is a 2 mins YouTube extract of my slow cruise up the Bison valley. My first try, so it's not so great. I see I'll need to add a wedge below the camera to point it up some more, it's looking down about 10° here. A more horizontal view - or even 5 ° upwards - would have showed you more of the magnificent scenery. The airflow is noisy in the built-in microphone too, now I know why YouTubers dub over with music later. Next take may be better?

Copyright ^© Stu Savory on June 2, 2008 permalink Comments Email

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