Show us what you did today, thread

Re: Re:

mkone":35jnf9qt said:

Looks an interesting ride. The POW camp looks a bit easy to escape though i have never seen that fuel depot before either, is it still in use?

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It was in use, or under maintenance at least, until the 1980s but it's unused now. It's interesting keeping an eye out for all the associated bits of the pipeline and pumphouses etc, all the way down to the docks in the town... the biggest pumping station has been converted into a house, I wouldn't be surprised if there were still a faint oily whiff about it!

Edit to say - another useless fact is that the tanks are actually the world record holding location of the longest echo - 112 seconds!

That looks a very interesting route, would definitely be interested following you on a rerun of it.
The POW camp is quite interesting and would like to hear more. I lived near a Japanese POW camp in Cowra back in Aus and it had some interesting individual stories as well as crafts come out of it.

Jamie

Re:

Think I remember a TV programme that actually went inside that fuel storage depot, it was on the telly year or more ago. It looked scarily huge and dark inside, really echoey and guy said it still stank of the fuel oil used by the Navy's ships.

Jamie, there's an old POW camp just south of Comrie near Crieff, Cultybraggan Camp, think it was used in both wars. Seem to remember BBC Scotland doing an article a while back, a year or 2?, about one of prisoners who settled in area after war, he was interviewed by them.

Keeping with a bit of a retro conflict type theme I have a couple of pictures from a ride I did in Germany just local from where I was staying at friends in the small village of Rade in Gifhorn, lower Saxony. The village is tiny and a real farming village that has a forest/woods running along the outer side of the village. I was told this was the old east/west border and if you follow a small dirt track in the woods you will come to an anti tank deployment and if you go just past you will see a piece of the wall and a sentry post still in place alongside. You can also see the usual concrete tyre paths that were laid from one end of the wall to the other. I was riding my friend Nils Commencal which while a bit big was still good to be out riding.
I went along this path and was surprised how close it actually was there was trench, anti tank deployements and then a bigger trench with a section of wall and sentry sitting on the far side of the wood. This opened out onto the farmers field on the other side. He had left the section of wall, put down some gravel and there was a nice undercover picnic bench alongside. There were also interp boards on both sides showing how it was in the day with photos of it being dismantled and the plans showing how on the farmers side it was all lights, barbed wire, bunkers etc for a good distance back from the border.
Whilst I am used to being in Berlin etc and seeing the wall and it's divisions etc it was a bit different seeing it in this very rural setting just literally a block or so from where you sleep. A bit more real maybe? I don't know, just bit of a sombre feeling. This was made all the more so by the farmer giving a wave while feeding his cows who slowed on his way back past to gesture if I was needing anything. Just made me think that only 30 odd years back this would have been a very different place.
Another thing that was noticeable was that the bunker was concrete block and the only door was from the east and the sighting slots were steel reinforced so the was no was you could use one to go west. Young conscripts were used to man these and the remit was to shoot anyone coming near the border on the western side, east too I imagine if they got that far. I was told if they refused or didn't do it properly they would be imprisoned and have no opportunity at either education or work and most likely repercussions for their family. This only stopped in 88 I think, when it was opened up.

w1 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

w2 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

w3 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

w4 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

w5 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

w6 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

You definitely wouldn't want to cycle into one of those anti-tank devices in the dark, they seem to blend in a bit too well for my liking!

I'd be very happy to re-run that route, it's quite a nice length of loop with a nice variety of scenery and really well suited to a roadster type bike. Hopefully we'll get a few more nice sunny Saturday mornings in the next month or so...

Some great info here, love the pics too.

Im off to find the TV programme about the fuel tanks

And Jamie, great pics and info, do the concrete tracks actually run the whole length of the wall?

Mark

I know they do in the rural areas and I suppose only where there isn't a road running nearby.

Jamie

mkone":m6xn3zzc said:

Some great info here, love the pics too.

Im off to find the TV programme about the fuel tanks

And Jamie, great pics and info, do the concrete tracks actually run the whole length of the wall?

Mark

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Wikipedia page for Inchindown oil tanks, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchindown_oil_tanks

Had a look for any reference to TV programme that went inside but nowt. Memory says it was along the lines of secret or hidden Britain. There's several other sites that have pics of exterior and interior, Forestry Commission apparently did tours.

Edited for speeling.

Another of the pics from last weeks holiday was from Sunday where I spent the day mtbing in the Hartz Mountains.
My good friend Franzi who we were staying with mentioned before I left home that her boss's son was a bike mechanic and he had organized for me to go riding with himself when I was over and just needed my shorts, jersey and gloves, he would sort the rest. I went to a BBQ at his dads the night before and when I met Felix I wondered what I was in for, Specialized Epics and Enduros along with Canyon downhill machines everywhere, hanging from the walls of the basement. I thought I might be in over my head.
I worked out in the morning that the Canyon with a really impressive but understated spec was a young guy I had met the night before, Mark who is at Uni majoring in composites, mainly carbon fibre with thermal dynamics. It was a nice Canyon but the wheels were something else, being DT Swiss hubs and rims though he was running tubes not tubeless. He said that he runs light weight tubes and suptle tyres and this way he knows in the mountains he can patch a tube and not get stuck as he did once when tubeless so rather than carry a tube in case, he just carries it in his tyre with a bit of air

It took us about an hour and a half, maybe more to get to the mountains and get to the top at a little village that even at this mid morning hour was heaving, carparks in the village were full, one had around 60 or so motorbikes coming and going and was solely for motorcycles. Really busy sort of place like a sort of tiny Aviemore or Rothiemurcus on a bank holiday. The main town was at the bottom of the mountain section we were on. We parked in a carpark about half a kilometre away near one of the trail heads and got bikes off and sorted. I was given the loan of a friends Bergamont Contrail 29'er with full Fox suspension both ends as well as a dropper seatpost. Very nice indeed, though again made me wonder what I was about to ride, trail wise. It was already heading towards about 30 degree but cooler in the trees so the climb up the first summit was nice in the cool mountain air especially with 2 x 10 gearing to help, I was flying up the hill and I must admit it was nice. We got to one section and Mark said we have a short technical climb then a bit of a rocky technical descent for about a kilometre and I thought here we go, I'm either going to get hurt here or be blown out the back. To be fair it was fine, I climbed up the climb waiting for the technical stuff only to find it was done and then the downhill part was really big rocks and slab stuff so I was especially fine. I am fine with the techy stuff and years of racing enduro on the morobike means I can pick a line from way out but I can't do it a million miles an hour and so we were all together and riding along like we had been doing it together for ever, a bit of a relief. This section I would have cleared easily on my 1X1 but I imagine slower as the suspension came into play here. Though not as much as you may expect as Mark pionted out to me at the bottom that the crazy Aussie had ridden it with his shock and fork locked out. How the fu** was I to know, I'm a rigid singlespeeder! If I thought this bike was good before it was absolutely sublime for the rest of the ride now I had freed it!
The riding was very similar to ours here in the highlands with hiking trails and then due to some recent storms there were quite a few trees down on some of the lesser used singletrack trails so we had a bit of hike a bike stuff, so besides the heat and dust the terain was similar to here. We climbed a huge rock in the middle of the forest and had the most amazing veiws off the mountains. I also came round on bend on a well formed trail with a few hikers about so was taking it easy to pass three guys on randonneur bikes with panniers and handlebar bags etc. I slowed and said hello as I checked out their bikes and Mark said to me the part of the trail we were on is a trail that goes right over the Hartz mountains and covers about 160 kilometres from one end to the other and is well mapped and marker posts every 5 kilometres. All I could think was Brian and Jamie could take the randonneur rides off shore next year
We then did a few more climbs and descents before heading back to the village of Toffhouse for some lunch and a couple of cold drinks. I had a currywurst and frites (huge sausage with a sort of tomato sauce sprinkled with curry powder and chips and thought I better not have a beer so drank pepsi as I didn't know whether we were finished or about to ride back up the steep mountain again. Unfortunately we were just about done, it was well later than I thought and we rode the couple of kilometres back and loaded up.
A great day with some good guys who were really cool to take me along. My German is almost non exsistant and Felix and Wolfgangs was OK whereas Mark had excellent english but once riding non of this stuff mattered as it's pretty universal communication when your riding.
Just thought I would share as it was something different but great fun.

Jamie

mb1 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

mb2 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

Nice cool shade
mb3 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

Nice downhill singletrack through the trees
mb6 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

Wolfgang
mb7 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

mb8 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

mb91 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

Nice fresh cold water to refill bottles from
mb92 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

mb9 by Jamie Dyer, on Flickr

Car shows and bike rides, sounds like a great trip Jamie.
Don’t get too soft with all this new tangled bike technology.
Also, don’t fret over you suspension mishap, Keith and I do it all the time. We’ve developed a buddy system to remind each other to check before we head off downhill.