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book reviews

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don't try this at home



behind bars

i had hoped to bring a review of the assos airjack 851 this week, but since the weather is not currently conducive to cycling at all let alone trying to evaluate an item of clothing for review, i shall now reminisce about last saturday and the assos jacket will have to wait a day or two.

bbc scotland currently operate an 'island blogging' site which allows those of us on the outer edges of scotland to say whatever we like (within reason and house rules) in pixels and have it blogged to the world.

the last island area to be included in this excellent scheme was the inner hebrides: islay, jura, colonsay and also arran and suchlike. having been recruited by a man from the beeb (hello mike), i now seem to be the only person on islay who has continued to post a regular blog. unsurprisingly this started off being almost solely about cycling but has now metamorphosed into being just as frequently about digital photography and adobe photoshop lessons (no i don't really understand why either).

in a moment of silliness a few weeks back i posted the question, 'does anyone know how to take photographs while cycling quickly?' in an attempt to answer my own question, i tried this very procedure last saturday using a relatively elderly kodak digital camera stuffed into the back pocket of my assos roubaix jacket. while this made it quite easy to remove the camera when the photographic opporchancity came along, the rather efficient elastic at the top of the pockets made it nigh on impossible to replace it without stopping. this is mainly because, experienced cyclist that i am, i do not care for cycling no hands while undertaking procedures designed to upend me and the colnago.

so i thought that this week, since the colnago is unlikely to make it out the bike shed, i would take you on the trip just to give you an insight into the carefree world in which i live and cycle. you can check out the pictures here.

one of the notions that took me away from mountain biking was having to cycle a couple of miles (at least) on fat, knobbly tyres to reach a suitable offroad area (don't bother moaning at me - i know lots of you have to pack the bikes and gear into the car and drive to your offroad playground, but just remember, i'm a spoilt cyclist) on the colnago, i am immediately in my playground as soon as cleat clips in to pedal.

since the idea of the trip was to take an offseason run to the official home of velo club d'ardbeg, i went out past the bonded warehouses belonging to morrison's bowmore distillery, which are only about three hundred yards from my back door, and on to what we locally refer to as the 'low road'. and yes, there is also a high road. both these roads are easily accessible from bowmore and both reach the same destination - port ellen - about ten miles away.

about the first two or so miles are up and down and mildly squiggly before we reach the bridge over the river laggan and island farm. from this point onwards is what i believe is the longest straight section of road in the highlands and islands (though i haven't actually gone looking, so it's possible they've sneaked one in somewhere else). the principal reason for its straightness was the proposed construction of a railway line connecting port ellen with bowmore and, presumably, the western half of the island. unfortunately the timing of this coincided with the so-called 'beeching cuts' in the 1960s and the line was subsequently scratched. so while the road does have its ups and downs (sort of) it is absolutely dead straight. this is a major boon when taking advantage of a tail wind (i have comfortably achieved 65kph along here - overtaking a tractor in the process), but it can be a long, hard slog into a headwind.

last saturday, however, was very pleasant, with blue cloudless skies and no real wind to speak of (and how often have you heard that phrase referring to islay?) apparently in their last few days of existence, i didn't have to stop at the traffic lights at duich. the low road crosses the river at duich by means of a bridge which, last year, had been designated unsafe for some of the heavier vehicles that currently require to traverse, so they built a single track diversion using part of the old road and put up traffic lights to control the normal two way traffic. if this sounds rather unremarkable, i should point out that there are no other traffic lights on the island (and no roundabouts either).

the new bridge looks considerably more substantial than the one it replaces, though once the lights are removed and we get back to the existing route, we'll probably never notice - certainly not while on a bike.

duich is roughly midway between bowmore and islay airport which, on a saturday afternoon is pretty well deserted. we currently only have a saturday morning flight which was long gone by the time i reached the airport, so there wasn't much activity. unfortunately, the low road is somewhat featureless, apart from the temporary traffic lights and the airport, being bordered on both sides by intermittent peat bogs. with the advent of central heating and a smallish population, peat is not cut on quite the scale it once was.

the next major landmark is port ellen maltings - one of the ugliest buildings on the island and which rather overshadows the entrance to port ellen village. owned by diageo, it supplies malted barley to some of the islands' distilleries and frequently clouds the surrounding area in white smoke with a rather distinctive aroma. since large articulated trucks have to turn and reverse in to the loading bay, the road surface at this point makes paris roubaix seem like new laid motorway. it is not at all kind to cyclists traversing its patched tarmac on 23mm high pressure tyres.

the road continues to head towards the ferry port, but i turn left in the opposite direction and through the village, before taking another left a few hundred yards further on and heading along islay's southern coast.

the last building on the right as port ellen is left behind, is the village primary school and the road heads towards a rocky coast looking out to the island of texa. this is distillery country, signalled by the large, green bonded warehouses belonging to laphroaig distillery. the distillery itself is virtually hidden from view behind a lot of trees, but a sign on the left of the road alerts you to the 'home of the friends of laphroaig'. the field adjacent to this sign, which is often under several inches of water, contains small flags of many nations, where whisky nutters have waded in wellies to place their country's flag on their square foot of islay - it's marketing jim- and exactly as we know it!

ever since they cut down the trees on both sides of the road, the surface has subsided in very creative ways. it's quite easy to manoeuvre on a bicycle, but it could almost make you seasick in a car. between laphroaig and lagavulin is a small bridge, the parapets of which used to be all but hidden by the grass at the side of the road. in may 1994, while heading in the opposite direction on a pipe band outing, the driver clipped the edge of the bridge and tipped the van on its side. unfortunately, my arm went out the window and scraped along the road with the van and occupants on top of it. hence my meeting with a plastic surgeon and two weeks in hospital. i don't mind if you cringe when cycling over the bridge:-)

colnago at the old kiln

lagavulin distillery is preceded by a few small cottages on the right hand side of the road. there's a car park just past the last cottage specifically for the distillery while the road continues past what used to be the distillery's malt barns. at this point, the road starts to head upwards, and should you wish to take a detour to see dun naomhaig castle (or at least what's left of it) in lagavulin bay, you should watch out for the gap in the stone wall on the right side of the road.

i, however, continued to cycle uphill past farmland and up to the point where, if you look over to the right, you can see the pagodas atop ardbeg's old kiln cafe. unfortunately, for me at least, the cafe is not open at weekends in the winter months, so the visit to the distillery was merely going to be by way of a turning point and an opportunity to take a few more photos.

as luck would have it, ardbeg's manager stuart thomson had just returned from a small tour of the distillery (must be a real pest living on the premises), so i chatted to him for five minutes or so before clipping back in and heading back the way i came.

how was your saturday?.

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this website is named after graeme obree's championship winning 'old faithful' built using bits from a defunct washing machine

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as always, if you have any comments on this nonsense, please feel free to e-mail and thanks for reading.

this column appears, as regular as clockwork on this website every two weeks. (ok so i lied) sometimes there are bits added in between times, but it all adds to the excitement.

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