Cycling the West Highland Way - Part 1

The West Highland Way is a 96mile long walking route in Scotland from Fort William to Milnagavie.
It is currently celebrating it's 40th year since inception.
I decided to ride it on mountain bike at the end of last year.

I’ve been aware of the West Highland Way long distance walk for as long as I can remember, but I have never done the full distance. I’ve done small parts, just as part of different routes, both on walks and cycles. It such a long, well known walk though, that tourists and locals all seem to do it at some point. Coming across the route during various other travels I’d always been surprised at quite how busy with walkers it seemed to be. I always wanted to do it.

Josh Ibbett - GBDuro 2020 winning ride

A 1200mile fully self-sufficient bikepacking race the length of the UK. Starting at Lands End in the south of England the route takes riders through 5 national parks to finish at John O Groats in the north of Scotland. Due to Covid19 the race was fully self-sufficient. Josh carried 8 days worth of food on his bike and was unable to use any public buildings.

Tsar Bomba

In 1961 the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated exploded at the equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT.
This previously unseen footage of the event has just been declassified and released for the first time.
It was dropped from a TU-95v plane, which even though 75 miles away when the explosion took place, was hit by the shockwave causing it to quickly drop altitude and making control difficult for the pilot for a few minutes.

Wuppertal, Germany Schwebebahn: the flying train

From: Film at MoMA
"The Flying Train" depicts a ride on a suspended railway in Germany in 1902. The footage is almost as impressive as the feat of engineering it captures.
Built to make use of otherwise dead space in a city, the trains run above existing roads and rivers with only the slender struts and stations entryways taking up space on the ground.

Built in 1901, the train is still running today:

Rainspotting

An 84-Hour Bikepacking Ramble.

Leaving the Sleeper Train at the highest, remotest station on the West Highland Line, a group of cyclists head off on an opportunistic wintry journey to ride the old-established network of gravel drove roads.