Cycling Through Central Edinburgh - A Photographic Narrative Of Sight & Sign
I had arranged to meet up with my friend 'A' in town and decided to cycle in. Having recently fixed the brakes on Bicycle, I had the pleasure of no longer needing to use my feet to stop and I could also pick up a bit of speed. I took my camera with me and had these two themes in mind:
- bicycles and cycling
- signs and signposts
I present this selection of photos as they were taken, in chronological order. There is some accompanying commentary.
This is the first time I am using the #cyclefeed tag. The #travelfeed tag is already one of my main go-tos and my experience using it has been excellent. These two tags flow from a similar space of good vibes - here is cyclefeed's introduction.
All images are sized to a width of 1680 pixels, so if you'd like to zoom in, you can use the right-click (CTR-click) options to 'view image'.
Thanks for stopping by.
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I set off under an alternating sky of sun and cloud, no rain on the horizon. I go past some signs. The first one is friendly
...then two more hugging a post. One passively aggressive, the other actively so
...before cocking my head at this one!
I followed the sign down the hill and through the park where the Braid Burn flows, until it disappeared under a stone bridge
...and I hit the road again, Edinbugger castle perched on the hill in the background and a church steeple sticking out of Number 23's doubled-up decker
I don't need to ride with the traffic for long, and soon turn off onto another of Edinburgh's many green spaces
I descend gently to the Meadows where I meet up with A. We sit on the grass, catching up and enjoying each other's company, fulfillment of sign #1's prophecy 🌞
After a while, A goes back to work and I head into a town that is getting ready for the month-long Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
I park Bicycle near the University, good girl that she is....
...and walk through one of my favourite graveyards
....and out, past a gent mirrored in the wall
...and someone spying on the cyclist
...before bursting into the Grassmarket, bowels of Edinburgh, cleaned up a couple of centuries ago and now buzzing with humanity. Cyclists are exceptional sez the sign on the right :)
And cycles??? Whatever guys, whaaaaa tever!
Stonewalled with a rusty old caution....
...and dumped!
Oh the facade, the promise of bright skies - yet entrance is blocked and parking forbidden!
Where else to go pushing the load but into the unknown eh?
Aha! Now you're talking, although pleeeeze consider adding some THC to mine. Patience friends, the time will come when the leaf will roam free again. And yeah, vegan too btw 😉
...regardless of official ridicule and what they may say!
Right, heading back now, with a stop in a secluded, walled-in, little-known, concealed and overgrown graveyard. I sit and have a smoke
Bicycle's chilled and waits patiently with the Peaceful Dead
I decide to go along the Union Canal, which starts at this very point, and carries on out West to Glasgow, 50 odd miles away. The cycle/pedestrian path runs the entire distance.
...no swimming apparently!
Some local stats and figures
Barge! You here? Now fancy that and who would've thought it?
Cycling is much quicker than barging. I move on to the acqeduct, where the canal goes over the Water of Leith, and a cyclist is bracketed between two blurred stalks of grass that bomb the photo
What, yet another barge wtf? How??
Right, getya, it's Area 51 and all sortsa weird shit's takin' place....I see!
Well hello there Sir! Smiles of such Utter Delight as yours are seldom seen, thank you and good day to you!
I leave the canal and take the old railway line through the woods, now a cycle path that runs alongside the Water of Leith
Bicycle flirts with some wild red flowers. I don't mind!
I cycle through the tunnel, my whistling echoing back and forth
Down to the water's edge for another smoke, nicely timed with the lighter, 50-50 with the auto-focus :)
Nearly home, farewell shot of a cobweb I saw on a bridge - fascinating reminder of the inter-connectedness of it all.
...and finally, welcomed back home by the Sunlit Princess, who doesn't like being left out of anything 🔆.
Bees
Echinacea
Flash the cat
New York City
Workers in Dubai
Bitch on the Beach
Tahiti & French Polynesia
Fly Life – macros and verse
Diary Travelogues:-
UK to India overland by car (1973)
Eastern Europe - Poland, Russia, the Baltics (1994)
The Nile and the Pharaohs - Egypt (1996)
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon (1996)
This is a great entry for #cyclefeed! hope @mrprofessor sees this :)
Those are nice cycling lanes but I'd be scared near a canal. I did that in Bangkok and the canals aren't clean so I always walked on those areas and just carried the bike haha
Thanks @wanderlass, and for the shoutout to Mr. P :)
I used to cycle to work along the aqueduct and one of my colleagues once fell in. It's not deep, but was icy cold. I've seen a swan try and land on the frozen canal, and just slide and slide, with a funny surprised expression (if that's possible :). One is supposed to dismount before crossing the aqueduct. I do if there are people coming towards me.
The cycling network infrastructure itself isn't as sophisticated or extensive as what Holland and Germany have, nor is it as high a priority, unfortuantely :( ....but there are lots of beautiful cycling routes through and around Edinburgh, even if they end abruptly every now and then :).
I think your cycling infrastructure there are much better and safer than in the PH. And lol to that poor swan :D
But of course we have noticed @wanderlass, how not to see this amazing post, we loved it!
That Peugeot bike is a beauty, is it vintage, @barge?
Thank you so much for supporting @cyclefeed and spreading the bike word across Steemit.
Hey thanks @mrprofessor, thanks for the kind words and the appreciation. I'm loving all the encouragement I'm getting on this one :D
I've had the Peugeot for 7 years I think. Rescued from mum's shed, where it was gathering dust and I needed a bike. It had belonged to various people before, including my sister - traceable to around 20 years lol - vintage I guess :D. I'm actually a racer (curved handles) at heart, and all my earlier bikes were racers, without exception. This little one has been patched and reconstructed by cannibalising other old bikes. She's only got 5 gears, enough for city commuting, but not really suitable for exploring further afield as I'd like.
I've a friend who lives 600km away, who has offered me one of his bikes - a touring racer with panniers - a beast 🐺. My plan is to cycle it back up, just haven't got round to it yet. Something I'm really looking forward to though!
Nice to meet you and thanks for stopping by 🔆
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That's amazing, what a history that bike has!
I guess I'm the opposite of you, I'm a dirty mountain biker hahahaha. However, I already see that we share one major thing in common; love for bike, obviously; and appreciation for bicycle touring. I'd easily join you on that 600 km bike tour If I was around your area. In the future, maybe?
The best wishes for you.
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LOL, they're great for mountains and rough terrain, but I find the tyres too thick for asphalt and speed :D - now that I'm a bit older, a touring racer (medium tyres and plenty speed) is defo my thing.
Sure man, although currently the Atlantic and the Equator lie in between 😌. I'd love to visit S. America someday - your post on Uruguay made it look very attractive (plus I know they have legal ganja :). I've done a lot of hitch-hiking and outdoor sleeping in my time, it may sound nuts to some, but I think it's great.
And the same to you 🔆
Yeah, Uruguay is a great place to travel by bicycle actually; they respect and encourage cyclists there, it's safe to camp, it has beaches - Perfect!
And, they do have ganja, but interestingly enough you don't see it everywhere. Maybe because I don't smoke, so I don't really notice.
That's really great to hear! And yes, I do know for a fact that cannabis is legal in Uruguay :D
Awesome Mr P! :)
AHAH I love the 'Mr P', I want to change my name now hihi
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Love at first sight with you @cyclefeed, thanks so much 💜
Congrats!
Thanks for this tour around Edinburgh. I love the Peugeot! We have the Infringement Festival starting in Buffalo tomorrow. It only goes for a week and a half. I guess Infringement has roots in Montreal where it was a counter festival to their Fringe Festival. It's a little more wild, political, often free and pretty much anyone is allowed to perform.
Thanks for stopping by @robmolecule, nice to get some vintage bike vibes :) - I see you found yourself an old racer and fixed it up, very nice indeed!
The 'Infringement' festival sounds like what Edinburgh used to be like a few decades ago - real fringe and alternative stuff. Now of course, it's full-blown commercial and establishment - regulated, expensive and for the artists, I guess more and more exclusive. There's still some scope for ad-hoc and unregulated street performances fortunately. City population pretty much doubles.
great photos. Realy nice. And peugeot bike. Interesting. Now i seen skoda's bikes. Peugeot also making bikes now?
Thanks @jasiu, glad you liked them and nice of you to say so :D
Peugeot have been making bikes for over a century, including racers - which is what I knew them for! I think they're not as prolific nowadays.
Thanks for stopping by, I see you have lots of bike posts, a self-declared bike addict :D
A thoroughly enjoyable trip around Edinburgh displayed and described here @barge, thanks for taking the time to put this tour together.
Caught me eye, as did the big smile from the cyclist passing by!
Hey Asher, you cycle around too no? There was a post about 'art' sculptures and red bikes a while ago that I remember :D
Mr. Smiles hit me with it as soon as he turned the corner and saw the camera pointed in his direction. The gent gave me a nod and I only noticed the reflection on large-screen review. Nice timing :)
Thanks for checking it out, great to see you here 🔆
Yes I am out on the bike almost daily. Perhaps it's time to share some of the photos I've taken over the past few months too.
I enjoyed the flow of this, and understand the time and thought required to both take the photos and build the story of the day.
That chap seems very happy to be part of the photo :)
Why not Asher, there is a lot of scope for creativity in the selection of photographs that shapes the theme and energises the flow :D
I enjoy these types of posts and now at last have a decent camera. The photography is immersion in the loosely-defined themes I may start out with and I consciously side-step the temptation to take a photo for effect, rather than feel, although stuff creeps in of course! For me, the editing and posting is not as time-consuming as say the travelogues, or posts where I'm thinking a lot :)
Cycling is such a suitable way of covering ground with the flexibility to stop at any time. You've got great weather in the Balearics, if perhaps crazier driving (?) and less cycling infrastructure (?). Be a great way of bringing in some personal stuff (eg a mood expressed through word/photo narrative), a break from numbers and stats and churning the blocks. I look forward to reading them 🔆
Indeed. A decent camera and perhaps less time required (although it's still a factor) in editing/arranging the post is a good thing.
I've posted similar in the past, they are buried away somewhere :) The infrastructure for cycling is pretty good here, and in fact, a number of pro cycle teams (including SKY) use Majorca as their training ground. I even witnessed a race on the other side of the island a few years ago.
There are also routes that are completely off-road. I will plan to cover more ground and create more of this content soon. There is another numbers post coming first though :)
That's where skillsets and experiences come in handy I guess, in optimising the work flow - I used to do tech-support for Adobe and am comfy with their software. I often marvel at the colourful pictures you paint when creatively querying databases :)
The quality of the camera allows me to crop pictures and not lose resolution. Cropping really brings the hidden and less observed stuff to the fore (kinda like with the 'gent's reflection, but there was't much cropping there lol). It's also the hidden and less conspicuous stuff that makes for the most interesting shots (when observed :).
Nice to hear about decent cycling infrastructure on Mallorca. I was only there once, for a week in 1998, experiencing a long distance relationship in meltdown and my heart in the gutter 😭 - didn't see much of anything but my own self-pity lol. I remember liking the old town, and listening to deeply melancholic live Flamenco singing with ripped emotions.
The responses to this post have been really uplifting....many thanks for your encouragement Asher 🔆
Love this post! This is my favourite kind of photography. You must've been fairly close to the passers by with the 40mm. I would like to learn how to feel more comfortable with that kind of shooting.
Hope to see more of this kind of thing from you. It's inspiring!
Thanks Cams, and thanks for another resteem 🔆
This was the first time in town with the camera and I found myself getting into position without much self-consciousness, kneeling on road or pavement, even flat on stomach. I remained kneeling for a while taking the Cowgate shots ('Espionage'), so I guess people walking past had had time to see me and prepare psychologically :) ... at any rate I gave folk waves of thanks/acknowledgement if I thought they thought they were being photographed, and were. One or two of the cyclists didn't look very happy - I said thanks anyway and didn't use their photos (which weren't really suitable anyway!).
I love the idea of capturing expressions when there is no awareness of camera, but not much chance without a different lens. Luckily little things aren't as self-conscious and I can use the macro lol.
So cool of you to say that, I enjoyed the process very much and intend to take the camera about on outings like this.
PS: forgot to say that the shot of the coppers was a single click and hope, with the camera at chest level, and the act of clicking concealed from them ;-)
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