RNLI Fundraising trip
Round the Coastline of Britain

Day 5 16th May 2005
St Abbs to Aberdeen (197 miles)
Visited 9 RNLI Stations

Another late start and we were not on the bikes till nearly 9.00am.

Farmer Palmer drove his tractor to the top of the track we would leave on and after climbing into its raised shovel, he filmed us riding up the track, round the corner and off down the lane to start the next leg of our journey.

Once we filled up with petrol and slogged our way through the Edinburgh traffic, we reached South Queensferry Station where we met My nephew (and talented documentary maker) Will Tadros and Johan Meintjies who was joining us for the days riding on his Transalp.

With a few pictures of the Forth Railway bridge in the can, we looped up across the Road bridge. (Ooh, that made me feel a bit wobbly) and onto Kinghorn and Anstruther

I found the roads quite boring and fairly urban, which surprised me a bit as I was expecting to find a much more open landscape above Edinburgh. It was also extremely cold and there was some heavy cloud cover. I had throught that we would find some good views for pictures, but due to the weather and the towns they were not at all forthcoming.

Soon we were fighting our way into the Aberdeen evening traffic and then riding across a dock which was full of logs which were being shipped to Norway to be pulped or turned into chipboard. This saves the Norwegians from felling their own forests. International commerce eh.

These two RNLI guys were some of the many cheerful RNLI'ers we met throughout Scotland.

After leaving them, Chris and I decided to cut the run short and stay in the Aberdeen YHA, while Johan (being a tough b*stard) decided he would ride on to Fraserburgh and find somewhere to sleep for the night. He texted us later to say that he did reach Fraserburgh (in freezing rain) he could not find anywhere to stay and rode back down the coast where he camped out.

I'm glad we stayed put, as we were going to be up against it on the next day.