A September To Remember? Let’s see if that’s right…
In the BBC Scotland home show “Scotland’s Home of the Year” the judges mark every home they visit out of 10. Except they don’t – they only ever mark them out of four as homes either get a 7, 8, 9 or 10. No one has ever scored six or lower.
The judges could be reviewing a home with one wall, no roof, a raging fire burning down the living room and, worst of all, a “Live, Laugh, Love” sign in the kitchen, and they would still give it a 7.
It’s a nice show. And it’s nice touch that no matter how crap the home they always try and find good things to say about it.
“The out of control fire really keeps the home toasty and warm while providing a degree of spontaneity that shows the home owner’s fun loving side!”
So, all I’ll say to this week’s Film Friday is that a film about a man who challenged himself to sleep in a different London park every day in September deserves a seven.
And any film that talks about sleeping in the parks without once mentioning homelessness is, in my books, morally suspect as I couldn’t help shake off my feeling of unease watching someone say “it’s better than sleeping in my own bed!” without acknowledging that for many people this is not a fun social media challenge. But, looking at the positives:
“The lack of mention of serious social issues really show’s the filmmaker’s fun loving side!”
I’ve covered the White Loch before and if you want know about parking then check out our guide here and if you want an updated version you can find it here and if you want to know what it’s going to be like in six months in winter then you can find that too.
So, this is a review to bring you up to date with what the White Loch is like in 2021 after a year of lockdown, a year of closed swimming pools and a boom in wild swimming.
Well, the answer is easy: it’s become one of the most popular lochs for swimming, paddle boarding and for taking a quick dip in the south side of Glasgow. I regularly pass it when I’m out cycling and I count 10 – 20 people there most mornings, days, evenings and nights (though I’m guessing with that last one as I haven’t checked that out as I can’t ride my bike in the dark!)
In one way, this is fantastic as it means that you will always have company if you want to go for a swim. However, popularity brings its own dangers.
First, the more people use the White Loch the harder it is for it remain ‘clean’. It’s important when swimming to always wash your wetsuit between swims and especially if you are changing locations. You don’t want to bring microbes from one loch to another. What is natural in one loch may be harmful to another so please wash between swims.
Second, not everyone welcomes wild swimmers. While the law may be on your side, and the right to roam includes a right to swim, that doesn’t mean you have a right to the loch greater than anyone else who might use it. There are farmers, there are fishermen – and above all there’s Scottish Water. Be mindful of where you park, how you get changed, what you bring to the loch and what you bring away – everything. And most of all remember that the right to roam/swim doesn’t include a right to have a barbecue, a right to litter or a right to, erm, relieve yourself.
The White Loch itself remains a great place to swim. It has a nice loop round the loch, it’s relatively sheltered and it’s very easy to get there from Glasgow. It remains one of my regular swim spots but, in order to keep it safe for everyone, do remember that you’re not the only one who swims/fishes/walks/farms there. And the easiest way to do that is to join the Southside Swimmers Group on Facebook to keep up to date with everything happening with the loch:
Not quite a sporting video this week but one that features a town where everyone cycles rather than drives – and it only exists for one week a year.
This is the town of Black Rock City. If you don’t know Black Rock City it’s a town that exists for just a week each year as an entire community is built for the Burning Man festival. And we’re not just talking about a collection of tents, like at Glastonbury or any other UK festival. This is a proper town with shops, roads, bars and massive sky high works of art.
As the video explains the town is so big that the only way to get around is to use your bike, all of which are modified and decorated like a Mad Max extra.
I don’t know when Burning Man will go ahead again but, if it does, this video provides a fascinating look at the town Burning Man built.
As Glasgow drops to Tier 2 and we finally get permission to move around the country I finally decide to stay in Glasgow and not move around the country by withdrawing from Celtman.
In the end a combination of two things led to my decision to withdraw. First, I need to be confident that I stand reasonable chance of completing the course. I know that people say you should face your fear and that it’s normal to be scared of the challenge ahead but I need to be realistic: I don’t have the swim strength to complete the swim leg and then cycle 120 miles before running a marathon.
My longest swim this year was 2.5k two weeks ago and I didn’t come out of the water feeling energised and ready to cycle. I came out sore and tired and doubting I could have swum another stroke. If I’d another month I believe I’d have had enough time to train but, I don’t have a month, I’ve got two days and I’m not where I need to be to swim 3.4k in the open sea.
Second, TwinBikeDaughter is only five months old and the thought of leaving Mrs TwinBikeRun and TwinBikeDaughter for four days, while taking part in a race that I almost certainly won’t complete, would have been asking too much of them. I would have returned home to find the locks changed and unwelcome visit to TwinBikeDivorceLawyer..!
Sadly, Celtman has been my dream race and it looks like conditions would have been perfect – dry weather, warm(ish) water and a light breeze. But I can’t change the fact that with only five weeks to swim after Glasgow swimming pools re-opened I’m not yet ready for the Celtman swim course.
It’s my first time in a shop (excepting supermarkets) in over a year.
Salesman: “You don’t want that, it’s shite. I only have it in the shop as a warning not to buy it!“
It was good to see customer service in Glasgow hadn’t changed…
It was both ‘less strange’ and ‘more strange’ than I thought to be shopping in town.
It was strange to be shopping as Mrs TwinBikeRun and I had brought Baby TwinBikeRun with us and it was harder than I thought to move around while pushing a pram. We even walked different streets because “it’s quieter if we go to the next street rather than walk up this one”. While, in shops, Mrs TwinBikeRun was stuck by displays blocking the pram from getting round – shops are not designed for babies, which I’m okay with, as they don’t have a wallet so why should they have a say in how shops are laid out!?!? 🙂
It was less strange than I thought to be in town because there wasn’t a great change in how I shopped. I walked in, I looked round, saw nothing I wanted to buy and then walked out, just as I did a year ago. I’m not a slow browser: I check shops with all the speed of a soldier running across an exposed courtyard with a sniper somewhere on the roofs above.
I was in town to find a new pair of jeans as I don’t like ordering jeans on the internet. They always look different, and you can never tell the fit from a website photo. And I don’t want to order them just to send back. It’s for the same reason I wouldn’t order a mail order bride. Some things need to be seen first.
Baby TwinBikeRun slept through the whole trip and missed out on seeing all the shops with queues out of the door. Primark’s queue stretched along the front of the shop and around a corner. Zara too had a queue which stretched down Buchanan Street. I wondered if the queues were a sign of popularity or a sign of a decent social distancing policy. Perhaps the shops without the queues are the ones to avoid because they spray COVID on the clothes and cough in the changing rooms?
Most people were wearing masks, even on the streets. A few had them over their mouth, most had them around their neck, or, in the case of one man, on top of his head like a clown hat.
“That’s because he talks out of the top of his head,” says Mrs TwinBikeRun.
We put masks on each time we go into a shop, so did everyone else but, in Glasgow, the numbers have still been rising all month. As the rest of the country has moved in tier 2 we remained in tier 3 and, as I write this on Friday 28 May, it looks likely we’ll stay in tier 3 for at least another week.
If so, it’s another week I can’t leave the city unless it’s essential travel – and Celtman is not essential travel.
I now put my chances of taking part in Celtman at less than 10%. I don’t feel at all confident that I have the swimming strength for 3.4km. While I have managed 1 – 2 swims a week since mid April, my arms are very tired after 2km and I haven’t managed to do anything longer.
I’m comfortable with the thought of the bike and the run, and think my running is probably the strongest it’s been before any other long distance race, but, just like evolutionary biology, you can’t run before you can swim.
On Monday, someone had used white chalk to write the following message on a nearby pavement: “Ally, I love you, please call me!”. It was surrounded by love hearts.
By Friday, the message was changed to: “Ally, you are a GIMP!”
The path of true love does not run smooth, even if you use an actual path to declare your love…
This message was the only thing that changed this week as Glasgow remained in Tier 3 COVID restrictions for another week, month and year. We’ve now been locked down so long that, if we were in prison, we’d have been eligible for release on compassionate grounds.
I must admit, despite trying to follow the rules, that I’m not quite sure what the current rules actually are. I live in a postcode that borders the highest rate but also borders one of the lowest, an area which is in Tier 2. If you turn right at the end of my street the pubs are open, if you turn left the pubs have been turned into an emergency COVID vaccination centre to halt the spread of the virus. It’s all quite confusing.
So, this report is brought to you with the slight caveat that I’m not sure if I was or wasn’t breaking the lockdown rules by swimming in Loch Ard last week. Certainly Kinlochard, the village at the end of Loch Ard, was giving very strong ‘Haste Ye Back’ vibes with every parking space displaying a “Do Not Park Here” sign and the local community hall car park closed.
Instead, I parked in the same spot as last time and would point out that there’s only space here for four cars so you may want to come here early to make sure you have a spot. I was there for 9am and there was one other car parked.
The loch itself has warmed up nicely and was around 12 degrees. Depending on your cold water reaction it was either starting to turn cold but pleasant or still on the chilly side. I wore a vest underneath my wetsuit and was fine without gloves or boots. At the end I tried swimming without a wetsuit and it was okay…ish…
For the swim, I swam to one of the islands and back, a swim of around a mile, if you can swim in a staightline. My goggles kept steaming up so I was more crooked than Al Capone and veered to the left as I swam.
Be careful of the water becoming colder the further you swim out. While the water is shallow near the bank it quickly becomes deeper and colder the further out you are. I wouldn’t try this swim unless you were confident that you can swim 2km.
Overall: a fantastic setting for a swim with plenty of options for short or longer routes. The water should only get warmer as we get into summer. Just remember though to check the COVID restrictions.
A Ronseal video. It does exactly what it says on the tin/description. A man runs every day for a year and then records his thoughts after finishing the last run. Why did he do it? How did he do it? And is going to stop?
As lockdown has had more sequels than Mission Impossible, it seems apt that throughout each one – from ‘Lockdown: The Original Series’ to ‘Friday The 13th Lockdown This Week’ – I’ve become Tom Cruise.
For the last year, Iain TwinBikeRun has made videos of local bike routes and running trails. And, just like Martin Scorsese needs Robert De Niro, Iain TwinBikeRun needed a star for his videos – and who else to turn to than me!
Just like Tom Cruise, I can run.
Just like Tom Cruise, I have a nose so big and pointy I can use it to pot a snooker ball.
But, unlike Tom Cruise, I don’t believe I’m filled with tiny space aliens controlling my mind as I wait for the mothership to descend from the outreaches of the cosmos and whisk me away to intergalactic heaven.
So, basically, I’m 1980s Tom Cruise and not 2020 Tom Cruise. I’m the Cool Cruise! Cocktail Cruise! Maverick!
But what Tom Cruise doesn’t tell you is how hard it is to run on camera. I’ve been running on camera for Iain TwinBikeRun for a year and it goes something like this:
Iain TwinBikeRun: “Run up that hill!”
Me: Ok!
[Runs half a mile up a hill]
Ian TwinBikeRun (Shouting): “Come back.”
I do.
And I run it again because he wants a different angle. And then again because he had his thumb over the camera lens. And then again because he wants an overhead shot with a drone. By the time I’m finished, I’ve been up and down more often than Tom Cruise on Oprah Winfrey’s sofa proclaiming his love for ‘her from Dawson’s Creek’. And I’ve covered more miles than a tarmac spreader.
Tom Cruise makes it look easy. He’s always running on camera. However, I can now see that not only is he a great actor he must also be a great ultra runner because that’s the only way he could get through a day’s filming. If Mission Impossible was accurate he should show him spending 10 minutes each film bent over with his hands on his knees and saying “Just give me a minute, I just need to get my breath back!”.
So, when you watch the videos, spare a thought for the Tom Cruise impersonator running through them. I know I make it look easy but, just like Tom Cruise, I would also like a spaceship to swoop down and rescue me when I hear Iain TwinBikeRun shout for yet another take.
Last week, as it looked like Moray was going to remain in Tier 3 lockdown restrictions while the rest of Scotland moved to Tier 2, I wrote my friends and colleagues in Moray a song:
When the COVID’s sky high in Findrassie and Roseisle
That’s a-Moray!
Where the police block the streets if more than two people meet
That’s a-Moray!
When masks are in bins because “we got the vaccine!”
That’s a-Moray!
When we’re ruled by the SNP but we all voted for a Tory…
That’s a-Moray! (A-Moray!)
That’s a-Moray!
Of course, three days later it was announced that Moray was not the only region to remain in Tier 3, Glasgow was also going to remain in Tier 3. Which means that we can no longer travel outside the city as the rest of the country will be Tier 2 and you can’t leave a Tier 3 area to go to an area with a lower rating.
Which means, for the moment, I cannot travel to Celtman or to some of my favourite swimming spots. With four weeks to go, unless anything changes, it looks very unlikely I’ll be taking part in Celtman as: (a) I might not be able to travel to the Highlands; or (b) even if I could, I won’t be ready to swim.
I’ll see what happens in the next four weeks but I put my chances now at less than 25%.
Twin brothers swimming, cycling and running in Scotland 