Thank heavens for motorways.

Am I the odd one out? Cos I actually quite like riding a bike on a motorway - not Cubbie, but Skorpy handles the bigger roads quite well. Anway, this post is nothing to do with bikes, but it is to do with travel. So here we go......set off from Cubbie Towers late last Thursday, ended up staying near Cumbernauld, which is a good 4hours and then set off again on Friday at silly-o'clock in order to make to the VMCC Committee meeting at 2pm in Burton upon Trent. It would have been far more convenient to have just jumped on a plane, but guess what, there don't seem to be any flights from Aberdeen to East Midlands that get there in time for the meeting, and the only flight home I could find was from Birmingham at 7am on Saturday, meaning I'd have to be there for 6am, meaning I'd have to leave Burton at 5am, meaning I'd have to be up at even sillier-o'clock! So, with the meeting done and dusted, my co-driver and I set off once more into the blue yonder, this time to Taunton, some 3hrs away. Well we didn't do too badly, even though there were roadworks everywhere, and we got to the Travelodge at 10.30pm. The next morning, Saturday I suppose that was, we were away by just after 8am for the co-driver to go and see a man about a trailer, a tipping trailer, an Ifor Williams tipping trailer. We took a little detour through some nice villages, went past the Worlds End and finally got to the village where the trailer man lives. Rang him up, found out we'd then have to sit and wait about 20mins for him to get ready, before following him to his yard where he keeps the trailer. Not having met the guy, or knowing exactly what vehicle he was driving, we were passed by a small transit van, which, for some reason, we decided to follow. Another few miles of narrow, twisty Somerset lanes and we were beginning to wonder if we were following the right person, but eventually, he pulled up at a timber yard, opened the shed and there was the trailer. Inspection done, deal done, co-driver handed over the readies (a wad of very green and very crisp £50 notes was received with a little caution by the seller, who didn't seem to have seen Scottish fifties before!) and then we were on the road again. Essex was the next stop, only 225miles east, via the M4. We got there about 3.30pm if I recall, viewed, inspected and road tested a Vauxhall Frontera to add to the flock at Cubbie Towers (our current one is a bit poorly). There were a few things about it that the seller had forgotten to mention in the advert, and as I pointed them out to him, I could see he wasn't used to being told about cars by a woman! Still, a deal was struck involving some top quality tarpaulines that we just happened to have with us, and some more of those lovely Scottish fifties were handed over - much to even greater consternation, and we were on our way again. It's not far to Derbyshire from Essex, only 193 miles. Yawn. We had planned to be there in time for tea to treat our hosts to a meal but alas, it was gone 10.30pm by the time we got in, so it was a stop at the chippie for us which we rather naughtily took back to the house and ate in front of our hosts! Sorry, hosts.

No rest for the wicked, up at 7am on Sunday and off to collect the co-driver's tower scaffolding from a friend of a relative, who had been storing it (or maybe borrowing it) for a while. Arrived at 8am, the guy wasn't up. Rang, knocked on door, still no answer. Told by said relative that the friend probably wouldn't be up til closer to 10am! Grrrrrrrrrr was all I could think! So we went away and got a bacon roll, killed a bit of time and returned bang on 10am, and finally, the guy answered the door (wearing not very much and looking a bit surprised) and unlocked the garage. With the scaffolding loaded, and several hours behind schedule, we returned to the hosts and gave my new Fronty the once over. Checked the fluids, air in all the tyres, put the spare on as one of the fronts was a little on the bald side and we were off on another 10+hr journey north to Cubbie Towers. The new truck performed faultlessly on the run home, although I'd be happier if the steering column didn't move mid-corner.

So, that was some 1500miles in total, 450 in the new truck, goodness knows what all that motorway service station food will have done to us, and those pick 'n' mix sweeties at Glasgow were, to be honest, disgusting! I managed to eat a few tho...

Old Bloke on a Bike.

Did you see the little snippet in Old Bike Mart about that guy who is riding his bike from Nepal to Belgium? He's not on a plastic rocket or a fancy tourer, no, he's riding a 1910 FN. A bike that is one hundred and two years old. Say that again, out loud and you'll see how scary it sounds!

Anyway, have a read of his blog www.oldblokeonabike.com

Banks, sunsets and benches.

Well, thats the new Cub Mag bank account set up, all approved and apparently I'm digitally verified or something, yay. And I've managed to find the workbench in the shed, it was hiding under a pile of chop saws and batteries and chargers and the like. And, as if that wasn't enough, I took this lil snap of the beautiful sunset when I was in Edinburgh a week or two ago.

Enjoy. And send me some pics of Tiger Cubs and Terriors please!

The MUD, its 'driving' us crazy!!!

By the time the Loadall had run up and down the drive and through the fields, turning with its rear wheel steering, in narrow gateways, the place was in a bit of a muddy mess, so we thought that if we got the man with the mini digger in to scrape off the surface mud that had been transferred onto the drive, it would help to sort things out. We also thought he'd be able to fill in the ruts in the fields, but the weather wasn't kind and it rained all day, and as he scraped just a weeny bit more off the drive than we would have liked, the mud got worse. So we set him to work on the ruts in the field, which he managed to do something with, but some still needed the attention of a spade and a pair of wellies. Having been up to our ears in mud for couple of days - which was a couple too many, we were going through the options of how and where to get some stones - this still being in the Hogmany holidays. Nowhere was open. A call to a friend who lives near the local quarry and who's husband just so happens to know the guy who drives the lorry, set the delivery and spreading of a lot of "inch-down" and another mini digger with another driver, in motion. Inch-down is a stoney/dusty mix that should soak up the mud and bed down and set nice and solid. I went to collect Peter and the mini digger, and he continued the mud scraping exercise on the rest of the drive, and a little while later, Jim the driver arrived with the first 10tonnes of stone, which Peter duly spread with the digger. It was originally estimated that 10tonnes would do, but then we thought 20 would be better. That hardly covered from the front to back door, so we had a third delivery, which got us to the bottom gate, and then we were sure that one last load would do it, but it was clear when that arrived that we would need....another 10tonnes. In total, we had 60tonnes of the stuff, and about 20tonnes of that was spread, shovelled, barrowed and levelled by hand - thanks Muckle Flugga Man. We've since borrowed a whacker device from a neighbour, but there's been nothing but hard frost since - and you can't whack when it's frosty. Looks good for tomorrow though, a bit rainy just now which has thawed the remaining frost pockets.

And did I mention that while we had the Loadall, we shifted a couple of old vans that have been gathering rust for a few too many years? I'm surprised that bit of it went as well as it did, you've only got to look at the pics to see it was a bit of a tricky job getting them from their tucked away little parking spaces to the two trailers we had to borrow.

Scottish Cub Fest?

And just in case you didn't see this on The Cub Mag - here it is again, and for those of you who check both sites, apologies for repeating myself, repeating myself, repea...

Some of you might have heard about the new Scottish bike show, to be held at Lanark on 12/13th May this year. I was considering the idea of having a bit of a Cub get together there - it would make an ideal venue to showcase our Cubs to a new audience, and maybe even meet a few 'like minded' types. The deal from the organisers is a FREE 16 square meter plot indoors, which would give us room for a selection of different models - not scantily clad stick insects, I was thinking more Sports / Mountain / Trials Cubs etc and not forgetting the Terrier, and perhaps some sort of project on the bench, so that people can see the mad things that we Cubbers do!

Might even manage to hook up a slide show with Cub rides and activies shown on a screen - would probably be a charge for an electric hook up, but if the 'Fest' takes off, I can find out more.
I'm sure there are a goodly number of Cub owners in Scotland or the north of England who would relish a weekend away at a bike show, talking bikes, looking at other bikes and generally having a good old time. Being May, the weather might be nice and we could even attept to organise a BBQ for Cub Fest Partakees and Friends.

Any thoughts on this are most welcome, either leave a comment by clicking on the 'comment' link under this post, or email me gbc AT thecubmag.com. If you fancy taking your bike along or helping out by manning the stand for a couple of hours each day, then that would be much appreciated. Contact me in the same way.

More 'shovelling' than 'shedding' really...

....So there we were, digging this hole, which was to be for the inspection pit in the new concrete sectional shed. Well, actually, 'we' didn't dig it, the mini digger man dug it, in the snow, a few weeks back. Luckily, it hasn't really snowed much since then, and the pit has remained covered up with tin sheets and anything else that would stop Star the not-overly-bright-Collie from falling in it. Last Wednesday, the Man from Muckle Flugga came round and started the concreting of the pit floor. There was a small pile of sandy ballast left over from the last shed build, half way up the drive (the lorry driver got stuck so just dumped it there), so some of that was barrowed down to the site and after clearing out the mini-landslip in the bottom of the pit, a few loads were mixed up and dropped into the pit. While the MFMF was busy concreting himself into a corner, I was up a ladder fixing the roof on Cubbie's shed. One of the corners of the box profile sheet had somehow come lose, and was flapping around in the rather stiff breeze. Luckily it had survived the recent storms that we had earlier in December. The problem was that the plank that that the sheeting was screwed into was so rotten that the screws weren't holding, so after a quick scout around the 'timber recycling pile' I found a suitable replacement, chopped it to size and fixed the roof back down. Sorted. Meanwhile, someone had left some footprints in the wet concrete....
(A couple of days later...)
So with the pit floor sorted, the next step will be to pop a few rows of blocks up for the walls and back fill the gap between the blocks and the rest of the world, with some concrete. But that's for later. Moving swiftly on to New Years Eve, and a handy contact in the world of 'big diggers' had agreed to lend us a JCB Loadall, and it was delivered to Cubbie Towers at early o'clock. A rather useful bit of kit, it would surely make shifting the huge pile of spoil a lot easier than a wheelbarrow...

The first pile to be shifted was nice, healthy dark top soil, which had to be carted right through every field we've got, up to the top of the farm, then back down to the bottom and back up half way again, to Mrs BC's veggie garden, and when that was gone, it was time to move the thick, orange clay that was heaped up on the far side of the shed base area. Easier said than done really, as there's the small matter of the whopping great big hole in the middle, aka the inspection pit.

New Years Day: Being ever so careful to avoid dropping the Loadall in for an inspection, TMFMF set about shovelling up the clay and dumping it in one of the fields to make a bit of a sheep shelter. Unfortunately, being the middle of winter, and having had quite a lot of overnight rain, it meant that the big heavy beast of a JCB cut into the ground rather a lot, and after just a few loads it was decided that it would be better to dump the spoil on a patch of waste ground, that wouldn't involve running back and forth through the fields. That was a doubly good thing 'cos it also meant each load could be dumped in half the time, and I didn't have to keep running around opening and closing gates and keeping sheep in the right fields. It's certainly been a great help having the machine in to shift the spoil, but more or less every load has had to be supplemented with hand lifted shovel-fulls of heavy, sodden, half set clay, which let me tell ya, is no way to spend New Years Day! But hey, it's all going to be worth it when the muck is cleared, the ruts have healed up and the shed starts to be built. Can't wait. Oh, and before I forget to tell you, it looks like I might be getting my paws on another plunger Cub frame in a few months!

We've only got the Loadall until Wednesday, so hopefully the weather tomorrow will be nice and frosty, and we can finish off the earth shifting and maybe even get the mini digger man back to help tidy up and then.....maybe.....on Tuesday....maybe the block work could go up in the pit....maybe....oh yes, there's a tree to plant too, one that had to come out when the base was dug out.

And before I take my weary body off to the land of nod, I'd like to say thanks to one and all for the good wishes received by email, text or Fleecebook, and thanks for your continued interest and support in all things GBC and Cubbie over the years. I hope you'll continue to 'watch this space' for more madcap adventures and sheep tails. Tales. Sorry. HAPPY NEW YEAR BLOGGERS!!!!!

What did you get? C'mon, share it, tell us!

Well I was one lucky girl this year, receiving 2 pairs of wonderfully warm and cosy boots, some gloves (which always come in handy, boom boom), a rather brilliant hat and scarf hand made by a friend of Mrs BC, which isn't my usual style at all, but there's just something about it that I love. A joint pressie for Cubbie Towers came in the form of a DVD recorder, but we've now discovered that we have to watch the same channel as we're recording, which rather negates the whole point of finally having a DVD recorder. I'm wondering if it's because it also contains all the Freeview gizmos which we previously had to use the set top box for, and if there is a way of hooking up the old set top box as well as the DVD recorder, so that two different channels can be received at the same time. Mrs BC has gone all technical, with a DAB radio and wait for it....one of those MP3 player thingies! Somehow, Santa managed to fit a hammer drill down the chimney, along with a helmet cam - you just wait for some new 'Cubbie / Terry Tours Scotland' videos. Two other pressies that will aid in the filming process are a natty new neck tube that turns into a hat, and, yes, wait for it, an upside down map. I mean, please? An upside down map? I'm a girl, don't people know girls can read maps the right way up! Tis a bit funny though, finding the south coast of England where the north coast of Scotland should be, and all the place names the right way up. So, what did you get?

Go on, click on the map pic and see for yourself, weird!!!