Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Edinburgh and Glasgow are about an hour apart. You can drive there from Glasgow like you'd drive from Brisbane to the Gold Coast. The M8 practically joins the two with business parks and towns scattered along the motorway. But they're two very different cities. Weegies will tell you, sure, Edinburgh's pretty, but you wouldn't want to live there. Edinburgh locals (when you can find them amongst the English and Aussies) will tell you Glasgow's dirtier and rougher. And you know what, they're both right. The heart of Edinburgh is genuinely beautiful. Glasgow is rougher, but it's bigger and there's a lot more for the locals to enjoy.

Anyway, that's a long winded introduction to what amounts to a handful of photos from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. This thing takes over the city for a month. Inner city flats are turned over to tourists and rented by the night. Street performers crowd the Royal Mile almost as much as the touts handing out flyers for their shows. But amongst some absolutely terrible acts are more than a few incredible shows. Karen and I, along with Bron up from London, caught a few from both categories when we popped over there for the weekend.

Karen and Bronwyn relaxing by the Spiegeltent.

Sun! In Scotland! Can you believe it!

A Fringe Festival club in the old town.

Festival lights.

Edinburgh to the East.

Edinburgh Castle and Princes St.

The Scott Monument.

Scott Monument detail.

Karen and Edinburgh skyline.

Edinburgh Castle and me.

World Pipe Band Championships

The Boghall lining up.

Marching on.

In the circle.

Hard at work.

The crowd watches on.

A cheeky smile.

Carl's Visit

Carl dropped in for a few days on a round-the-world trip a few weeks back and, in the space of just over 2 days, we managed to take in a fair bit of Scotland: Edinburgh (including a show at the Fringe Festival), St Andrews, Loch Lomond, Glen Coe, Oban, Inverary and Glasgow.

I suspect, somehow, that this pace was sedate by Carl standards, given how he described his trip to that point! Carl, if you're out there, I hope the Contiki trip didn't do you liver any permanent damage and that you were able to secure the McDonalds and Coke required to keep your body functioning on a day-to-day basis!

Carl at St Andrews.

Dunnottar Castle.

From St Fillans.

Sunset across Loch Lomond.

Luss, on Sunday morning.

Heading north.

The approach to Buachille Etive Mor.

Yours truly.

Karen on a summer's day.

Reflections of the highlands.

Summer vs winter.

Mmm, windy roads.

Castle Stalker on Loch Linnhe.

Connel Bridge.

Oban bay.

McCaig's Tower.

Karen, high above Oban.

Carl and Karen.

The boys.

Me, at McCaig's Tower.

There's only one way down.

Inverary Castle.

Tourmalet vs Coot-tha

Last Tour de France post, I promise!

Ever wondered how those big those climbs in the Tour really are? Ever wonder how they compare to the rides round home? Well (for the Brisbane readers, anyway) wonder no more.



Check out the picture above. The outline of the large yellow area is the Col du Tourmalet. The little squiggle just visible above the x-axis - that's Mt Coot-tha shown on the same scale!

The scary thing is I didn't calibrate the altimeter on my heart rate monitor on the day I rode Tourmalet so the altitude readings on the graph are slightly lower than in reality. That makes Tourmalet even slightly higher than shown here. The sign at the summit reads 2115 m.

Tour de France

I've finally managed to put together some words (and more than a few photos) from my recent trip to the Tour de France. You can find more details on each day of the trip below:

• Day 1, Arrival in Paris
• Day 2, Road-Trippin
• Day 3, The Pyrenees
• Day 4, More Climbs
• Day 5, Still More Climbs
• Day 6, The Finish
• Day 7, The Feed
• Day 8, The Start
• Day 9, Individual Time Trial
• Day 10, Finish in Paris