Island 1 - Crammond Island, biked 7th January 2014

Ready for action

In spite of the dire weather forecast, I set out today with Bill, Linda and Lora to bike to and on Crammond Island.  This is accessible by causeway two hours either side of the low tide.  It turned out to be a beautiful, if windy, day and we got the Crammond with three hours of safe crossing time in hand.  A notice board gives the safe crossing times for each day but there are still people who get stranded there.  While the lifeboat would come and rescue us, I did not think they would be keen on rescuing our bikes so we were careful about

Fun on the causeway

the timing.

We had a glorious run along the seafront, then took pictures (this project involves more photo-taking than cycling) of the island and us and us in various groups and stages of readiness.  Bill and I took our bikes onto the causeway, Lora walked and Linda kept an eye on the local coffee shop.  The causeway is quite rough underfoot, as it might be expected as it lives under the waves for most of the day.  Bill helped me with my bike down some treacherous steps and scratched his own beautiful new bike in the process.  Well, these are honourable battle scars, surely.

Muddy and slippy terrain

Job well done!

The short crossing  was lovely, with all the shore birds doing their stuff in the sand and the shallow water.  The island itself was challenging because we didn't have mountain bikes but we did cycle a bit in order to fulfill the promise.  We then had coffee and cake looking out from the most sheltered spot we could find.  We all wondered why we had not been here before.

This might be very local to me but it might well turn out to be the most challenging of the islands to be biked.  Having said that, last year's bridges each had their own challenge and I expect it will be the same with the islands.

A smashing start to this project.