Hills and Beer in Scotland

I moved to Edinburgh.

I also (accidentally-ish) became a sordid engineer.

Because this is neither Homes Under the Hammer, nor an education column - I won't go into why, suffice to say that between Finals before the summer, and moving to the Democratic People's Republic of Scotland I haven't had a great deal of time to update ye blogge. There are some stark differences between Oxford and Edinburgh that are worth mentioning. ("Really Mike?" I hear you cry. "Will you next explain to us the religious orientation of the Pope? And the habits of clenching bears?").

For a starter there's the hills. In Oxford, there is one hill - and people flock for miles around to marvel at its grassy inclines. In Edinburgh, the Pentland Hills Regional Park takes care of any and all of your topographical desires.  I've dropped my standard gearing from 32:16 to 32:18 (nerd alert), and increased the front disc rotor width out to the full downhill-monty width of 203mm. These seem to (with a few notable, and to my riding buddies hilarious, exceptions) get me out of most problems.

My current nemesis is a hill called "Puke Hill." So named because of the effects it has on the even slightly hungover who try to cycle up it. I joined Edinburgh RC about a month ago, and they took the view that baptisms of fire should not be the sole property of the Holy Ghost, so took me straight up it on my first outing. Sadly, I don't actually have any figures for the hill in terms of length or elevation (other than "it's chuffing difficult"). Hopefully by next week I should have a photograph or two to put up. Colourful names seem to be a running theme through the Pentlands. My definite favourite is the Chocolate Slide of Doom, which as you can imagine, provides a heart-in-mouth ride - all too commonly followed by a mud-in-mouth moment, especially after it's been raining.

No SingleSpeed ride would be complete without beer, so that's worth mentioning too. I'd had Scotland down as a land of distilleries, interspersed by an immoral quantity of kilt. But apparently this is the tourist view (the one they'll gleefully sell you on the Royal Mile), and Scottish breweries are actually a thing. Above are four I picked up from a local supermarket (beers, not breweries - do keep up). The only one I have tried as yet (keep watching the Twitter feed if you've nothing to do, and really want to know effect these have on my ability to use a BlackBerry http://twitter.com/#!/SingleSpeedMike) is the Bellhaven 80, which is decidedly mediocre. With any luck, Brewdog should come up trumps - they've got a special place in my heart for repeatedly sticking two fingers up at the Drinks Industry Regulators (something we're going to need more of in Scotland if the government have their way...).