Another expedition

After another ride into town to fail to buy one of two remaining Christmas presents, on account of the shop having underestimated its stock and clearly not demonstrated the rudiments of Just-In-Time manufacturing, I rode further into town to another shop to get the last present.  Their products: lovely; the service: not so much.  So not so much, in fact, that I may never go there again.  Since I was in town I pottered west past Haymarket to have another look at the wrongly constructed cycle lane but of course they haven't done anything about it.

While I was hiding from the pouring rain, under the tram bridge, and eating an excuse for some lunch, I noticed a builder's plaque on the railway bridge.  It reads, "Alex Findlay & Co., Parkneuk Iron Works, Motherwell".  Motherwell was known as Steelopolis for many years on account of the number of iron and steel works, everything from the Lanarkshire works to the Dalzell works, the Motherwell works, the Etna works, and of course, the mighty Ravenscraig that finally closed its doors in 1992.  Findlay's business at Parkneuk was just a few sidings across from the Motherwell traction maintenance depot (an "engine shed" in old money) that is very much still there, while the Parkneuk iron works that opened in 1888 closed in the 1970s.  I read that the factory made the structural steel for the White City stadium, station canopies at Troon and Perth and Marylebone, various bridges – including the Opaeka'a Road Bridge in Hawaii, of all places, – and the pier heads for the Mulberry Harbours as deployed at Normandy.  Not a bad run.

I stopped by at The Bike Station afterwards and had a rummage through their boxes of used bike parts, then went home in the still pouring rain.  Some of the puddles on the road were enormous.  The bike's ergonomics aren't as bad, I have to say, but my hands are tingly.