Water and cranage

After being extremely lazy this morning I took a ride down to Leith to look at an interesting ship that is currently berthed.  The best vantage point was always the northern end of Ocean Terminal, going to the top of the multi-storey car park.  But alas, they are doing some sort of huge demolition work and the car park is shut, and I couldn't get a view of the ship at all.

Instead, I pottered over to the eastern end of the docks and watched them putting the Hopetoun through her paces in the Edinburgh Dock, doing lots of spinning on the spot.  The Hopetoun is a fire fighting vessel, although it looks like a tug boat with an extra bit on the back for landing a helicopter.

I had a look at the three old dock cranes while I was there.  They are Stothert & Pitt electric travelling cranes, but they haven't travelled or craned anything for many years.  I think they are rated at about 8 tons: pretty modest really, certainly not your 150 ton goliath cranes that installed ships' boilers and exported railway locomotives.  The cranes are in rather poor condition these days and will probably deteriorate until they fall down, because they aren't preserved or historically listed.

After photographs it was mid-afternoon, not quite enough time really to go to North Berwick, and I didn't have any snacks or water or tea with me to sit on the beach at Longniddry whence my blips started, so I thought I'd say hello at Laid Back Bikes.  Then I had a better idea, and rode to the motorbike shop to have a sit on a Royal Enfield Himalayan*, which is a sort of miniaturised Africa Twin, and it weighs about half what Fidra the gigantic Pan Euro does.  The Himalayan has a better seat than either of them, too!  Offers of test rides declined (for now), I rode home the long way for a big cup of tea and and yesterday dinner's leftovers.  En route I came across another K6 telephone box, which although from the Carron company and not Lion Foundry is nonetheless quite interesting, so I may have to describe it in a phuture Phriday blip.

* Apparently I've been pronouncing it wrongly my entire life! Lovely bestie tells me it's actually "hih-mah-la-yan" with the emphasis on the second syllable, and it's 'la', not 'lay' or 'lah'.