On the banks of the Clyde

With an early o'clock start it was one traffic jam after another.  I wasn't late getting to the office but my safety margin was just about used up and my plan for a relaxed ride went out of the window almost as quickly as the rain arrived.  With a couple of colleagues – one of whom doesn't drive, and one who didn't want to drive – I was the de facto EV expert and designated driver.

And so it was we piled out of town onto the M8 and battled through the rain and the absolutely mental Glasgow-circulating traffic to reach Clydebank.  But I got us there on time!  It was mostly an engineering-project management visit to see the fancy super-power district heating scheme, which naturally I found very interesting.  The epicentre is the building on the left in my photograph; on the right is the ex-John Brown shipyard goliath crane, known as the Titan Crane – I had a visit up top with the IMechE in years past but I think it's been closed for ages.  By lunchtime we were done so we convened in an office until mid-afternoon, and with in tow colleague no.3, who also didn't want to drive, I found myself once again the designated driver.  It was a fairly straightforward drive back: electric cars are so easy to control smoothly.

I worked for a bit longer and then headed home in light drizzle and utterly crazy traffic.  I actually did a u-turn when I saw the queue stretching from Fairmilehead to beyond Hillend, and instead took the ring road to the A701, which was almost as busy.  What is going on?

It was hard work: my brain was tired, my clutch hand was tired, my ear plugs hurt, my bum was squeaky, and I was glad to get home for beans on toast.  I've done a lot of miles on Fidra, and she is very capable, but today I really had had enough.