Yesterday's hovercraft trip was brilliant! For those of you who don't know, Stagecoach are currently carrying out a trial run of a hovercraft link between Portobello in Edinburgh and Kircaldy in Fife. The hovercraft crosses a 10 mile stretch of the River Forth and dramatically reduces the time it would take to travel between the two towns by road (which involves using the Forth Bridge). It can carry 130 passengers at a time and takes approximately 20 minutes to cross the estury. At each port there are bus links to continue journeys.
The trial is being carried out for two weeks to see if it could be a feasable method for transporting commuters. Given that the Forth Bridge will be closed next week for maintenance, it will really be put to the test. Unfortunately though the hovercraft is currently being used mainly by pensioners and tourists who want to ride on it for the experience of doing so (like me). This means that the trial is not a fair representation as most of the passengers are not commuters using it to get to and from work. This is not helped by the fact that all pensioners in Scotland get free travel on public transport so they are invading the hovercraft for the purpose of leisure. A beaten-looking Stagecoach manager at the bus stop said that he reckoned about 80% of the passengers were pensioners travelling free. There will be another trial carried out in February 2008 though, (out of the holiday season), in order to collect more realistic passenger statistics.
Anyway, moaning aside, it was good fun. I took a number of photos with my Pentax and used the G4 to get them onto Flickr. Not very Retro I know but there is no other easy way really. Have a look at them here.
Again nothing much has happened Retro-wise. I'm going to try and get the BBC graphics creation done in the next few days but I do have quite a few other things to do at the moment. I'll try to at least get something done on it though, even if the "creation" is a bit basic. The real challenge come in when transferring it to the Mac and converting it. Watch this space!
In other news I got Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows today. Harry Potter books have always been a weakness of mine since I got one when I was 12. They are brilliant stories and what I have read of the final book is brilliant.