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Wee Tour de France

Pump up the volume: Le Tour

The news that Scotland’s capital will host Le Départ 2027, the start of the biggest annual sporting event in the world is trés grand.

And a ringing endorsement for Scottish cycling which has a rich legacy.

Stretching back to King of the Mountains Robert Millar right up to multi-Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy.

The only regret is that my old colleague, Commonwealth Games competitor and cycling and sports journalist Richard Moore is no longer here to see it.

And he’s off: In the Pyrenees

And judging by past visits to British shores, in London and Yorkshire, it will bring in hundreds of millions in tourist mullah.

Where in Edinburgh the world’s top cyclists will whizz by will be released in due course.

Hooray for Holyrood

Park life: Holyrood

But we would expect the City of Edinburgh and Le Tour to want to showcase the Athens of the North.

And the riders to fly around Holyrood Park where this cyclist travelled daily on his bike to work.

From Edinburgh’s beach town Portobello, home, of course, of our own Sir Chris.

So, Le Dieu willing I’ll be on the streets in two years and Sir Chris will too to cheer on Le Grand Départ.

As we get the wheels turning for Le Tour de (Little) France in Edinburgh.

They’re separated by an ocean and a continent but they’re mutt brothers… here’s Edinburgh and San Diego a tale of two doggies.

We’d never dream of passing by the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, made a freeman of the city, on George IV Bridge, without a nod.

Although the city’s burghers have long been fighting a losing battle trying to stop people rubbing his nose.

A Bum note

Less heralded but just as deserving is Edinburgh’s ‘other’ doggie statue, Bum.

Bum, like Bobby whose story so charmed Walt Disney he made a film about him, has a home in a graveyard.

In Bobby’s case it is Greyfriars Kirk, or church, next to his master ‘Old Jock’ on whose headstone he slept for 14 years.

In Bum’s case it’s the still older St Cuthbert’s Graveyard, in West Princes Street Gardens at the foot of Edinburgh Castle Rock.

That Bum is commemorated here at all, and we’re very glad he is, is down to Edinburgh and San Diego being twinned.

And canineophile councillors on each side of the Atlantic tightening the bonds formed in 1977, thirty-one years later.

And who can blame them if they got a trip out to each other’s city for the ceremony?

So, for those not from San Diego or Southern California, here’s Bum’s story, and quite a tail it is too.

Where Bum came from nobody knows, he arrived as a stowaway into San Diego in 1886.

But where he was headed for was the hearts and history of the San Diegan people.

Who took him in, fed him and even treated him we injured his leg in a dogfight… hence the stump you see in his statue.

The half-St. Bernard, half-Spaniel mascot became such a part of San Diego life.

That when the city issued its first dog license, an image of Bum adorned it.

We’d like to think in a different world these two survivors Bobby, the Skye Terrier and Bum, the crossbreed, would have been firm friends.

At least the San Diegans think so, bringing them together with their own plinths in Gaslamp Museum Pocket Park.

And us too, as we passed ten minutes in the sun with new friends.

Jim, a C&W singer, and Andrea, from San Diego next to Edinburgh Bum’s statue.

Just spitballing about Edinburgh and San Diego a tale of two doggies.