Somehow without my noticing it a network of cycle paths has been formed to stretch all over the UK. I only stumbled across National Cycle Network 1 about a year ago, and it’s about 400 yards from where I live. Sustrans with the co-operation of local councils has joined up the disused railway tracks, footpaths, bridle paths, B-roads, has added bridges and culverts and put up numbered signs. It was a millennium project which was opened with fanfare in June 2000, and escaped me entirely.
However, now I’m an initiate and I went onto the Sustrans website and ordered a bunch of maps. The day after they arrived I took off with three of them, rather late, at about 11:30 in the morning. The route out of Edinburgh takes you over the Forth Road Bridge, which shakes with the rumbling internal combusters. You get a wide view of that wonder of cantilevered steel, the Forth Rail Bridge. It’s an exhilarating sight and when a train crosses it is dwarfed by its huge structure. William Morris hated it calling it "the supremest specimen of all ugliness.'' Now it seems like a grand monument to Victorian enterprise and engineering innovation.
The Forth Road Bridge is wonderful as well. Suspension bridges have no problems looking elegant.
After this mighty overture the rest of the journey was a bit of an anti-climax. It took me ages to get out of the clutches of Dunfermline, as the route is still in flux and a sign would lead you somewhere and then peter out. A fellow took my picture, saying “Good for you,” so evidently solitary female cyclists are a rare sight. It was a warm, windless, humid day and I sweated up hills through the dull countryside ready for hay cutting and with the loneliness of the rural scene when agriculture is mechanised, the relief to the eyes being flowers in waste ground - there were no hedges, which usually add colour and variation. The route had changed from the map and the signs diverted me to heading towards Glenrothes, which is the last place I’d want to go to, so I had to retrace my way.
I got to Auchtermuchty, which meant I’d done about 47 miles or so and in the Cycle Tavern I drank a couple of pints of ginger beer shandy and asked the landlord whether there was anywhere to stay. The landlord and solitary fellows at the bar speculated about possible places and then the landlady turned up and gave me directions – alas, too expensive. So I cycled on to Newburgh, where the landlord had said were some hotels – a few miles on, with a grand view of the River Tay from the B road that was the cycle route. But the inns there were full or being refurbished. However a kind landlady in one of the pubs rang the hotel in Abernethy, a couple of miles down the road, - he was full but he rang some B&Bs and called her back and just as it was getting dark I got to a Victorian villa, which had a bathroom with a huge Victorian bath on legs, exactly what I would have asked for, at £30 per night. I don’t mind a solitary cycle trip but it is far more expensive for accommodation than if you’re sharing. But I have had camping – carrying camping gear makes cycle trips a real slog.
I was pleased that my muscles were not complaining much about this work out.
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