Smooth as butter tarmac descent after tough but very enjoyable day on the bike. Headed out at 4.30am. Bloody freezing in shorts!Stupendous mostly off-road route, and no rain. Photography took ages. Lots of setting up and breaking down to do. Hopefully pix are worth...
Took it easy on this quiet ride to Pitlochry. Got to save my legs for some big distance rides coming up. No loop today; that’ll be for early doors tomorrow. Good to see the first real mountains. More to come. Rant? That’ll be a blog posting about road building...
After two hard days in the saddle — one of them a 55-miler on tough MTB trails plus a 17 mile ride to get there — it was good to take it easier today on rolling hills and smooth asphalt. I’m staying in Perth but these three fellas I met in a Kinross coffee shop are...
Slept on the top of Minch Moor last night. Cold and windy but I rigged up a useful tarp so I was dry in the rain (more details on that in a posting). I’m pretty sure that at 5.00am I was the first run of the day on Innerleithen’s 7Stanes trails. Sustrans Route 1 from...
I saved my legs on the 5am-ish ride from Melrose to the start of today’s book research loop beginning in MTB-friendly Innerleithen. On my return this afternoon I’ll be seeking out a. outdoor/bike shop to buy warmer clothing! Bivvying is wonderful when you’re warm,...
I’ve chosen not to hide today’s GPS track. It’s mainly the 4 Abbeys route between Melrose, Dryburgh, Kelso and Jedburgh. Almost all of the 52 rides in my book have been curated by me but this one wasn’t. It’s a great route and I left it almost as is — there’s just one...
I wild bivvied last night so was up early. Still took me ages to do the 30miles or so to Melrose. This is partly because I’m laden, partly because I’m unfit, but mainly — I tell myself — because of the stops due to photography. Flew the drone a couple of times today,...
Another wet and very blowy day punctuated with snatches of (cold) sunshine. Full GPS track is for the book only but no secret that I visited Hermitage castle, which has to be one of the baddest, bloodiest, and most forbidding castles in Britain. I’m wearing merino...
The weather forecast said there would be drizzle but day would get sunny from lunchtime — so, I left from Chollerford at 10am thinking I’d get maybe an hour of light rain. Oops. There was almost constant rain until about 4pm, and some of it was proper wet rain. Cold...
No point leaving stupid early because weather forecast not great for Hadrian’s Wall country. So left at 7am and took it slowly to Hexham, where the first loop starts. Chilly for June. And very very windy riding west. One needlessly dangerous overtake on the Military...