2009-Aug-07 by Gregory Williams.

The weather was great during my rest day at Innerleithen. So I decided to map the town, then sat around for a bit in the sun, followed by cycling a small amount of the main tracks at the local mountain biking area: one of the 7 Stanes sites. I wasn’t mountain biking though, just casually climbing up, taking in the views and plenty of photographs.

The journey today essentially followed the river Tweed. It started out on a quiet road out of Innerleithen and continued that way for several miles. There then followed a choice section either traffic-free or on road. The traffic-free section is pretty bumpy, but I chose that because I didn’t think that OSM had it mapped yet. After a few more roads I passed through Galashiels and Melrose. Whilst following all of this there were numerous local cycle route signs, like those I found in and about Innerleithen, so I tried to map these as well.

At Dryburgh I took a short rest then took a temporary diversion from NCR1 to walk with my bike to Wallace’s statue nearby. It’s impressive. Interestingly for something so large I managed to walk practically straight past it before needing to backtrack and find that a side path leads to it.

After some small sections of quiet B-roads and a couple of short stretches on A-roads the route took some exceedingly quiet smaller roads. It regularly got within a mile or two of the Scotland-England border but didn’t cross partially because of the lack of bridges over the river Tweed where the border lies at this point. It did eventually cross though, just before Norham. NCR1 at Norham passes the impressive castle there on its way out of the village.

Only a few more miles further on I found myself crossing the border once again, back into Scotland. There was almost a problem here; the road towards the Union Bridge that crosses the Tweed again into Scotland was closed, and for a good reason: part of it has collapsed. Luckily it’s passable as a cyclist, so I didn’t need to take a lengthy detour as a result. About an hour later I arrived at my accomodation in Berwick-upon-Tweed quite a bit earlier than my planned time. Luckily they unexpectedly have WiFi Internet access, so I’ve been able to bring this blog back up-to-date.

Posted in Cycling | 2 Comments »

2009-Aug-07 by Gregory Williams.

The planned trip today was relatively short because it included a reasonable amount of climbing. As it turns out the climbing was over the course of several miles, so a relatively shallow gradient. The first portion was OK, but as I progressed a strong headwind hampered my progress. Luckily the road was very quiet and scenic, so I stopped several times to take photos and for short rests at fighting against the wind.

Despite the wind I still arrived at Innerleithen reasonably early. I took a distraction of investigating some of the side roads in order to map them, before going to my accomodation. After a rest I set out again without my panniers for an early evening cycle westwards following some markers for a number of signed cycle routes near to the river Tweed. I got as far as Peebles before I turned back towards Innerleithen again. Even then I couldn’t resist mapping a few brand new residential roads in Peebles on the way out. In the end I added approximately 20 miles of cycling to my total through my evening excursion.

Posted in Cycling | No Comments »

2009-Aug-07 by Gregory Williams.

Today’s cycling followed mainly quiet roads before crossing the Forth Road Bridge and not long afterwards through Edinburgh. On the way into Edinburgh I met another cyclist and we chatted for several miles. We followed NCR1, but near the centre of Edinburgh I took the opportunity to divert off onto NCR75 both towards the Scottish Executive. When following NCR75 the other way (towards the Union Canal) I managed to unexpectedly meet some friends that I was going to be meeting in the evening. So we chatted for a bit before agreeing a plan for the evening. I then continued along beside the Union Canal for a bit before returning to NCR1.

There were two tunnels today. One on NCR75, near the Union Canal, and the other on NCR1 on the way out of Edinburgh. Both were pretty lengthy and great experiences.

Posted in Cycling | No Comments »