A foggy December ride

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The original plan was to go to South Queensferry, however the day dawned reluctantly with a thick fog, and associated perils of unobservant drivers. Our leader for the day, Veronica, sensibly decided to go for a route with more paths than roads and a shorter route to match the dim daylight hours. We headed to Musselburgh - more ambitious than our original plan which was to turn left at Brunstane and go straight to Portobello and have an early lunch or late 11-ses there and head home.

Fourteen of us set off from Middle Meadow Walk, foiled in our plan to leave on time for once by a puncture, and we still had 14 when we got to Musselburgh - good to see that no one got lost in the fog! Two of our number decided to go their own way after lunch, and set out to Prestonpans for a slightly longer ride. The rest of us headed back along the nearly-deserted Portobello Promenade (so we didn't feel too guilty about riding along the "no cycling" section - we self-justified it by deciding that what it really means is "no scaring pedestrians" - so we pootled along rather than trying to go faster.

December 2009 ride to Musselburgh

In all we had 3 punctures on the ride - sometimes one just has bad luck, and most people are now in the habit of bringing a spare inner tube (and hopefully are a bit better prepared than me in September - I brought an inner tube but it had the wrong size valve so was completely useless when I got a puncture! and in October I had the right kind of inner tube but when I inflated it the valve broke - completely useless and I had to borrow one instead. Lesson to self: don't get cheap tubes...)