January's ride to Cramond

We had 14 people on this ride - who had obviously ignored the windy weather forecast and decided to brave the cold by wrapping up warm for the day's outing.

January 2009 Ride to Cramond

Alan led us to the Cramond Brig, then along the River Almond, where we bravely tackled a large set of steps (up and then down) to get us to our lunch stop at the Cramond Mill cafe. The owner had kindly opened early for us (forewarned that a load of hungry cyclists would be coming through for lunch) and we had some excellent homemade soup and bread, and filled rolls, cakes and hot drinks.

After lunch we did a short detour to the old Roman Fort at Cramond - I never knew that it was there before: it's interesting to find out new things about Edinburgh on these bike rides! We then headed East along the Cramond foreshore to Granton and then up through the Trinity tunnel and back (*) along the excellent North Edinburgh cycle path network back to the centre.


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(*) That's "we" in a 3rd person sort of sense as I ducked out at the 5 ways intersection near Trinity and headed home to Leith through Victoria Park - home by 2.30pm which is probably a record for me on a 20milers ride! Several others did the same though so I didn't feel too bad...

Saturday 10th January

Today's ride will explore bike paths in the north and east of the city.

Meet: 10.30, at the north end of Middle Meadow Walk (junction of Lauriston Place).
Cost and booking: Free; just turn up.
Further information: Mike Lewis (0131 343 2520) or Livia Dyckhoff (0131 554 0577), or email 20milers@gmail.com; see also the 20-Milers Blog.

Mud and punctures

We're normally not particularly bothered by punctures on 20-milers rides. Every now and again someone gets a puncture; we stop and have a look at the view for 20 mins or so while it's fixed and then we get on our way again. Quite often the punctures happen in pretty, quiet spots with a nice bit of sunshine. So it's no hardship really.

Yesterday's ride was a bit more of a challenge though!

Eight of us headed off to Balerno, via the Union Canal then the Water of Leith (the path was very muddy - my white bike ended up brown!) and up to Balerno before lunch at the Riccarton Garden Centre (where we had a very nice lunch in a warm conservatory and tried not to get mud everywhere). On our way back it all went a bit wrong though. We went through the Heriot Watt campus, then out onto the footpath beside the A71 coming back into town, and somewhere along there we all went through a thorny patch (we think that someone must have cut back a blackthorn hedge) and within minutes, 5 out of the 8 of us had punctures. I had at least 7 in my two tyres - other people had similar numbers. As you can imagine this put a severe strain on our spare tube / puncture repair kits and it took rather a long time to get the group under way again. By this point it was dark so everyone was glad to have brought their bike lights. Within 100m however I got another puncture so at that point I gave up and let the rest of the group head on without me. I spotted a number 25 bus which would take me home (from the Park & Ride) so I Parked my bike with good locks on it and Rode home - to pick the bike up later by car. There will be stories to tell at Chris' party today!


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December's Ride: Saturday 13th

Our ride this month will be a nice easy run out to Balerno, returning by way of Riccarton. With the winter weather and short daylight hours in mind, this will be a slighly shorter ride than usual. Lunch will be at an indoor cafe, with the usual option of a picnic for those who prefer. Veronica Gallagher, who will be leading the ride, is planning to get us back to town around dusk, and so strongly advises us to bring lights.

Caveat cyclist

This month's route is a change to our original plan, which was to visit Dalkeith Country Park. This is because the park is now closed for the winter. Please keep in mind that, in general, any route or destination that we announce in advance is for guidance only, and is not written in stone. There's always a possibility that a ride will be changed or curtailed, at the leader's discretion, depending on the weather, the number of people who turn up, and other factors. For that reason, we ask all riders to meet at the start point rather than try to pick up the ride at some point along the way.

We'll aim to visit Dalkeith Country Park in the spring.

November's ride photos

Photos on Flickr - thanks to Mike for taking some great photos.

November's Ride Report

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Our ride today was all within the city limits. Sometimes we aim to do a route to a place, like next month's planned route to Dalkeith Country Park, or September's trip to the Cousland Smiddy, while other times it's good just to get out and investigate different paths around the city. Today we generally avoided the "main bike routes" out of town and discovered some interesting paths in the North of the city. We had lunch at the newly-opened Morrison's supermarket in Pilton, and made our way back along the Forth and through Leith and Lochend.

Mike Lewis was cameraman today so I'll post a link to the photos when they're available, or check the "20-milers on Flickr" link to the right.

20 miles without pedalling

20 miles without pedalling

Pictured are Dr Chris Oliver and Jo Hilton, regular 20 milers. Chris & Jo went to Bhutan in the Himalayas for a kayaking, rafting, trekking and Mountain biking holiday this October 2008. They were driven for two hours to the top of the Chelela Pass outside Paro, Bhutan.

The descent was for 36Km (20miles) from the top of the spectacular Chelela pass at 3988 metres to the valley floor at about 1900metres. For the entire descent of twenty miles, which took just over an hour no pedalling at all was required!