Dear All, my wife recently purchased a nice hybrid to ride on paths and out of town, so yesterday we took a ride out to Hermiston from Roseburn, partly to check the infrastructure, partly to allow her to ride without traffic hassles.
It was a 12km round trip, into the wind and rain on the way out, but nonetheless my wife really enjoyed it, i found her comments about the entirely rubbish path network to Hermiston Gait from Broomhouse quite interesting, as she had never encountered these before, and i deliberately didnt mention anything, as an honest newbies opinion is more valued than my biased one. She found the crossings at Broomhouse and the Gyle to be problematic in design and placing, and the junction boxes opposite Makro were "just bloody dangerous, WHY would you put them there" to quote her directly, she had much more colourful language when we encountered the cyclists dismount signs heading west to Edinburgh Park station, we were naughty and just completely ignored these, my wifes comment " those do nothing, for nothing, why are they there? They are bloody pointless" bear in mind, this was about 45mins into the ride west. Compounded further by the badly sited bike stands at Hermiston. So the westward ride was interesting, the ride back east was great fun, as the wind blew us along for hundreds of metres, until we got the Balgreen crossing, nothing either way, no need to press the lights, I cross, wife begins to cross, TAXI 100m away, beeps her for taking all of 5 seconds to cross the road, what a total pr*ck i thought, and all because she had not pressed for the lights to stop him, and he stopped at the primary school anyway at a red!Then on entering Sainsburys Murrayfield, she was entirely ignored by drivers as she attempted to cross at the zebra crossing, i explained that this was the norm nowadays and not to worry too much, at least she knows where she stands sort of convo.
She overall had a nice ride despite the weather and some drivers, and was not discouraged at all, more surprised at the rubbish cycle network west, and the impatient aggro of people hurrying to stop at red lights, or to go park in a car park.
An enlightening take on our sometimes not so marvellous network, which from my cycling out to Stevenson days, has not actually improved that much,and is better only slightly.
Best regards
The Radgeworks and Wife.
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