Tells me now possible to go the whole 8.5 miles from Duror to Ballachulish off road
And more locally
From mid to late October the path from Bo'ness to Blackness will be finished with a proper surface for cycling on
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Sustrans e-newsletter path news
(19 posts)-
Posted 10 years ago #
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"the path from Bo'ness to Blackness will be finished with a proper surface for cycling on"
Is that 'next to the Forth' or more inland?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Route 76 next to the forth as the only thing delaying contractors is the tide timetable
Posted 10 years ago # -
Ta
GREAT!!
Only done it once (some years ago) involved quite a bit of carrying.
I thought this route was 'too expensive'.
Glad some things change.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Have done North side back and forth as it were several times. On South side did it over old Kincardine bridge then Grangemouth up to polmont and back canal but will do almost anything to avoid that return on the canal nowadays. So Grangemouth Bo'ness blackness s Queensferry Kirkliston Ratho Balerno sounding good.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I've tried the south side of the Forth a few times on various audaxes but the roads have always been terrible (Skinflats is a name I associate with terrible driving. I couldn't even point to it on a map).
Shame as the north side of the Forth is pretty sweet.
In the summer I meant to, but never got around to, doing some kind of exotic commute where I cut through to Kincardine from the deep south, going around the west of Livingstone and Linlithgow. Looks like some possibly quiet roads to be found with the right knowledge.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Sustrans route 76 takes some curious corners in the forth flood plain on some very rutted if deserted roads. Skinflats has the Dutch cottage pub maybe linked to hanseatic league trade see also dutch stepped gables in Culross. I just use the main road when out that way then pick the sustrans route back up in Grangemouth. Now i am tempted to go on to Bo'ness then blackness.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Posted 10 years ago #
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Another pic...
Check out @JRSO_edin's Tweet: https://twitter.com/JRSO_edin/status/539732142922940416?s=09
Posted 10 years ago # -
Fantastic. I'm an ex-resident of Bo'ness and as a boy I always wished the coastal path could be more suited to bicycles. My bike back then, an Emmelle Clipper GT12, wasn't exactly suited to the rough stuff.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Looks like a lovely path, quite close to the water?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Back to the OP. I cycled from Ballahulish to the Bridge north of Oban and as we'd cycled 40 of the last 48hours we took the cycle path. Its not that straight or direct despite it being on the disused railway line. It goes left off course then right and back again. Signage wasn't brilliant and at one point it crosses to the seaward side but you end up cycling along a dead end up a cul de sac before turning round to look for the path. Its nice in places but we ended up leaving it to rejoin the road as it was much faster.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Visited Kentallen, when the Oban-Ballachulish path was developed. Seemed a bit stop startish then and interesting that it hasn't got a lot better. Even so, it is on my to-do list...
Excited about the Bo'ness-Blackness development - nice if I'm doing 2 bridges anticlockwise to have the option of not taking that nasty hill out of Bo'ness any more. I sense an early morning investigation soon.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I foolishly tried to cycle round the coast once and ended up doing a lot of portage and stumbling over rocks. Look forward to trying out the new path next time I'm up that way.
Posted 10 years ago # -
One of the first 'CCE outings' was to Blackness, via Queensferry.
We were early users of a (then) new link at Abercorn -
http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=2788&page=2#post-30053
Now with new section, a nice 20 mile trip (mostly off road) from Haymarket to see a castle and steam trains -
Posted 10 years ago # -
I cycled from the Sea Life Centre to just north of Castle Stalker about three years ago. I think I'd rate about 80% of that section as excellent.
Mostly separate from the road, but a few short stretches were shoehorned onto pavements.
This is the sort of infrastructure that could/should attract family cycling holidays. Hopefully we'll see much more of it.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Now with new section, a nice 20 mile trip (mostly off road) from Haymarket to see a castle and steam trains -
When do we leave?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Any Santa Specials?
Posted 10 years ago # -
Finally got to do the Blackness-Bo'ness path en route to work this morning. It really hugged the coast and the first 2km or so out of Blackness are on pristine tarmaced surface. The budget seemed to run out after that, and the path got a lot more gravelly/rutted with a few branches where you could take wrong turns. Not a grumble - if your bike can handle Hopetoun Estate, it can handle this.
For better or worse I stuck to the coast and managed to guess the right spot to come out at for the little badboy climb out of Bo'ness up to Linlithgow.
All in all a good trip - 15km off road :-) -and one I'll definitely repeat at other times of the year.
Posted 10 years ago #
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