Thank you HankChief for taking even more time out of your week to organise this trip. Hopeful of a repeat next year :)
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Events, rides etc.
Glasgow POP - Feeder ride from Edinburgh
(66 posts)-
Posted 7 years ago #
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Next year you should take the big flag through to Glasgow!
Posted 7 years ago # -
Thanks hankchief for leading the ride. Made all the difference to have the good company, and someone who knew the route.
Posted 7 years ago # -
A very enjoyable ride to Glasgow despite the headwind and a slog through the urban dual carriageways of Airdrie. Nice to (re)meet klaxon, daisydaisy, hankchief, frenchy, DaveC and a Portuguese guy called Tito who'd come down from Aberdeen.
Apparently the bike paths north of Lisbon are now really good and biking is starting to become "a thing" in Portugal (previously bikes had no right-of-way on roundabouts, even on the carriageway, but now they do...)
And thanks to hankchief for organising.
The last time I cycled the NCN75 path from Bathgate to Airdrie, it was on the railway bed, so beautifully graded, bridges across all the roads and no need to stop for anything (except the odd pile of glass / burnt out moto). Now, the construction of the railway has somewhat ruined the path:
- quite a few rolling "mini hills", even beside the railway;
- several crossings of the railway with climbs and awkward turns / loop rounds;
- drops down and climbs out at every road and gives way to the road;
- completely missing section at Arnadale Station, where you have to go on awful shared use pavement, beside horrible wide motor based roundabouts;
- lots of bollards, many broken off, leaving a sharp jaggy edge sticking up a few inches off the ground.The annoying thing about it is that when they built the railway, it would've cost them almost nothing to widen the rail bridges and continue the path alongside at the road crossings, and to grade the path nicely, the same as the railway. Now we will have to spend tens of millions trying to fix it in the future.
Through Aidrie and Coatbridge we ended up taking the A89 40mph/30mph urban dual carriageway (as Klaxon mentioned), for speed (although I'm not convinced it was any faster than NCN75 due to the number of lights we had to stop at). However, it is a lot easier to navigate than the circuitous 75 through the back streets and parks and probably saved us from getting lost.
I guess the above is the whole reason we were going to Glasgow...
Posted 7 years ago # -
"it would've cost them almost nothing to widen the rail bridges"
Not sure that's really true, but the 'alternative' is no substitute for what was a really nice path.
Simple truth is that many more people go that way by train now, but - maybe - Sustrans could have struck a better deal.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Nice to meet some new faces on the ride over to Glasgy.
It was head wind central going west but tailieeeee all the way back. As few 'problematic' sections along wide dual carrageways but we had no incidents, despite a cyclist, insisting on cycling aling the white line for some of the time, when single file would have been fine for everyone.
The lumps and bumps made is more interesting, as we were not commuting. I have cycled on a few ex railway line paths and while they are speedy, they do become samey samey after a while.
Posted 7 years ago #
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