This ride takes me from Kirkintilloch / Lenzie over to the centre of Edinburgh. Having a young family means longer rides at the weekend are less training, less luxury more impossibility so if I wanted to get some miles into the legs on the bike I needed to incorporate it into getting to / back from work.
Sadly I’ve not found the on route Krispy Kreme but I hope my continued spamming of their Facebook page will make them see sense and build in say, Blackridge.
Having commuted to Edinburgh for years there’s a comparison across various forms of travel on timings that makes interesting reading and often surprises people
- Driving – door to door 1:30 on a good day and anything up to over 2hrs on a bad day. Typically I’d leave around 6:30am, any later I’d get stuck in traffic at Cumbernauld and Newbridge – cost about 90 quid for 3-4 days fueling
- Train – train is 40 mins from Lenzie to Edinburgh, with 40 mins added on for walking at both ends and the usual faff of on/off station waiting etc. Typically cost about £24 for a daily ticket & £2 for a utter mining coffee on board
- Motorbike – 35 mins and you look cool too. Who cares how much it costs
- Bike – quickest so far is 2hr 20mins – it’s quicker than you’d think. And it’s free.
So in looking to figure out a route to work there was some initial criteria – direct / fast / simple. This is no tour, it’s a means to get from A to B as quickly as possible. Alongside that there needed to be some flexibility with changing my mind halfway along or if something went wrong so started with looking along the main train lines and linking up the stations.
Section one - Strava Segment I've named 'trudge to the good stuff'
It’s split into three sections in my head. First is getting to Airdrie. I’ve tried a few options with heading over to Cumbernauld and then up the A73 dual carriage way (biggest hill ever) and then gone a more direct route as per below across the back side of South Lanarkshire. Ultimately the latter through the back roads is faster simply due to it being more direct but there are lots and lots and lots of ups and downs which doesn’t suit a chocolate loving watt starved rider like me. But it’s quicker so it’s on the route
Section two - Strava Segment I've named 'up UP AND AWAYYYY'
Second section is the best bit ! This is where I jump onto the A89 and ride this road through to Edinburgh. This stretch runs from Airdrie to Bathgate through Plains, Caldercruix, Blackridge, and Armadale. This is a glorious stretch of wider than normal and smooth as you like road that goes up and over that large lump in the middle of Scotland. Typically there’s little traffic here and any that does come by is well behaved moving right over into the other lane. There are good views and on a sunny morning it’s lovely. I have no idea whether there are any coffee shops on route as I’m not stopping!! Seems to be a bunch of decent strava segments over this stretch with bits of a TT course – I tend to use this stretch for some interval work
Section two - Strava Segment I've named 'Grand Theft Auto'
The last section runs from Bathgate into the centre of Edinburgh – This part gets way busier with the A89 turns into a more of less straight drag down to Edinburgh Airport. Good thing about this stretch is it’s a long downhill to Newbridge – problems are the traffic, which starts to get considerable and the 3-4 sets of traffic lights on the descent, get it right and you go straight through but if not then you’re stopping at each one. With the long descent you can keep with traffic at about 40-50 kph for 20 mins or so if you get the lights which is good fun. Not so good if you’re a bit nervous about other road users, but there is a large cycle lane alongside the road from Bathgate to Edinburgh Airport but sadly it’s cut to ribbons by various side roads so I tend to avoid.
After Newbridge roundabout it’s along the dual carriageway, A8, beside Edinburgh Airport to the Gyle – this stretch has a cycle path beside it again but again it cuts in half halfway along swapping sides via a bridge/turn off into the airport so I tend to just batter along the road. At the time I’m using this it’s busy with traffic so the general speed isn’t too much faster than the 30-35kph I’m going at – difference here are the amount of commercial traffic with buses / trucks to watch out for.
After the Gyle it’s still keeping to the A8 along through Corstorphine and Edinburgh Zoo. This is the best route into Edinburgh I’ve found so far as the left lane from the Gyle largely to Haymarket is a bus / motorbike / cycle / taxi lane so there’s LOADs of room and it’s the one road straight to the centre.
Edinburgh city centre is a mixed bag – from Haymarket down to the New Town where I work I’ve tried a few routes – and either get stuck in multiple traffic lights at Princes Street or going slightly north over Dean Bridge and around the back the descents over cobbled roads risk loss of child bearing capabilities.
Couple of points to note on this route – I prefer roads but:
- There’s a tarmaced cycle path that runs largely from Airdrie (through the middle of absolute nowhere) along the railway line to the Gyle Shopping Centre on the western approachesto Edinburgh – there’s then another one that picks up at Edinburgh Park railway station just at the bottom of the Gyle Business Park that takes you straight into Haymarket (I’ve been meaning to try this as an alternative route through to centre from Gyle)
- Wind direction is generally westerly and with the hump in the middle of Scotland need pay attention to weather – 70k into a decent headwind sucks
With a low boredom threshold after a few trips I started looking at alternative routes across the central belt and tried a route below along the main Glasgow / Edinburgh line once.
Same distance, but I found myself riding through Falkirk / Linlithgow with a significant amount of time in the towns and their outskirts rather than in the country side, also it was a bit more up and down which was a bit crap for getting up a decent rate of knots for a bit. One good point was after Linlithgow there was virtually no traffic and you come into Edinburgh north of the Airport to Cramond rather than through the middle of the main route in. There’s apparently a link from Cramond into the Edinburgh cycle network too which I couldn’t find but may try again.
Some other options to be explored
Also worked out a few other options for longer routes into Edinburgh which hope try over the next month or two with the early mornings available. Largely involved going north and over via Stirling way / through fife and over the bridge down into Edinburgh.
