Taking the long way home
I decided I couldn’t face another wrestle with the Calton Road/Leith Street/Picardy Place/Leith Walk snarl-up and decided to find something more relaxed. Every time I looked up cycling to the western edge of Edinburgh there seemed to be a route which skirted the north of the city and came back down about Haymarket. So where was it actually, and could I get there?
It turns out to be pretty easy to find from Haymarket station — though I did have some help because there was an old guy on a Brompton who was also heading that direction so I just tailgated him. Brompton or not, he quickly disappeared into the distance…
I’m still nursing a sore wrist from earlier in the week, so I was effectively riding “one-handed” (but not really; I could still brake or steer with both if necessary). So I wasn’t really riding fast though when there’s no traffic lights and a decent road surface you can get up a decent pace. From the Strava chart I reckon the uninterrupted section of road was averaging ~25kph — about 15mph.
More importantly the “moving time” was about half an hour — which means in half an hour I can get to Haymarket station without touching the roads, and that’s if I’m not pushing it. I’ve been lamenting that my cycle commute has been getting shorter as the years go by, but I’ve not been willing to do the full ride from flat to office. I’m still too feart of being stranded in the middle of West Lothian somewhere especially in the winter. (And I don’t trust the traffic on that road either.)
This seems like the ideal way to add some more miles to my weekly tally without going crazy.