Isle of Skye 2007

Friday - Lost in Falkirk

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The day started with a great breakfast of toast, jam, cereal and copious qualities of tea, then took a down turn when Patto lost his glasses, he only uses them for riding/driving so we knew they had to be here somewhere, search parties were sent out to scour the buildings and thirty minutes later Gee found them in our room :-)

08:43 Neil and Gee packing and prepping for the ride home.

N56 14.141 W4 14.932 (map)

But we're not going to ride straight home, were going to pop in at the Falkirk Wheel on the way, well that is if we can find it! After dodging around major road works in the town, we eventually came in on the A9 road top right of the map below, and from there my GPS took us on a merry dance around Falkirk, eventually Patto took over with his 2610 and lead us straight there.

10:27 After just 34 miles we've landed, we might have gotten here a little sooner... but never mind!

N56 00.029 W3 50.356 (map)

The Falkirk Wheel is part of the UK's largest canal restoration project finished in 2002 at a total cost of £84.5 million, the wheel itself was £17.5 million. It was built to reconnect the Union Canal with the Forth & Clyde Canal allowing boats to travel East/West again for the first time in over 70 years.

On the left is the visitors centre, all under glass, the staff of the cafe inside were pretty good too, they quite happily made me up a beans & hash brown buttie to go with my coffee, so top marks to them! The picture below shows the wheel just starting off (rotating anti-clockwise). At regular intervals barges go in and out of the wheel lifting and lowering them between the two levels. Here's Wikipedia reference to the Falkirk Wheel, it a great engineering achievement and fascinating to watch.

11:43 From the wheel we're riding below Edinburgh to pick up the A68 south as Bill and I did back in 2005, from passed experience I know the road is littered with revenue machines sorry, speed cameras... until the England/Scotland border when they magically disappear!

13:36 After nearly two hours steady riding and one fuel stop we arrived at the refreshments van on the English/Scottish border, we're 3000ft up here and the view across the Cheviot Hills is excellent.

N55 21.275 W2 28.642 (map)

14:02 After tea and a bun we set off again for Weir View Diner our last stop 62 miles further south for a long promised steam pud and custard, yum yum!

15:14 The A68 road south was great fun, just a little slow at times due to smoky old lorries struggling on the steep hills.  Arriving at the Diner we found the car park had quite a few bike already in, some from the UKGSer community judging by the stickers. Choosing a pudding proved difficult, not helped by Patto and the waitress's teasing, but I finally settled on Jam Rolly Polly with custard, and it really was yum yum! :-)

N54 39.080 W1 46.182 (map)

I'll end this travelogue here as we split up from the Diner going our separate ways. I still had a 64 mile ride back to York, but it was a beautiful afternoon and I was home by 17:15 with my feet up, having a pot of tea :-)

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Our last days route in yellow from Trossachs Backpackers to the Wear View Diner, 183 miles, adding my ride home it became 248 miles

Our complete route showing the location of the hostels used

Statistics:

Total miles travelled:        968 miles

Average moving speed:  47.5 mph

Moving time:                     20.21 hrs

Average MPG:                 57.6 mpg!

All tracklogs and waypoints in Garmin .gdb format click to download.

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