Changing Plans and my first RRTY validated - 02 March 2019

The plan for the start of March was to ride one of the old classic Scottish events that's now available in the form of a Permanent, the Daylight 600 though in this guise it's known as the Twilight 600.

This route starts at South Queensferry and heads north through Fife and Clackmannanshire before climbing Glen Devon to Strathearn and then crossing into the Highlands at the Sma'Glen before heading West for Acharcle where Moidart, Sunart and Ardnamuchan meet. The return route is to cary on North into Morar at Lochairlot before taking the Road from the Isles to Fort William, heading south to Oban and then returning via Callander to South Queensferry, a cracking ride in good weather but ideally timed for the quiet season or at least to hit the busy roads with no alternatives at night.

While the weather forecasters were talking up a wind storm with gust speeds of up to 70kmh, I was looking at the gust speeds forecast for Mull and Ardnamurchan which were forecast to be over 100kmh and with a lot of Rain/Snow also forecast to hit, we decided that it wasn't going to be this time.  The Sunday night hotel was cancelable but I'd booked a saver for the Saturday and Robbie had advanced fare train tickets to Inverkeithing.

With reference to the forecast wind speeds and direction we determined that rejigging plans to do the Central Scotland 300 instead wasn't an option either, but with a strong southerly and Aberdeen being quite easy to design a 200km route to from Edinburgh we set out a plan to ride north to Perth before following the east coast route to Aberdeen.

Crossing the Forth

I met Robbie at Inverkeithing and we rode over to South Queensferry to make use of the friday night room booking; a McDonalds breakfast set us up for the day and record times were set on the way up and over Hill of Beath to Kelty and onto Milnathort and Glenfarg, with our average speed sitting at the highest we've seen for a while by Perth we were fairly happy with our progress and I was starting to wonder how long I'd have to wait for my 2130 train home.

Preparing to climb Kinnoul

The Carse of Gowrie redeemed itself for being so horrible on the way to East Lothian and we were soon rolling along the cycle paths through Dundee, we stopped at the Bridgeview Station roll carriage for lunch before carrying on along the Esplanade and then we took the new open access route through the Docks to the Grassy Beach in Broughty Ferry this is much better than the old enclosed permissive access route and saves on the climb up to the Broughty Ferry road.

Along the waterfront

The Ferry was busy and we lost a bit of pace along here but once out onto Barry Buddon things got much quieter, Easthaven to Arbroath is a compacted earth/lightly gravelled section rather than sealed surface but it was fine on 28mm tyres and we were soon taking in the sights of Arbroath with Pleasureland and Gayfield park greeting us, the town improves as you pop through the edge of the Harbour where creel boats of varying sizes still operate from before riding along Arbroath's waterfront Esplanade with the grant concrete pillars welcoming you to a big desolate stretch of road before a climb up a gap in the cliffs takes you onto a quiet road out to Lunan bay and then into Montrose where I hadn't cleaned up the GPX that was submitted for the mandatory route and we found ourselves riding back up hill in order to carry down stairs, just incase it was beyond the threshold.

Robbie discovers the wonders of Arbroath

Traffic got busy again as we left Montrose on the A92 and the going got lumpy, the wind was picking up and some spots of rain fell and I feared a soaking. However it didn't come to anything as we carried on up the coast, the Stonehaven Cycle Club catching us on the descent into Inverbervie, some members taking a tow off us briefly, claiming to be knackered (fairly sure they hadn't ridden 180km at this point!)

Crossing the railway south of Montrose

We stopped at Greggs in Stonehaven for some food for once with no time pressure, the rain threatening again so we set off quickly for the Netherly climb which looks horiffic from the town but turned out to be not bad, I'm sure it will be horiffic when I ride it without a strong wind giving a helping hand. At the top we stopped to add rain jackets as the threat seemed to be getting stronger, but by the time we'd descended to Maryculter and started cycling along the Dee into Aberdeen the threat had gone. Once over the finish line at Union Street we set off to the university grounds to visit the BeCYCle workshop where Robbie volunteers, there was cake and an odd fusion of Dance music and Bavarian Oompah playing.

It finally rained while we were there, and there was still 3 hours to spend before my train home.
While checking my e-mail I discovered I'd recieved confirmation of my first RRTY being validated. This is a challenge to ride a 200km or longer at BR time schedules each month of the year; often started accidentally I realized during the summer that I had started on in March and carried it through with Calendar events, ECE'ed BPs, DIYs and Perms.


My first RRTY series was as follows

Mar-18	200 - Scottish Borders Randonneur
Apr-18	200 - Moffat Toffee
May-18	DIY - 200 - Aberfoyle and Back
Jun-18	300 - Snow Roads
Jul-18	DIY 200 - Highland Perthshire
Aug-18	200 - No Work for us today
Sep-18	DIY 200 - Back fae Arran
Oct-18	200 - Brant and Slape
Nov-18	200 - Long Dark (Wet) Tea Time
Dec-18	Perm 400 - Kingdom Come
Jan-19	DIY 200 - MULL
Feb-19	Perm 200  - A Ride Around Ben Klibreck