Day 93  Edinburgh to Kirkcaldy

 

 Date: Wednesday 21^st September 2011   Distance: 37.87 Miles

 

We cycled to Manchester airport station at 6.30 to catch the 7.25 train to Edinburgh. Groups of friendly people on the train helped the 3 hour, mainly rural, journey to pass more quickly. We arrived at Waverley Station at 11am and were soon cycling in light drizzle and wind.

 

I loved all the beautiful lofty buildings and Bob hated all the misleading or non- existent cycleway signs. Edinburgh is suffering from the laying of the metro lines and we seemed to be going round in circles trying to find a way out of it. The main street Princes Street was road blocked and we had to walk a fair bit as cycleway became squeezed into a walkway. It seemed like we were making progress as we headed for Murrayfield but then the signs left us high and dry and we retraced tracks to find cycle route 1.

 

Panic was beginning to rise when we ended up in school grounds. Round and round we went looking for the little blue sign. Heaven knows what they all thought of this yellow and pink vision on a two-seater!

 

I had been trying to tell Bob that I had seen what looked like a railway bridge with a path underneath but maybe the wind carried my voice away. It was a disused railway line and it then began to feel like we were leaving the city.

 

After a few miles we passed 3 quite elderly people heading for John o’Groats. The sky was black and we were hungry so we stopped at the first pub, the Crammond Brigg, only 7 miles from where we started. As we chose our food the heavens seriously opened and I felt for those poor cyclists plodding onwards. There was no real ale and the food was expensive and full of things Bob shouldn’t eat but we were glad to be there with friendly people. The airport was a mile off and planes flew low overhead.

 

We left when the rain became less of a torrent and the terrain was mainly countryside heading towards the Firth of Forth Bridge. There were very few people on the disused railway line and later cycleway beside the road. There was a fantastic view of the famous Queensferry railway bridge on our right and the rain seemed to be clearing. We rode through unlikely looking housing estates, twisting and turning, then beside the road leading to the bridge. Little tempting patches of blue disappeared under heavy cloud and visibility over the water deteriorated so that buildings seemed to half disappear.

 

There was no warning but the cycle way was closed our side of the bridge and we had to carry the bike down stairs and under a tunnel. When we came to the other side we stayed put while another deluge came down. After eating something sweet to give us a lift we set off across the Forth in the biting cold and wet, leaning to the left to stop ourselves falling over with the 3 John o’ Groaters struggling just ahead of us. High wind signs banned double- decker buses.

 

Over the other side the sky suddenly started to clear to a beautiful blue. We noticed a strong cherry smell just as we came into Inverkeithing, where it was lovely down by the sea as the cycleway followed the same path as the coastal path. Views back to Edinburgh were really good and the seaweed on the beach smelled briny and fresh. We now had a tail wind!

 

We met a girl cyclist sitting barefoot by a ruined church right on the sea’s edge. She had a bike with a plastic solar panel that powered her cyclometer but she said it’s not much good in Scotland, especially today.

 

It was through Delgety and then back to hugging the coast. Next was Aberdour Golf Club with greens on either side of the cycleway. There were iron gates to go through into Aberdour town and opposite these was a hotel where we had a pit stop. We warmed up a bit but the padding in my shorts remained soggy.

 

Somehow we missed Silver Sands but again we were right by the edge of the sea on a very narrow, rough path. We passed a waterfall looking like it was cascading over earth but it must have been solid else it would have washed away.

 

We climbed all the way through Burntisland that seemed to have a lot of modern housing and then it was over another hill, a couple of swoops up and down to, on approach, an impressive looking Kircaldy. It was muddy sand for a beach with gannets vertical diving, beaks like harpoons, off shore.

 

 

We rode along the promenade until the harbour, where we turned left and left again where we hit the main road and” Dunedin “,our 19th century Guest house. This large house has modern minimalistic decor and the bike was locked round the back but with no cover. We ate at the Weatherspoon “Robert Nairn”, with a Scottish menu and Bob tried his first Cullen Skink, smoked haddock soup.