7th December Ride Report
Ride Report - A Short Local Run - 150 km in 3 hours
Standing about in the +8degree relative warmth seemed a pleasure after last weekends Santa Run in the frost!! With a couple of “maybe” attendees texting across their excuses (mostly seasonal / Christmas Party related!) myself and Steve decided it was just going to be us so cranked our respective engines and rolled out of Bike Park Leith and headed for the Bridges.
Roads were surprisingly busy / chocked up for a Sat morning but some responsible filtering (the joys of not having the luggage on the GS) had us out over the bridge and cruising at Motorway speeds in no time. We took exit 4 and headed out the Knockhill direction, into some slightly damp but very atmospheric fog. Roads were wet, slippy in places especially with leaves / the usual farm mud here or there, but with almost nobody else on them we had a lovely quiet, fun spin, through Powmill, Yeats of Muckhart and headed over the hill into Dunning.
With the rain still trying its best, and the temp having dropped a noticeable few degrees as we gained in elevation (heated grips now on high) we didn’t do much stopping or chatting, however with Steve being from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and having recently moved here, I had decided to fit in something of note other than the lovely Scottish Countryside, and what better a spot than this lovely pile of rocks where the last witch was burned at the stake a fair few years back
With that out of the way and the drizzle feeling like it was getting even colder again, we confirmed our earlier plans to stop en route back in the mouth watering Canadian Cafe at Port Edgar, and headed that direction. Heading across into Auchterarder and out through Gleneagles meant some waving and pointing by me ticked two more boxes, a proper old petrol station on the main street with pumps on the footpath (not sure why but I’ve always enjoyed these!) As well as some waving at Gleneagles Entrance & surrounding course. Up and over the hill heading South on the A823 I had a bit of a moment, having completed a safe and easy overtaking manoeuvre of a slow moving car, on some gentle throttle my back wheel decided it wasn’t happy being directly behind the front and stepped out to the left, giving me quite the surprise! I’d like to say it was my lightening reflexes that saved me from ending up sliding up the remainder of the hill but some credit should go to the bike for being very smart and having traction control and wet mode which I’m assuming helped, or arguable wasn’t working very well at all or the arse shouldn’t have slid out in the first place! Still getting used to the newer GS having always ridden older bikes I’m not sure how I feel about that point.
Speaking of older bikes we picked up our third rider en route on who had finished some maintenance and chose to join us slightly later in the day (the lure of epic Canadian food obviously too much to refuse) so we became three and also gained significant style points (shown above)
The food was as amazing as always and the company not being too bad either, the perfect end to a nice day on the bike. So with full bellies and caffeine levels topped up we headed back into Edinburgh via South Queensferry, sticking to the coast most of the way and arriving back at a reasonable hour still with enough daylight to give the bikes a blast!
Not a bad ratio of good roads Vs boring straight ones snd plenty of scenery, all up we squeezed a nice ride into few hours and a handy spin for a mid Dec run !!