Scottish road trip
My wife Kirsten & I decided to visit some friends and relatives in Scotland, and booked a week off work to make it worthwhile. Rather than bumbling up the M6 in the comfy car as we’d normally do, I figure it would be worth making a trip of it and take in some interesting roads along the way.
Day 1
Headed off from Reading mid-morning, with the Sat Nav (a Tom Tom Via 120, the new gen Tom Toms that don’t let you plan a route and upload to the device, so you need to faff about setting waypoints on the device itself if you want to go anywhere other than the fastest/shortest etc route. In short: don’t buy one) set to take us for an overnight stop in Didsbury, just on the edges of Manchester.
The first route I wanted to drive was the road that runs parallel to the M40 – the B4100 from Banbury to Warwick. As it happens, we got a bit distracted and stopped off for lunch at a little pub near Edgehill, which we’d visited years before – but re-joined the B4100 at Gaydon and carried on.
I had wanted to take a particular route through Coventry (to scope out a cycle route I’m planning from Manchester to Reading), so there was little of excitement for a while – then a slog through Nuneaton and Burton upon Trent reinforced the belief that there are some pretty grim bits of the Midlands.
We carried on along the A515 to Ashbourne and headed for Buxton, and things got a lot better – though there were far too many stretches of A-road with 50mph limits. After heading to Buxton, the last leg of the journey was a real disappointment – the Cat & Fiddle (A537) was wet, it had 50mph average speed cameras and we got stuck behind a lorry that proved impossible to pass until very near the end of the road – he was clipping along at 50-odd some of the time, but took an age getting through the bends, of which there are many. We had stopped for a coffee at the iconic Cat & Fiddle pub: the wind was blowing quite fiercely and I can’t imagine what the place is like on a wild night…
more like the Slaughtered Lamb...
Day 2
Left Didsbury after a modest breakfast, and let the satnav take us towards Giggleswick on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. A thoroughly soaking and otherwise forgettable motorway journey to the end of the M65 gave way to some pleasant roads, then we turned to the B6479 from Giggleswick to the Ribblehead viaduct. We then had to persuade the satnav we wanted to go via Hawes, which is the launchpad to Thwaite via the Buttertubs Pass.
The Buttertubs is said to be Jeremy Clarkson’s favourite road, and I can see why – it was open, twisty in parts and pretty much devoid of other traffic, except a few wandering sheep. Sadly, it was still raining reasonably hard so caution was the name of the day, and it wasn’t as much fun as I’d been expecting. Oh well, maybe on a bright summer’s morning…
Anyway, after crossing the dales, we headed for Penrith and a bit more motorway action to take us to Carlisle, at which point we deviated onto the A7 “Tourist Route” to Edinburgh.
The A7 is a fairly quick road at the best of times, though there are often Land Rovers & the odd small truck to keep things in check, but its main users are either tourists or locals in a hurry.
When we got to Langholm, a new battle with the stupid satnav ensued as we wanted to take the B709 route to Edinburgh – it starts by veering north-west but soon starts swinging back in check. Both routes from Langholm to Middleton, not far from the Edinburgh boundary, are just shy of 60 miles in length, making the B709 (apparently) the 2nd longest B-road in the country.
B709 "The Scottish Nurburgring"
The road surface was a bit patchy in places but for much of the way, it was in good shape – and what a road! By this time, the sun was out, the rain had long since vanished and it provided a combination of well sighted stretches, sweeping turns and cracking scenery all around. If you ever find yourself driving north to Edinburgh, try this road out!
Days 3-5
Spent some time mooching about in Edinburgh, catching up with old friends and doing a couple of touristy things (the Royal Yacht Britannia at Leith is well worth a visit, to my surprise). We went through to Glasgow for a night out with some other pals, and got the usual mix of bewildered looks and neck-snapping double takes as we burbled up and down the city streets on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning.
Superman... at the museum of Scotland
I was supposed to be following my sister from Newton Mearns (outside Glasgow) to Irvine, and I said “should we just follow you?”, to which she replied “yes, but you know where you’re going…” Turns out, I didn’t – so figured I’d set the destination into the Tom Tom just in case we got separated. By the time I’d done this, she’d vanished – I presumed we’d just follow the TT’s directions and would catch her up as she headed out on the main A-roads that I recognise but couldn’t be sure of how to get to.
By the time we were belting across a moorland B-road by a reservoir, I realised we were on a different route – the B769 Stewarton road, which proved to be just what the car needed after a few days of city-dwelling. At last, the blasted satnav took us on a road we didn’t want, but which was a lot better than the one we were aiming for..! To cap it off, we arrived about 5 minutes earlier than my sister, who later said that the road we took was great going north-south, but the combination of bends, dips and cambers made it a much hairier prospect going the other way.
We later headed over to Ardrossan, the original plan being to sail round to Largs on a friend’s Beneteau 47 and stay the night on the boat. The remnants of Hurricane Katia put paid to that plan – the storm gates in the Clyde Marina were already closed by 4pm, so nobody was going anywhere that night.
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Originally Posted by Marky
I'm cycling with a few pals from Manchester to Reading next weekend - 
No more NA