touring on a tandem
kaylie and i have been wanting to go bike around scotland on a tour. they are known to have lax wild camping laws on the books. however, this requires a takin a good chunk of pto and hauling all your camp shit and bikes over the US and across the pond. i guess you could rent.
well we got our arses out to scotland, but pto doesn't grow on trees out here and we wanted to spend sometime in edinburgh. we settled on a smaller route to do this, which didn't require camping. the john muir way - 130ish miles from helensburgh to dunbar. since this was a shorter one, we opted to rent bikes. when we were finding a spot to rent from, i had to look at what bikes they were offering. one of the sites had tandems, and on a dark wine filled night, i half jokingly told kaylie we should ride the route on a tandem. without hesistating, she agreed... ( •ᴗ•)⸝🍻⸜(•ᴗ• )
cycles scotland and peter butterworth provided the tandem. a funny little scatter brained business mostly doing day tours on bike up to arthur's seat. this little shop space was packed in with a god dang pile o' bikes. there was a sweet old dawes galaxy tandem touring bike i wish i would have had them bring out just to see.
shop dog, merk, keepin kaylie company as we waited for the tandem to get wrestled out. i asked peter how often he gets people renting the tandem. his response was that it mostly gets used for corporate merger photo ops.
the train, probably the most anxiety inducing part of planning this out. "will scotrail take a tandem?" we would periodically ask ourselves the weeks leading up to the trip? maybe? the website was never too helpful, but from what i could gather, the route we were taking happened to have one of the few cars that can fit a tandem. phew, i was friggin right.
the start in dunbar. we had a little shaky start. kaylie noticed that to start i like to push twice while she does one. once we agreed on two pushes we were finding our rhythm. "push, push, pedal"...
i got all hyped when i saw this castle in the distance. i shouldv'e remembered someone said, "go to ireland if you want to see castles. come to scotland if you want to see ruins". this place was built in the 19th century.
the trail is nicely marked the whole way. some people walk it. the first day had some paved country roads mixed with some flowy little single track sections along the side of farmland. as a matter of chance we ran into a lady we met the day before. kaylie and i took a day trip to glasgow and at the 11th hour signed up for a random city tour with three other folks. this lady was one of the three. she was walking a segment of the trail east to west for a couple days.
we rolled into our hotel at the last call for food and beer. sleepy little spot on the canal closing at 8 pm. we got up the next day, ate a full friggin english, and kaylie took the helm.
the pannier we got was a bit shotty and it fell off the rack a time or two on day one. had to use a john's strap to keep it on haha.
day 2 was mostly rippin down the canal systems.
falkirk wheel.
we got cookin on the the canals and missed our turn for blackness castle. oh well, we got our fill of castles on day 3.
we made it into edinburgh and were challeneged on the tandem with how much more on-point we had to be. we got on stopped on a slight incline at a light on a busy road and forgot to shift down. after fumbling a bit. a taxi cab driver yelled at us to get outta the fuckin road in the thickest scottish accent. i couldn't help but burst out in laughter.
we had spent a few days in edinburgh already so we opted to go a bit further west to musselburgh. we hit the local pub and kaylie sniffed out some to go chinese food. we had a buffet on the bed of a best western and knocked out moments later.
day 3 was riding the shoreline of the firth of forth. passing through old fishing towns and castle ruins.
Dirleton Castle
tantallon castle. a wee bit off the trail, but when else are we gonna be out here? You can get up pretty high on some medieval spiral staircases. Even though all these places are in ruins, they do a pretty good job of painting a picture of how these places looked and functioned.
the john muir statue in dunbar. The little haus he was born in is just down the street.
the john muir trail was a good little trip. the mellow 40ish miles a day lets you take it easy and explore a bit more. scotrail rules. it made it easy loadin bikes and getting outside and back to edinburgh. hopefully one day i'll get together a larger trip up in the highlands.
c r a w d a d c o l l e c t i v e