Lomond Hills

Up early to get the train to Scotland and the weather is beautiful: still and clear. This is usually the kind of weather I experience when I head on the train down to London, and I always harbour a resetment about having to miss so much of the day on the train and in a meeting. The fact that I am heading north makes it a little bit easier, but I still detect a bit of resentment. I love where I live!

I've still got this silly deadline hanging over me so I have to work through the journey, but I never really mind that. I find the train very conducive to work. I always manage to get a lot achieved and sometimes save something difficult and interesting for such occasions. The time certainly passes quickly that way. The meeting with my new clients, public health doctors and health protection nurses went very well. Lovely people who are all very enthusiastic to start using the software. No real issues come up so I'm happy that it's going to be quite a straightforward implementation. The best thing is that they are all willing to embrace new technology. No technophobes to have to win over! But I digress ...

Get back to Kirkcaldy where I'm staying just before 6pm and I'm straight out on the bike. It's a beautifully warm evening, with fantastic views across the Firth of Forth to Edinburgh. I only have a vague plan and a torn out page of a road atlas to guide me. Potentially a recipe for disaster! I soon discover that road surfaces in Scotland are no better than in England, if not actually worse. And the same can be said for signs. I'm heading out to the Lomond Hills and want to use the back lanes, but I keep finding myself on the main roads. This is always a problem, whenever I visit somewhere new. From the middle of towns there never seems to be any help to guide you towards the unclassified roads. In Spain I once gave up on such a quest, after repeated failed attempts, and in the end had to ride the route in the opposite direction to find out exactly where the back road appeared. In the end, there was no sign to indicate that it was in any way more significant than any of the other roads I had tried and which didn't lead anywhere. They obviously want to keep the tourists away! I was reminded of that experience here because I kept finding myself entering industrial estates, from which there appeared to be no exit other than from the direction I had entered. Keeping the local roads for the locals. I suppose I can empathise with that.

Eventually I found the turn off to Falkland that I was after and it was immediately like entering a different world. Rural Fife was laid out before me. The climb soon started, and I'm feeling very low in energy, as I have done from the start, so I take it very steadily and enjoy the views and just being somewhere new. I'm passed by someone flying down the hill the other way and amuse myself with the thought that he might be a cyclosport.org reader and soon be reading about himself! The descent down to Falkland seems a lot steeper than the way I've just come up, but still goes on for a long time, so I'm encouraged that my lack of speed climbing was down to it being a bigger hill than I had realised! Falkland is a quintessential Scottish village, complete with its own Palace. It reeks of history and a sense of place in that history. I could understand why they refer to this area as the Kingdom of Fife.

Now in the countryside it is much easier to find the byways and most of the rest of the ride is on quiet roads, with a few more short climbs to enjoy. I've been reminded though that although it is good to see somewhere new, I've missed the continuity of my riding back home. I think that's become important to me. It's been a bit of a pain to have kept having to stop to look at the map and backtrack here and there. And I also have to admit that although it's really pretty here, it still isn't the Dales! I am so, so spoilt. I've asked the question before. Is there any better place to live for a cyclist than Ilkley? Get back to my B&B with 37 miles on the clock and happy to have got to know a little corner of Fife.