There’s no comparison between my ride from Dumfries to Glasgow, which I finished today on my comfy touring bike, and Kirkpatrick Macmillan’s on his velocipede in 1842. Mine was harder. Because I actually did it and he didn’t. He was hard at work in his smithy in Keir Mill, hammering away at glowing horseshoes on anvils, or whatever blacksmiths did then. Maybe he did indeed ride a treadle-operated tricycle now and then a short distance, but not a bicycle. And whatever it was, he sure did never make it to Glasgow on one.
One thing in common between us, though, was heavy machines. Laden with camping gear and four days’ food, my bike no doubt weighed even more than his fanciful treadle-operated monster.
Anyway, I set off from my campsite in good spirits, knowing that from Leadhills it was all downhill, and that I’d be riding almost all the way to Glasgow along one of Britain’s longest car-free cycle routes: NCN74. It utilises half of the old dual-carriageway-now-single-carriageway A74, now the B7076, paralleled by the A74(M).
It’s all wide open, austere but not unattractive stuff. The cycle path is not all that near the motorway, and there’s little traffic on the old road’s remaining half for cars, so there’s no obtrusive noise.
I was pleased to see a new wide cycle path being built as we got closer to Glasgow, and the picnic area set aside to give Land’s End to John o’Groats cyclists a break.
But I was less pleased to see that cyclists have to give way to any and every cross-path, even if it’s just a residential drive, even if it’s just a clump of grass. Priority at junctions this ain’t.
All steady stuff, at a decent pace on a day of reasonable weather. I snaffled a coffee and cake at Larkhall as the suburbs of Glasgow began to coalesce into unbroken city.
For the last ten miles or so I was on the Clyde Path, which runs along the river right into the centre of Glasgow. Flat, OK surface, not too much in the way of photo opps, but not too much in the way, either.
At one point I did a side-jag to Cambuslang, whose bike shop supplied me with brake blocks to replace the ones worn away by yesterday’s efforts in the Lowther Hills.
Journey’s end was in the Gorbals, once a byword for grim urban deprivation and slums, but now a redeveloping area making its way back up. Kirkpatrick Macmillan, according to legend, collided with a pedestrian here at the end of his mythical ride from Dumfries, and was fined five shillings for his pains, or rather for the pedestrian’s. Bike historians reckon that’s nonsense (the machine described in the newspaper reference to the incident was nothing like Macmillan’s velocipede) but even so I was careful not to emulate him.
KM may never have ridden this route, but I very much enjoyed riding it. Three days of thrilling variety and fine uplifting scenery, ending with a stay in the vibrant centre of Glasgow, and a celebratory drink and meal at a Wetherspoon with outside tables, right opposite a horseman statue with a traffic cone on his head. What could be more authentic?
Miles today: 47
Miles from Dumfries to Glasgow: 90