Monday June 30, 2014

A long day but a lovely ride.  We left the hostel at 9:00. We were hoping that the roads would be a little quieter at that time, I don’t think they were that much quieter.  It seemed to take forever to get out of Edinburgh and to the Forth Road Bridge – in fact it did take two hours for 22.5 kms.  Our planned route was 75 kms, I was a little concerned that we were taking too long.  However, as soon as we crossed the Forth we got going a lot quicker.

We followed cycle route 1 and 7 to get to the Forth Road Bridge which kept us away from the A90 (which we weren’t allowed on).  Sustrans is working on a dedicated route from the A90 to the Forth Road Bridge.  At the moment there is a diversion through the Dalwhinny Estate.  Ralf commented that this was the nicest diversion we have been on.

We crossed the Forth Road Bridge – it was great – a very wide cycle way and a separate pedestrian path.

The Forth Rail Bridge is famous for having to be constantly painted.  By the time it has been painted from one side to the other, they start all over again.  It was a lovely route, rolling hills and the road coming down into Perth was 5 kms of winding downhill.  I was expecting it to kick up at any time but it didn’t.

No idea when we cycled into the Kingdom of Fife – or why it is called the Kingdom.

At one point we saw a big hawk sitting on a post.  We both managed to stop without disturbing it and Ralf almost had his camera out then a big lorry came by and scared it off.

We have now planned our route for the rest of the week.  We should be in John O’Groats by Sunday.  When we get to Inverness we will have to book our train trip from Wick to Troon and our ferry trip from Troon to Larne (Northern Ireland).

We arrived in Perth and tried to find the Tourism Information, eventually we found it and found out where the camp site was.  It is about 5 kms out of Town which we will have to return the same way tomorrow.  We got the tent set up just before it started to rain.  Our tent is leaking!! We will have to get some seam grip when we are in Inverness.  We managed to eat our dinner before it started to rain again. Forecast is for showers all night, hopefully it will be good tomorrow.

Our campsite is in the area of Castle Scone, where the Stone of Destiny was kept.  The Stone of Destiny was used in the 1300’s to Crown the Scottish Kings.  It was taken from the Scots and kept in Westminster Abbey, only returning to Scotland in 1996.