I had a very busy diary last week so it was Friday before I got back in the saddle with an old colleague of mine, Stuart. He’d been working to 6pm so that gave me a few minutes after getting off the train to fill up on a Mars bar and a bottle of lucozade sport.

We met at Bothwell Street next to the phone boxes and headed down onto Waterloo Street after agreeing it would be good to go on the “Bridge to Everywhere” that used to be the “Bridge to nowhere” and here it is!

And very smooth and pleasant it was on the under-tyre too!  (and more importantly gentle on the saddle bottom)!  After the excitement and joy of going up and over and down and round and round we headed to another, but not so smooth, curly footpath over the Clydeside expressway and headed towards the River to join the Forth And Clyde National Route 7 cycle path from Glasgow to Loch Lomond.
We were on a mission to cycle between 15 – 20 mph the whole way which, in theory, would allow us to get to Loch Lomond and back to Glasgow in 3 hours and thus still in the hours of light!

The path along the Clyde leads up to the road past the transport museum, along past the old River Clyde docks and then up onto the old train line which has a tarmac surface.

Before we knew it we’d reached Clydebank and we stopped to pump up my rear tyre which Stuart had observed had almost hit the rim when I was going over kerb stones.  The next section was along the canal to Bowling.  Then we left the water edge and went up into a railway cutting which takes you along a very smooth path past Milton then on to Dumbarton amongst trees.

Through Dumbarton town centre, over a bridge then back out to more countryside and even through a field of cows before joining a river side path that takes you all the way to Balloch and was smelling sweet with lots of flowers.

A quick Mars bar and a drink then we headed back the way we came.  Sadly Stuart got a puncture at Dalmuir next to the canal and while he was changing his tyre (lucky he had 3 inner tubes as one spare was faulty) I was attacked by swarms of horse flies and I now have about 10 bites all over the backs of my legs and my arms!

Despite this, we achieved our goal of 3 hours cycling before we got our respective trains home to avoid cycling in the dark! (apologies for lack of photos but I’ve been this route before – see blog entry Braw Bike to Balloch