I've had a bike for the best part of a year now, and never gone very far. In fact, my longest ever cycle trip was the one I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Now I've realised an ambition: I cycled from Auchterarder (where I grew up and went to school, where my mum lives) to Edinburgh, where I live now (and it's been a while now). As I mentioned, it's not that far; it's about 70km (perhaps 45 miles). So I did that on Sunday.

I went up to my mum's on Saturday. Because of engineering works, it took 2 hours station to station, say 2.5 door-to-door. And it was a lovely sunny warm evening. Sunday morning, however, I spent sitting reading a book, listening to thunderstorms and on-off rain. By the afternoon, this seemed to have cleared. There were still clouds, but a little sun shone through, and so I decided to set off.

There was a little rain as I started, but as I cycled through glendevon, between the ochil hills, the sun seemed to break through, and it was all very pleasant. All too soon I was out in open countryside, then heading towards more hills. At this point the weather became somewhat... interesting. The rain very quickly soaked my shorts and t-shirt, and anything else in the vicinity. As that eased off, the thunder started to get louder. Being nowhere in particular, I pushed on. As I neared the top of the hilly section, it became apparent that the thunderstorm was closing, with lightning striking about 1km away. Somewhat worrisome.

Soon enough I passed the Knockhill motor racing circuit, with commentary blaring out to rival anything but the following thunder. From there it's all downhill to Dunfermaline, where I sheltered from another spell of heavy rain, obtained a coffee, and realised that it would not be possible to get a train home because of the aforementioned engineering works.

Fortunately the weather started looking up again, so it was off down the NCN 1 over the Forth Road Bridge to Edinburgh. Straightforward enough, apart from rather too much faffing about with shared-use footpaths. And home in about 5 hours. Given that I think I spent about an hour in Dunfermaline, it doesn't compare too badly with the rerouted train service...