Yesterday I took a cycle from Edinburgh to Stirling, following fairly close to the Firth of Forth and River Forth further West.
It was pretty clear when I set out, unfortunately it slowly got damper later on. Heading through Grangemouth the rain came on quite heavy. By the time I had started leaving Grangemouth, the rain was down to either nothing or just a light mist. It was a pretty strong head wind most of the way.
In many of the back roads that the National Cycle routes take you, it is a lot more sheltered and often more hilly. I decided to avoid Blackness, the low road through Bo’ness and from Bo’ness to Grangemouth, where I used the main roads instead of the minor back roads.
I got to Stirling and hopped on to a train home. It cost £4.10 to get back into Edinburgh. The train took about 50 minutes, compared to just over 4 hours for the cycle into the head wind.
I even took some photos.
Hey would you say it is quite easy to do this trip in 4 hours as long as the weather is alright? How long do you think it would take to ride Stirling to Glasgow?
Cheers
Hi,
Short answer: If you are a regualar cyclist yes.
Long answer:
Stirling to Edinburgh is around 38 miles
Stirling to Glasgow is around 26 miles
Both depending on route used. (Links above should use the avoid highways feature of Google maps.)
The time it takes depends significantly more on how fit you are than the weather conditions. Now that I have been doing quite a bit of cycling for many months now, I tend to find that a head wind has less effect on my journey time now than what it did have in the past.
If you haven’t done any cycling in a while I wouldn’t recommend you to even try that route straight off.
What I often do is build up to a long distance cycle over several days by taking several shorter cycles along the first part of the route.
When you gave the distances (Stirling to Edinburgh is around 38 miles; Stirling to Glasgow is around 26 miles) are you talking cycling on national cycle routes or the shortest distance given on google maps without highways? I would assume it is much more enjoyable to cycle the national routes instead of google map roads, but can you recommend one way over the other?
cheers
There is currently no direct route from Stirling to Glasgow on the National Cycle Network.
The problem with trying to use quiet roads which aren’t on the National Cycle Network, is that you can often end up in dead ends or lost in the middle of nowhere. Which is why it is better to keep to the Aor B roads.
If you want to from Stirling to Glasgow on the National Cycle Network you can either go North to Callander then South West to Dumbarton to head East to Glasgow. Or you can head south to the Forth and Clyde Canal and follow that.
You could even simply head South West from Stirling and at some point hit the Forth and Clyde canal, where I would join it. This is probably be the route that I would take.
I would recommend taking a look at the National Cycle Network Maps below.
Sustrans Cycle Map web
Sustrans National Cycle Network PDF
Sustrans Get Cycling page Lots of useful information.