Cresting the hill.

It was my turn to lead the club cycle run today, the start point and the lunch stop are pre-ordained, but the route and the coffee stop are the leader's choice. Actually, with the start being Slateford and the destination, Carstairs - the route is "Hobson's Choice" - so I unashamedly used Wild Bill Hickup's route from a couple of years ago. As always when I take the simple and unimaginative way out, the emails from fellow cyclists since then have all complimented me on the route (including the said Mr Hickup).

The blip was taken on a long and fairly straight road heading south west into the prevailing wind, it is known locally as "The Lang Whang" which translates into English as “The Long Bootlace,“ crosses bleak moorland and rises to above a thousand feet twice on the section that we used. Ideally, we should have travelled the route in the opposite direction so that we would have had a fantastic tail wind home; it is a good plan but means that there is nowhere for an afternoon coffee stop - that would have caused a mutiny - headed by my good self. We could always have had afternoon coffee in the morning but, the last time we did that, it wasn't popular.