Biking on a budget

Cycling adventures are my favourite – you can go far and fast, cover enough ground to feel like you’ve really gone somewhere, and feel the freedom and closeness with nature that’s typical of saddle-travel.

One of the best ways to keep your expedition costs down is to stay within the UK. There are thousands of routes to explore.

Though I have travelled many thousands of miles around Great Britain by bicycle, train, boat and foot, I’m always finding new places to go and new things to see.

Forth rail bridge

Eleven traditional locks once stood in its place, but they were replaced by this design, in which boats enter a watery trough which is then sealed and lifted by the wheel, arriving at the top level five minutes later.

And, being an infrastructure enthusiast, I couldn’t visit Edinburgh and not take a trip out to the famous Forth rail bridge, the elegant Forth road bridge, and the newly-opened and impressive Queensferry crossing.

I convinced fellow OS champion and infrastructure geek Jude to accompany me.

So the route was planned: we would ride a total of 80 miles over two days around the Forth from Edinburgh to Grangemouth, then inland along the canal towpath to reach the Clyde, and finally into Glasgow.

Transit there and back

My preference for long-distance travel is by train, but with a £100+ one-way ticket (even advance is £70) I was on the hunt for something cheaper.

National Express offer an advance overnight fare to Edinburgh for £9, and a return from Glasgow for £10. Even though we’d get little more than a patchy night’s sleep, and we’d have to be desperate to use that toilet, it was too tempting a price. It was only one night.

The arrival into the Scottish capital and the excitement of the cycle ride would nullify any tiredness. The one major snag was that full-sized bikes cannot be conveyed via coach. The solution: we would ride folding bikes, mine a Brompton, Jude’s an Apollo.

Bankies' Bike

I’m a member of Warmshowers, a world-wide community of reciprocal accommodation for travelling cyclists, and I have used this network extensively in my tours around the UK.

A major benefit of Warmshowers is that often hosts provide dinner and breakfast as well as a bed, which can substantially lower your costs.

This free hospitality survives on the generosity and kindness of its members, and I have had great experiences both hosting and being hosted. It’s easy to register for an account: warmshowers.org

We arranged to spend one night with Warmshowers hosts in Kirkintilloch, and our second night with a friend in Glasgow, though there were plenty of Warmshowers hosts there too, and there was also the option for a hostel which would have cost around £30 for the pair of us.

It was a terrific ride. We were lucky with the weather, and the shorts were on for day two. The panorama of the trio of bridges was superb, as were the views from up on the bridge itself.

The countryside surrounding both cities was beautiful, with mountains ever-present in the background, and the visit to the Falkirk wheel will live long in the memory.

But OF COURSE we should have done it the other way around. Though both experienced cyclists and seasoned tourers, we forgot about the prevailing winds that meant, for almost the entirety of our east to west cycle, we were battling a headwind.

The Kelpies