Day 5 - Tuesday – Newton Stewart to Gretna
Here’s the route profile for today, 142km with front loaded
climbing and a flat tail along the Solway Firth.
Heavy rain overnight, but cleared for the morning. A very
good breakfast with no rushing, but I still managed to be on the road just
after 9am.
A mostly much more sensible route today, but a couple of
points to note. The very first innocuous
looking blip is getting up onto an old military road (these were put in after a
Scots Rebellion in the 17th Century, but backfired a bit as they
simply allowed the next rebellion to come swarming out of the hills in a much
more organised fashion). In this case I
knew I was going to have to walk about 300 yards as the blip up was in fact
about 20% and then plateauing, but that was no problem, and then the next
little blip was a right PITA, with another of these pointlessly routed off road
sections onto a mixed use path through a forest with very steep access ramps
through gates. The only problem was the
other side, being in a forest and having had heavy rain the previous night, the
mossy floor offered no traction at all to a road tyre. A Q45 perhaps with a knobbly, but not a 28mm
Conti GP 4 Seasons. Only about 100 yd of pushing though.
The rest of the route looks pretty benign and it was. The
first substantial climb being a lovely quiet road through a forest section,
another logging road with a steady incline and no major dramas, and with the
added bonus of an eagle taking off from a telegraph pole right on the
roadside. Not a single car for about
15km. The downhill was great, until the
point where a young deer jumped out from the hedge next to me, took half a
dozen skittish strides along the road next to me and bounded back into the
hedge. A great view, but could have been
a very different outcome if it had headed across my path.
The bit coming out of Kircudbright at about 50km was
unexpected, but not too difficult with another steady drag of 4-5%, with a nice
steady descent into Castle Douglass, where I had a nice stop for an ice cream
and packet of crisps sat on a park bench in the sunshine. Out of Castle Douglass though was a different
matter, with another military road which started out nicely, but rapidly
changed to a series of sharply undulating up and downs, just what I hate, too
short to get enough momentum downhill before the next sharp uphill takes it out
of your legs again. The average route
profile really does not show this.
The Solway firth section after Dumfries was indeed pancake
flat as shown, but with one or two routing idiocies again, like turn off the
minor road you are on, onto a farm track, through a campsite onto a beach road
which is really not suitable for any kind of bike in comfort for about 500
yards and then route through a village back onto the road you just left. That section and the two mentioned above
would get rerouted next time. The other
bit to reroute, back in Gatehouse of Fleet was really stupid on the part of the
route designer, going through a large estate with a golf course, so far so
good, but then turning off road into a forest for about 2 miles, mostly
unrideable on road tyres due to the damp slippery nature of the surface. That could easily be given as an option with
another on road route bypassing that section.
I think it can’t save more than a mile by cutting through the forest.
Off road Idiocy?
Overall a much easier day, and much more sensible discipline
around my blood testing and eating saw no problems there.
Repurposing an S40 as a clothes drier
A good dinner and couple of beers and an early night in
Gretna, to be honest riding through the town on arrival didn’t make me want to
hang around. The Devils Porridge Pot
Museum on the run into town and the Old Forge may be worth a visit if I have
more time on another trip. The former is
an old WWI munitions factory, making explosives, the mix being referred to as
the Devil’s Porridge. The Old Forge was
where young couples could elope to be married.
Gretna is a border town and the rules in Scotland were different, with
no permission from parents required for younger victims.
Total
today – 144km, 1100m climbing
Total
so far 508km.
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