Bicycle theft

On Saturday morning we went to the garage to install new front pannier rack to my bike. When the elevator door opened I saw right away that Dóra's bike was missing. It became painfully obvious that her bike was stolen. She took it quite badly and I was not happy either. After searching around we reported the theft to the police.

But we were not about to give up our plan to do the trip. On the same day we found a decent second hand bike with reasonable price. Luckily Dóra's bike did not have lights or pannier rack attached so we did not lose them. Unfortunately I had just put brand new Schwalbe Marathon tyres to her bike.

On Sunday we then made a 30km ride just to get used to the new bike and find the right adjustments. The new bike turned out to be quite nice after couple tweaks. We cycled to Craigie's farm and deli where we had some chocolade cake with ice cream. We even managed to get some sunshine on the way back along the Edinburgh Promenade. Life started to feel better again.

Yet another preparation ride

Today we did a bit longer bike ride. We wanted to check some new paths and look how the cycle path continue after Cramond harbour. Cycle paths near our flat were pretty busy as there was some kind of theme day going on. When we reached the harbour we spotted a nice footpath next to the river. Initially it looked good for bikes but we encountered several sets of stairs. Oh well, some bike carrying exercise then.

After tackling the path and stairs we headed towards Dalmeny estate and we biked through it towards South Queensferry. I think we originally wanted to go back to Crammond harbor but there wasn't really suitable path - dashing through someone's backyard did not sound like a good idea. The route was scenic and involved biking along the beach side next to a golf course.

At South Queensferry we had a pub lunch without beer and headed back along the cyclepath 76 or 1, I am not totally sure which one it was. When we got closer to Leith we made yet another turn and biked rest of the way back along the coastline between Crammond and Leith. This time the wind was blowing in our face but we have to take it as a preparation for Hebrides environment.

The total distance was around 44km with many stops. The route on the map is based on my mobile phone's GPS tracking application.


View Leith-South Queensferry-Leith in a larger map

Shopping spree

For the preparations we have a shared Google Documents file with list of items we want to have with us. It is much longer than the one on this page! I have ordered several items online and bought some from the local store for the bicycling trip. I think most of them are necessary but I hope I wont have to use some of them.

Preparations update

We have now booked train tickets with bicycle reservations. The routes are Edinburgh-Oban and Inverness-Edinburgh. The Ullapool-Inverness will be done by bus.

Physical preparation has been going on as well. We have made a test trip of 15km with loaded panniers and we did not encounter any serious issues. So, things look good but there are still plenty to do.

Preparing bikes

Our bikes are pretty normal mountain bikes and we have used them for shopping trips and reasonably short trips, around 10 miles. But doing biking for several days with all the camping gear requires some preparations for the bikes.