Gravity

Today I was reading a discussion about commuting routes, and in particular how hilly our terrain was.  Most seemed to be using Bikely for plotting journeys and calculating the changes in elevation, but since the site was either down or busy, I had a play with a speedy little site called BikeHike instead. Marvel at my mighty four mile ride to work.  That dip at about 0.6 miles ought to be good for 40mph if I really went for it, and 30mph can be held along the level on a fresh legged Monday morning.  Up to about the two mile mark I can sit at 30mph if the traffic is light, but there are rather too many places along the way where other vehicles might emerge so normally I'm feathering the brakes and in hyper-observation mode.  Total time: about 14 minutes, reducing to 12 minutes in exceptional conditions and up to 18 minutes in winter traffic jams.

But I greatly dislike this route when riding home again, for the Great Long Hill is a 9mph slog amongst eager homeward-bound motorists in silver Mercedes, black BMW X5s and red Ford Focuses (Foci?), so my preferred route is carefully designed to take in the delights of ornate 19th century flats and a relaxed wheel along refreshing tree-lined parkland.

 Apart from the early downhill run to 1.6 miles, where I would normally expect to hit 30mph and hold above 25mph, it's deceptively uphill. It has to be, of course, but the circuitous route allows a few opportunities to give my bike its head.  It's a 7.6 mile ride that is just long enough to get a workout and with plenty of diversion options if I'm feeling tired or adventurous.  I might, for example, ride right through the middle of the city, down past the Scottish Parliament and up around Arthur's Seat and out past the currently, and sadly, closed for refurbishment Royal Commonwealth Pool.  At the 5-and-a-bit mile mark the land drops down off a ridge, one of two marking the Colinton Fault that stretches from Torphin Hill by the southwest of the city, under the West End and all the way to Leith Docks and indeed into the Forth.  This section could be another speed test if only the tarmac was mended once and for all.  But I like this route enough that it's become my standard ride home.

On a slightly more grandiose scale, and just for fun, this is the elevation graph from one day of my all-too-short cycle tour in the summer of 2008:

That evil spike at about 27 miles might be remembered by intrepid cycle tourists as much for its gradient as its dank scenery.

"Halfway up the tarmacked cliff I came to a church, set a little back from the road, and I eased off the pedals ready to stop for a rest. My momentum carried me on ever so gently though, as I took in the mossy grey stone walls and the wooden gateway, stained brown and and green from years of damp, shaded exposure. The church was very small, its windows dark, and it looked as though it hadn't seen a service in thirty years. I wondered idly as I passed if nature might be reclaiming it gradually for herself? The organ perhaps home to families of Great Tits, nesting amongst a miniature New York skyline of square wooden pipes. The gas lights long gone, their supply bright with verdigris. The pews, surely carved two hundred years ago from deep brown oak, turning a pale green with mould, an occasional shelf of beige fungus hanging from one end. Perhaps it was because it was a Saturday and the lights weren't switched on."

It was the secondary spike at about 29 miles that nearly finished me off, marking the first and last time I tried a day's touring on a full Scottish breakfast!