Verging On The Odd

You could not be an entitled prick and slow down to a safe speed for the situation, showing your much-self-vaunted-though-probably-imaginary courtesy, as you have so frequently told others they must do in such situations? Or you could ride on the road because, as you've also so frequently told us, Britain's roads are the envy of the world for their safety record and you ride with such courtesy that you never have any interactions with drivers apart from "cheery waves"?

"By the way, that photo in the article exemplifies why segregated shared use paths are an absolutely crap idea. Imagine I’m riding there, doing 20mph. Am I meant to use the path with people spewed haphazardly all over it? Or the road where drivers get upset by cyclists ignoring the expensive new infrastructure they’ve paid for? Lose lose." As someone who has used that section of road many times I would always stay on the road rather than use the cycle path, although not very wide it has many sections where it is easy for cars to overtake and in normal circumstances is not very busy. At that point in a ride I would still be over 50 miles from home so I wouldn't want to cruise down the shared path mixing with pedestrians. The shared path appears to be set up to allow tourists to feel comfortable doing cycling/walking loops from Drumlanrig castle and gardens rather than experienced cyclists going from A to B (and then maybe back to A)

@wtjs why isn’t there a removable bollard in place at either end? I'll answer my own question: because central deep steel socket - steel bollard - lock would be cheap and would work. Until the nutters move in with heavy machinery and knock them over, and the police would be too busy to do anything about it

I like the downward bit.

@AidanR if you've spent any amount of time watching your GPS device, on a ride, you'll know that overall average speed drops more quickly whilst climbing than it rises whilst descending - because, given a climb and a descent of equal lengths, more time is spent climbing. Sustained speed, over longer distances is where the bigger gains come.

Also your reminder that data show that "wider road" doesn't mean "more careful sharing" (or even "higher capacity"). What it *does* mean is *higher speed*. And possibly "less attentive/ careful drivers".

Reminds one of that line in The Blues Brothers when they asked the wife of the proprietor of Bob's Country Bunker what kind of music they usually played, "Oh we have both kinds, country and western." Your version of looking at it from both sides is first to look at it from a pro-car perspective, then to look at it from an anti-active-travel perspective.

@chrisonabike other end. There appear to be two access points, one would involve driving up a track, the other involves turning off the main road (not in the expected diversion direction) and presumably now has a similar entry (has an older streetview image though, before construction finished). As an explanation I'm definitely going with "well it says there should be a road here and it looks like I can...". Or just "sod it, not driving the long way, that's ridiculous".

@chrisonabike And easily confused with the road, that path...

Streetview safari - starting from (alas - outside) Penpont and heading east. Can't see why the path is needed - clearly ideal for sharing by all modes! 😉