Paul Kirkwood : Scotland Magazine

Hunting grounds

Paul Kirkwood sets out on two wheels to explore the villages on Scotland’s east coast

Arbroath and Montrose. I must have heard the names hundreds of times in that Saturday tea-time litany of the football results. But what are these towns like? When I spotted that they were linked by the National Cycle Network I had the perfect means of finding out. I began at Gayfield, home of Arbro...

Scottish Cycling from Issue 31 published on 16/02/2007

Hedging in the borders

Paul Kirkwood tries two contrasting bike rides in the south of Scotland

I was in the Borders with a bicycle and a day to spare but I couldn’t make up my mind which route to take. Should I do what I usually do and go for a gentle on-road tour of the countryside, or be a bit different and try mountain-biking for the first time? After all, I was just a few miles away from ...

Scottish Cycling from Issue 30 published on 01/12/2006

The pedalling pilgrim

Paul Kirkwood traces the origins of the bicycle in Dumfriesshire

The principal defies logic but is the basis of my favourite invention: it’s easier to balance on two wheels if you’re moving along than it is standing still. I no more believed it to be so when I was being pushed around the garden on my first bike by my father than my children believe me now when I’...

Scottish Cycling from Issue 29 published on 25/10/2006

Station to station

Paul Kirkwood concludes his two-day bike ride around Perthshire by pedalling from the wilds of Rannoch Moor all the way back to Pitlochry

It was nine o’clock on a Sunday night and I couldn’t work out why my fellow guests were checking out of our remote hotel. Like them, I’d just had dinner and my thoughts were turning to bed. That, as it happens, was where they were bound – on the sleeper train that remarkably connects Rannoch Statio...

Scottish Cycling from Issue 28 published on 20/09/2006

Take the low road

In the first instalment of a two-part feature, Paul Kirkwood pedals his way across Perthshire

As Kathmandu is to Nepal so Pitlochry is to Perthshire. For yak hair read tweed. Both towns are multi-national base camps for expeditions and mine was to take me 40 miles due west by bike to the fringe of Rannoch Moor, one of Britain’s last great wildernesses. My route followed the southern shores ...

Scottish Cycling from Issue 27 published on 09/06/2006

Town and country

In a new series of cycle rides for Scotland Magazine Paul Kirkwood will go mountain biking in the Borders, pedal around lochs in Perthshire and cycle to the smithy where the bicycle was born. He starts in the capital

You don’t need me to tell you about the appeal of the centre of Edinburgh. But what about the suburbs? Running through them to the southwest and out into the countryside is a cycle route along a canal, river and railway trackbed which provides an ideal introduction to another side of the city, as I ...