Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 29 on 25/10/2006.

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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’m the one providing reassurance amidst the wobbling.

Since those days I’ve learned to love the bike.

I’ve cycled to schools, colleges and jobs and on expeditions to all corners of the British Isles. Now I was cycling to the place where it all began. I suppose you could call it a pilgrimage of sorts – to the home in Dumfriesshire of Kirkpatrick Macmillan, the man that invented the pedalpowered bicycle in 1840.

I began in Dumfries by cycling from the station towards the River Nith via Shakespeare Street.

For a town so strongly associated with Robert Burns and close to the border such a street name seems magnanimous to the English to say the least.

I was bound for the start of the Kirkpatrick Macmillan Trail. The route initially weaves its way along traffic-free cycle paths beside the river, over the main roads and through suburbia then, suddenly, you’re among the rolling hills.

My previous ride was in Perthshire at Easter when everything was brown and wild. In contrast, Dumfriesshire in late spring was gentle and bushy green. The landscape looks like Wales and often sounds like England (many of the locals are from round the corner in Cumbria) but is, of course, a corner of Scot.....

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By Paul Kirkwood

Section : Scottish Cycling

Page number : 58