Biggar.Western Pentlands Bike Run.

I've got a slight backlog of trips at the moment as I never posted a few from the summer when I was putting up multi day long weekends first.
Biggar, seen above is one of my favourite small towns. There's a lot more to it than you think with lovely walks and  a collection of moderately priced museums. This is the old bridge on the west side of town. The type of  urban landscape rural English villages have in abundance but Its as scare as chocolate fireguards up in these parts. No village pond but you could sneak Biggar into Kent, the Cotswolds or Dorset and it wouldn't look out of place.

All around are the shapely hills of the southern uplands at their finest with Goseland Hill and White hill on one side, Tinto and Dungavel Hill to the west and the back of the lesser known and emptier Pentland Hills to the east.
It was this that attracted me as I hadn't cycled the minor yellow roads to the north of Biggar for over ten years but I remembered them as being special and unique .

OS Map 72. Upper Clyde Valley.    Just follow the yellow brick road.
As you can see here its a network of quiet highways that takes you into some superb cycling country with huge skies  and flat plains one minute, mountains the next.

My route left Biggar travelling North past Elsrickle and Walston then round by Dunsyre under the Black Mount, circling the South Medwin valley before skirting the unfrequented western slopes of the Pentlands.

Really enjoyable touring with great landscapes and few cars. Fairly flat as well with any hills being smooth and not too brutal. This is Black Mount above. Around twenty five miles or so in distance but I wasn't in any hurry, just taking it easy,  enjoying the views.
It was a warm lazy hazy day in October. Frost in the mornings high up but hot sunny afternoons in the valleys.

The autumn butterflies were out in force, aware their short fast life's would soon be over.
It felt like a lush fertile garden of Eden and there have been precious few outings I 've had those feelings this year with all the rain and chilly conditions summer long.
A great year for slugs and snails...not so terrific for everything else.

At Newbigging those wanting a longer bike tour can include the minor roads out to Auchengray, Forth and Carstairs but as I'd already done that section earlier in the summer(Wilsontown Post) I went back via Libberton, Quothquan  and West Lindsaylands.

Amazing what you find on your travels. In places this area  could be taken for the prairie and the animals roaming it are equally exotic. This is a Rhea, a South American bird.

It had company to make it feel at home.

Donkeys.

Free grazing cattle.(Well, almost.) Just like being on the open range with a bike.

I just got back in time for a tour of the gas works before they shut for the night. Due to funny opening hours, 2pm to 4pm I think, Its the one museum in Biggar left I hadn't been into yet. Another ambition realised. Very interesting.

As the towns proverb proudly and cheekily says. London's London but Biggar's Biggar.

A blast of modern blues now by a young man with an old soul. Cracking band playing up a storm.