This was interesting; with deep fresh snow bikers struggled both with the up and the descent – runners too. Some impromptu tobogganing on the drop down to Bonaly where we built a snowman, quickly christened ‘The Newest Carnethy Member’

At this point further runners peeled off after a long day, and the final three – Andy, Digby, Richard, with our two good bikers Nick and Keith, struggled to get moving again. The bikers headed off at speed on a good surface (for a few km only) while the foot-shod, feeling the distance, followed gamely.

So to Joppa and through Newhailes; under the bypass and over to pick up the old railway line. Big changes here, but it looks like the Council (perhaps at SusTrans prompting, and a wee bit from us) are converting the rail line into a proper running/cycling track. Most encouraging – we will enquire. Then into The Wasteland; no gypsies this year (though plenty of evidence), but emerging safely and crossing the sanctuary of Drum Estate we got onto the old railway line again near the Lasswade Road – where we were once again above the snowline.

But what a change! Instead of an Amazonian Forest of brambles, weeds, fallen branches, shoulder-high vegetation, with the old railway sleepers making for an interesting up-down binary-wave run, the whole thing has been cleared and hardcore put down, this must be going to be a trailway. Great. If the Director of Long-Distance Trails should read this, this development is brilliant – though please don’t tarmac the whole thing – we need wide grassy verges, knee damage on tarmac is horrid. Then we followed the track of a bike in the snow all the way up to Straiton. Holmes & Watson (aka Digby & Andy) whiling away the painful miles deducing it to be Keith's, which indeed it was. A pioneer of the nascent cycle path.But where had Nick gone?

Digby and Andy shot off (in a slow sort of way) following the usual route up to Fairmilehead over rugged & snowy ploughed fields, while Richard elected for the ‘Bad Route’ – the straight line from Straiton to the Steading (the name comes from some reccying with Michael O’C – this is a ‘bad route’ he said). The name has stuck. And it is, knee-deep mud at points, but found a sheep caught irretrievably in brambles and couldn’t shift it (reported to the locals later on so hopefully freed in good time). Meanwhile, the bikers had taken a few tarmac options to get back by dark (Nick peeling off for Gilmerton – but then he’d cycled to the Steading, so gets the all-way-round trophy).