For sure, living out on the sticks can suck. But there are days that just seem to compensate entirely for this - like the fact I have the Pentland Hills directly between House and Work.
Back on Wednesday, the ground was frozen, not muddy and very grippy so I decided to at least get some off roading in. Biked all the way up past Castlelaw to the top of the hills, and down the other side.
I decided to do a particularly sketchy trail, one of my most favorite bits in the Pentland Hills. Its basically less than 6″ wide slightly off-camber sheep track for a Km or two, then gets very pant-fillingly-steep before a 90 degree downhill corner where it starts to flatten out.
Bottled the corner by unclipping as I thought I was going to crash, but it was all good due to the cold weather giving me additional grip.
Now if I lived in Edinburgh doing this sort of thing before work just wouldn’t be possible.