THAT bottle

The last time I went round this route it was a bit windier, making the "this has to be taking the piss" moments of some of the less tarmacky bits of NCN76 one of the more enjoyable aspects. It's quite fun doing it in a crowd of people, especially when you get to the taking-the-piss bits which highlight the fact that different types of bicycles merely highlight the optimal usage of a particular style and do not prevent anyone from doing anything. The over-the-grass-through-the-woods bit on the Hopetoun estate has a very just-like-trundling-through-the-woodland-paths-as-a-youngster feel to it, though it annoyed me the last time as half of it was shut, forcing a detour through the traffic leaving a horse show which jammed up the road a bit. The entire path through the estate and past the house was open this time, enabling the house to be used as a backdrop to the multihubshot of which there are three clear instances of all the bikes being up in the air at the same time, the best one being the one which unfortunately ended with TFP almost clouting himself in the back of the head with his chainrings.

After a couple of small behaviour issues there was no way I was going to make the viaduct over the WoL at Coates to meet JS and EcoDad, so I just went along (the extraordinarily quiet) Ferry Road in order to be able to go slightly faster than I like to go along the parallel path. I assumed when I joined the path at Drylaw that I'd perhaps catch them up on the uphill bit towards Dalmeny and was therefore surprisedly pleased when the two shadowy figures joining the path at the bottom of some steps in Blackhall turned out to be them, having seemingly left the path at Craigleith rather than just take the left fork and trundle all the way through to nether Barnton.
After being collected by TFP after leaving the bridge we were passed by Joe and Scobes in their cars just before we turned off onto the upsy-downy-swerveybackwaypath so that Eco could wear his jobbie-suit for the last wee stretch without terrifying/confusing too many vehicle drivers.
The route on the far side included much of the bits I did back in July but omitted a couple of the horribly-rutted sections in favour of sensibly-surfaced roads, so I'll have to inspect one of the route traces and compare it to the signposted route I previously took.