Border Reiver Servicing

Taking your bike for a service needn't be a chore - make a full day of it and see the sights!

- Willie Davidson

My Triumph Tiger 900 needed its annual service, so I booked into a dealership in Carlisle. Using the A74(M), Carlisle is about 75 miles and an hour's ride from home. However, there's no fun to be had on a motorway, so I decided to revisit some of the roads I used to ride back in the mid-70s when I started biking. My current home is in Lanark in the Scottish central belt, and I decided to follow a mixture of A roads, B roads and some unclassified single-track roads. The route, through the Scottish Borders, is 185 miles long and takes about five to six hours to ride.

My journey starts at New Lanark, a model village built around an 18th Century water-powered cotton mill, intended to be a worker's utopia and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. It also has a café, restaurant, bar, sports complex, a unique hotel and Youth Hostel.

I take the A73 out of town, then follow signs to Biggar for 12 miles of smooth, sweeping road. Biggar is a lovely wee town and has an amazing piece of Victorian steampunk engineering. For over 130 years, the Biggar Gas Light Company provided coal gas to the town. Similar 'Town Gas' plants were in every town in the land, but this is the last survivor. Biggar Gasworks is now a museum and well worth a visit.

Leaving Biggar on the B7016, turn right at Broughton on to the A701 south. These are the roads I first visited on my two-stroke, air-cooled, Yamaha RD250. Riding the A701 today is just as glorious as it was in 1977 (but less smoky).