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BEECRAIGS AND CAIRNPAPPLE HILL

Distance: 16.5 km (10.3 miles).

Map: OS Landranger, sheet 65.

Start and finish: Linlithgow Loch car park.

Terrain: Basic route entirely tarmac. Mountain bike required for the ATB Trail, Beecraigs Country Park, which is a mixture of forest roads and technical single track.

Refreshments: Wide range of facilities in Linlithgow. Restaurant at Beecraigs Country Park.

For those not familiar with the Linlithgow area of West Lothian this route will be a total surprise, a tough but staggeringly beautiful ride. Even by Lothian's standards this is a hilly, nay near mountainous tour, but the rewards are enormous. Do not be afraid to walk up the hills: there are views and changes galore. Take your time: do not miss anything. The route has been designed with several options to shorten if the going gets too tough, but persevere, it will only take 10 minutes to get back down into Linlithgow.

Start from the car park by Linlithgow Loch, accessed via Water Yett off the main street. If you can remember to take something for the wildfowl the treat will be even greater. Feeding the birds will get you closer to species one normally only sees flying high overhead; the array is truly staggering, particularly in winter. In fact cycling could well be abandoned for the day and substituted by a walk around the loch; you could learn more about our native wildfowl in an afternoon here than years of study elsewhere. The official information board lists the Common Sandpiper, Coot, Cormorant, Great Crested Grebe, Little Grebe, Mallard, Moorhen, Mute Swan, Pochard, Reed Bunting, Sedge Warbler, Snipe and Tufted Duck as regulars, with house martins, swallows and swifts as summer visitors and water voles as resident mammals. However, in winter there are always the jackdaws, black-headed gulls, kittiwakes and often the little pink-footed geese. An impressive list.

The traditional Scottish view is that the Swan, by nature, is a royal creature, none more so than the Linlithgow swans. Apparently they flew away the day Cromwell's Roundheads arrived at Linlithgow Palace and stayed away until the very day Charles II was crowned at Scone. Furthermore, two English birds, which may reasonably be supposed to have other sympathies before travelling north, refused to settle!

On leaving the loch turn right onto the main street then first left into New Well Wynd, which will take you up the first hill to Union Road. Turn right again then left under the railway into Royal Terrace and past the grand houses with elevated views over Linlithgow.

The first major surprise comes when you bear right up Manse Road then right again over a bridge. You actually cross the Union Canal having climbed a considerable height; the magnificence of the waterway engineering is brought home quite forcibly.

Eventually you will reach the junction for the camp site and Beecraigs. Turn right, but it is uphill again! Although the route from here is far from level, by the time you reach the junction above the Visitor Centre the back is broken. It has been a desperate 4.5 km but well worth it.

Beecraigs Country Park is a fantastic development making so much of the countryside readily available for all to see. It is hard to say who will be most impressed: parents or children. There are red deer at the farm and roe deer wild in the forest. You can see the life cycle of trout at the trout farm or partake in a number of outdoor activities. But today we are cyclists. The Visitor Centre is well worth a visit to familiarise yourself with what is available, but especially so if you would like to enjoy the 7 km ATB Trail, which is sited in the south-west of the Park. Collect an instruction leaflet from the Visitor Centre, which will guide you across to Balvormie car park where the ATB Trail commences. There are areas of the Park that are off limits to cyclists, please respect this.

You can of course ride the rest of this route, then do the ATB Trail on the return leg because you pass Balvormie car park, but you'll need a mountain bike, it is a proper off-road course.

Continue downhill from the Visitor Centre past the main car park and entrance to the trout farm, then it is uphill again through an impressive stand of spruce, the road being quite dark at any time. Eventually you clear the trees, crest the hill and there is the relief of freewheeling through open rolling countryside, but it is not quite perfect. Pray for a west wind as you pass North Mains, otherwise the pong off the slurry tank will urge you to a great escape effort!

Follow the signpost west towards Bathgate at South Mains, then straight on past the Balvormie road to Cairnpapple Hill, which is well marked by the transmission mast. This final climb is verging on the apline with Armco barriers fringing the road. But as you might expect for such an effort, the views are fantastic. It might be worth the extra effort of carrying your bike up the steps and tethering it to a fencepost where you can admire the view, because the temptation to loiter on the summit will be great. Even in winter it is a great place for lunch, if it is not too windy.

Cairnpapple is a monument of national importance. It was the site of a primitive temple as long ago as 2500-2000 BC, and it is thought that the large holes which are arranged in an irregular arc may have been sockets for ritual cremations. Fragments of human bone and a food vessel have been found, but it is thought that by the Early Bronze Age, 1650-1500 BC, the interest shifted to the funerary aspect, and later graves tend to confirm this.

On a clear day the view is fantastic. The flame stacks of Grangemouth are near neighbours; the Forth Bridges seem quite close; and you can see all the way from the Isle of Arran in the west to the Bass Rock in the east with several Highland giants in between. This is a place to loiter.

Retrace to the Balvormie turn, even diving through the short cut if you've got knobbly tyres, then down an avenue fringed with deciduous beeches, which provide an interesting contrast to the mass of conifers, and back towards Linlithgow in a reasonably straight line. The mariners among you will be interested to pass the Racal Systems site as you enter the town, then it really is downhill all the way to the Black Bitch junction, and around to the car park. Not an easy day, but one of the best.