I’m riding a legendary route – Dumfries to Glasgow. It was the ‘world’s first long-distance bike ride’, by Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan, ‘inventor of the bicycle [in 1842]’.
Except… he never rode the route. And his bicycle probably never existed. But facts shouldn’t get in the way of a good story – ask any anti-cycling newspaper columnist.
Macmillan (1812–1878) features in many a 20th-century history of bicycles as a pedalling equivalent of phone trailblazer Alexander Graham Bell or TV pioneer John Logie Baird.
However, unlike those two other Scots, most statements about Macmillan’s inventions are largely false.
The story goes that circa 1839, Macmillan made a treadle (foot-lever)-powered, steerable, two-wheeled velocipede at his smithy in rural Dumfriesshire – the world’s first pedal bike.
He rode it regularly to Dumfries, and at one point made the 70-mile journey to Glasgow over two days, which ended ignominiously when he was arrested for hitting a pedestrian in the Gorbals.
The trouble is, it’s all hearsay, family folklore and conjecture. There’s no primary evidence. Not a Lorne sausage. No written records, no patents, no surviving machines.
According to design-history academic Nicholas Oddy, Macmillan probably did experiment with treadle-driven tricycles, like several of his contemporaries.
The bicycle tales we read come from a claim without evidence by his nephew in a letter to a newspaper 50 years later, with subsequent embellishments, additions and wishful thinking.
It’s like me claiming that my Uncle Frank invented the mobile phone, or my great-grandad Robertson discovered jam (spoiler: they didn’t).
It’s understandable people want to sustain the Macmillan legend. Local hero beats the world – another pioneering Scottish innovation, like the steam engine, penicillin or fried Mars bars.
So, when a new Scottish coast-to-coast bike route opened in 2023, they named it after Macmillan. He also has a namesake 11-mile trail in his home village of Keir Mill.
And celebratory replicas of Macmillan’s supposed bicycle litter Dumfries and Galloway like abandoned hire bikes.
People have reconstructed Macmillan’s putative machine, based on surviving contraptions by his contemporaries Thomas McCall and Gavin Dalzell (whose 1845 treadle bike is in a Glasgow museum).
But they’ve proved impossible to steer and terrible to ride. Too hard for a few miles of flat, smooth tarmac, never mind 70 over rough, hilly tracks.
Nevertheless, Dumfries to Glasgow – on a bike with gears, brakes and pneumatic tyres (thanks to the genuine invention by Scot John Boyd Dunlop) – is a grand ride.
There’s lots to see, including Scotland’s highest village/pub, a goldrush stream, a bike-only road up to a 730m summit with a giant golf ball, and a Wellington statue with a traffic cone on his head.
Dummy bikes in Dumfries
Having decided to recreate the mythical ride, I start in Dumfries, a friendly and easy-going town. There are various replicas of ‘Macmillan bikes’. The first I spot is in Loreburne Shopping Centre in town, above the car park payment machine.
The next is in Dumfries Museum, part of their bike display upstairs.
A third sort-of replica is an iron artwork guarding the entrance to Dumfries’ Maxwelltown Path rail trail. I can’t resist sitting on it, and find it’s uncomfortable, unsteerable and immobile – just like the real thing would’ve been.
On the path, soon after the River Nith viaduct, is a silhouette-sculpture of Macmillan himself, proudly astride the imaginary machine.
The plaque here is full-on Macmillan fable: ‘… He invented the first self-propelled bicycle… It was heavy and slow, but he enjoyed riding it and in 1845 [sic] made the 68-mile trip to Glasgow in just two days!’.
Keir Mill is the village where Macmillan had his smithy, called Courthill. There’s not much here – a church, a few houses – but he is commemorated.
On Courthill itself, now a private house, at the north of the village, are two plaques and an information board conforming to the usual myths (on his phantom Glasgow trip, ‘… He is reputed to have beaten the mail coach at about eight miles per hour!’).
Macmillan’s grave – well, family headstone – is also in Keir Mill. Not in the churchyard, but the old burial ground to the east, down a signed footpath. It’s an overgrown jumble of stonework, with Macmillan’s family plot at the bottom, marked by a plaque.
Life was tough in the 19th century – in 1865, Macmillan lost his wife, a baby and his 10-year-old son. The man himself (‘inventor of the bicycle’, the stone says) died aged 65, forgotten until his posthumous ‘rediscovery’.
If Macmillan had ridden from Dumfries to Glasgow in 1842, he’d surely have gone west, along what’s now the A76. Not a particularly pleasant ride then, but even less so nowadays.
So, seeing as it’s all fantasy anyway, I’m going the much more enjoyable way – east. Mennock Pass; Wanlockhead, Scotland’s highest village and gold-panning hub; the Lowther Hills, Scotland’s highest cyclable road; and NCN74 up to Glasgow, one of Britain’s longest car-free cycle paths.
Mythy smithy
I have one more ‘Macmillan bike’ to ‘collect’. For a time, he worked as a smithy at Drumlanrig Castle, a couple of miles north of Keir Mill. The magnificent 17th-century pile and its sculpted grounds will be familiar to watchers of Outlander.
Macmillan would have worked in the castle’s courtyard, now home to artisan boutiques and workshops. On proud display in the reception area is his velocipede.
The plaque claims it as the ‘first pedal bicycle’, which I’d dispute. But I’d agree wholeheartedly with its conclusion – ‘Dumfries and Galloway is fast becoming one of the most cycle-friendly regions in Scotland. The bicycle has made the world a happier place to live.’
I follow the estate road and then country lanes north from Drumlanrig through woodland. All nicely timeless – Macmillan would have felt at home. Except perhaps for the giant golf ball atop a monster tee at the top of Lowther Hill in the distance (golf was centuries old in 1842, but tees didn’t appear until the 1890s). The spooky object is a radar station for air-traffic control body NATS, helping planes to find Glasgow, and I’m heading up there, right to it.
From Mennock, I wind my way up the thrilling and scenic pass through imposing green hills to Scotland’s highest village.
Sitting at 467m (1,532ft), Wanlockhead is known for its gold-panning opportunities, and has a lead mine with tunnels you can visit. In return for buying a postcard, the friendly lady there is happy for me to stow my camping stuff and panniers while I cycle up Lowther Hill.
Hill to not die on
The road up to Lowther Hill is closed to motor traffic but you can cycle it, right up to its twin summits of 725m (2,379ft) and 732m (2,402ft). It’s a Scottish counterpart to England’s (much higher) Great Dun Fell.
The highest motorable road in Scotland is the Grampians’ Cairnwell Pass, at a paltry 668m (2,036ft).
It’s gloriously sunny for my beautiful climb to the first summit’s jumbo sci-fi golf ball. What if it were a golf ball? Assuming it’s 5m in diameter – about 1,200 times bigger than a normal 42.7mm golf ball – then a typical 320m par-4 hole would be around 380km, putting the hole somewhere around Stratford-upon-Avon.
If you had a 1.4km-long club, then a decent amateur 200m-plus drive would go 250km. That’s about as far as Chester, assuming you didn’t land in the water hazard of the Mersey or Dee estuaries.
I sidle across to Green Lowther for its slightly higher second summit, with comms tower, trig point and even vaster panoramas. Then it’s a joyful – if brake-intensive – hurtle back down to Wanlockhead and on to Leadhills.
Now, it’s downhill almost all the way to Glasgow, on one of Britain’s longest car-free cycle paths, NCN74. This uses half of the old A74. Thanks to the sun and tailwind, I enjoy the open, austere moortops.
Bonnie and Clyde
I’m pleased to see a new, wide cycle path being built as I get closer to Glasgow, and the picnic area set aside to give LEJOGers a break (Land’s End to John o’Groaters often come this way).
Less pleasing is the fact that cyclists have to give way to any and every cross-path, even a residential drive or clump of grass. The Dutch would laugh their clogs off.
As Glasgow’s prosaic satellite towns coalesce into suburbs, the cycling is all a bit functional. I snaffle a coffee and cake at Larkhall. For the last 10 miles, I’m on the pleasant Clyde Path, along the riverside right into the centre of Glasgow.
It’s flat, smooth-ish, and progress is brisk. There’s not too much in the way of photo opportunities, but not too much in the way, either. I go through a park amid joggers and dog-walkers, and cross an old pedestrian/bike suspension bridge for my journey’s end.
The Gorbals, once a byword for urban deprivation and slums, is now a redeveloping area battling its way back up. Macmillan’s fabled pedestrian-bothering incident was here, and he was fined five shillings.
Historians reckon that’s nonsense (newspaper reports give no name or bike description), but I’m still trying not to emulate him.
I make for the railway station, passing one of my favourite British monuments – a statue of the Duke of Wellington, on a horse, with a traffic cone on his head at a jaunty angle.
It’s a traditional prank that the council has long since stopped resisting, and is now part of the city’s artscape.
Before my departure, I toast Macmillan’s legend with a beer at the Wetherspoon pub outside Queen Street Station.
There’s another horseman statue here, also with a traffic cone. I wonder whether that statue of Macmillan on his ‘bike’ back in Dumfries has ever had similar headgear. Would that be vandalism, or recognition of legitimacy?
Kirkpatrick Macmillan may never have ridden Dumfries to Glasgow, but I did, and can recommend it. Just don’t do it on a treadle-powered, wooden-wheeled, unsteerable velocipede. Especially not an imaginary one.
Local knowledge
Distance: 160km
Elevation: 1,819m
Download the full route: Ride With GPS
Getting there: You can get the train to Dumfries and back again from Glasgow.
Where to stay: Drumlanrig Castle has fabulously situated apartments and cottages
(DG3 4AQ).
Where to eat: Enjoy hearty grub at Wanlockhead Inn, Scotland’s highest pub (ML12 6UZ).
Tourist Information: Head to Dumfries and Galloway Online.
Bike shops: The G&G Cycle Centre in Dumfries (DG1 1EX) and Billy Bilsland in Glasgow (G1 5LA) are both friendly, well-stocked city-centre shops.
Ride to Edinburgh: The towpaths along the Forth and Clyde canal, and then Union Canal, are good tarmac, flat and car-free for almost all the 60-mile route – an easy and pleasant ride from Glasgow.
Pub: Babbity Bowster in central Glasgow (G1 1PE) is a stylish whisky and real-ale pub with tabled patio for storing your bike.
