RAD Tour

RadTour: The Seven Castles of West Lothian Reliability Trial
Ever noticed how many castles you pass on the County’s best back roads? Well, starting from Linlithgow, the Tour will join the dots, passing seven of them. Click the route map below for more details.

The club’s season opener, our spring reliability trial or Rad Tour, is usually held in March. This is a good event for those newer to group riding, looking to push themselves, with the distance and elevation posing a good challenge.

What is a Reliability Trial?
A Reliability trail is a non competitive event, effectively a formal club run, open to all comers and can provide an excellent introduction to cycling. No Reliability Ride shall be promoted which requires the participants to maintain an average riding speed of more than 18 m.p.h. ‘Average riding speed’ means the average speed when actually riding.

When is it?
The 2023 edition will be hosted on the 27th May.

What’s the format?
Riders will be grouped according to their expected average pace. There are 3 pace categories so you need to decide which one you want to join:

 12mph: expected time 6hrs 10 mins (includes 45 mins for breaks). Start time: 9:30am. Target finish time: 3:40pm

15mph: expected time 5hrs 05 mins (includes 45 mins for breaks). Start time: 9:35am. Target finish time: 2:40pm

18mph: expected time 4hrs 25 mins (includes 45 mins for breaks). Start time: 9:40am. Target finish time: 2:05pm

Where to stay
If you are travelling far, Linlithgow is a great place to stay. There is a wide variety of accommodation from pubs, hotels, B&Bs, camp sites and caravan parks

Click for list of where to stay

Groups
Groups/categories will be set off together, though they may be broken into subgroups if necessary for the management of the event.

This is not a race. The aim of the event is to complete the route at a steady pace and as close to the chosen target time as possible; times will not be published. However, you should not take risks to ‘make a time’. All riders must ensure that they have a full understanding of group riding technique. 

It is not expected that the all groups that set off will stay together and there are certainly no ‘group leaders’. We would, however, encourage groups to stay together for support and we would encourage all riders, especially the stronger ones within each time class, to work to encourage the cohesion of their groups where possible. Please be patient when getting through the slightly stop/start section at Hopetoun – your 45 mins of breaks include some consideration for this section so please wait for your group to get back together. Many thanks!

---