Day 4 – Take the rough with the smooth
You can get some amazingly good deals with Premier Inns. I don’t know how they decide on pricing but the deal I got at Portlethen which lies about 7 miles south of Aberdeen City Centre was a cracker. Bed, breakfast and an evening meal for £73.99, certainly the cheapest night of this trip. My room was on the ground floor of a block situated away from Reception and the Brewer’s Fayre restaurant that served the meals, but only a short stroll across the car park. The hotel is beside the A92 but it’s well screened and I wasn’t at all disturbed by traffic. A five minute walk over the flyover is an ASDA store and I went and bought a bottle of wine – a very palatable Australian red blend from McGuigan – for blog inspiration, before I went across for food. The meal deal was a drink (I chose Belhaven) and either a starter and main course or a main course and pud, though you could have all 3 for an extra £2.99. I went for chicken wings in a bbq sauce, messy but tasty and haddock and chips with mushy peas. Now if you can’t get good haddock in this neck of the woods it’s a poor do, and it didn’t disappoint: tasty fish in good batter and well cooked chips and peas. Nothing I could fault.
I was able to use the fan to dry the clothes and they were ready by bed-time. Breakfast was the usual Premier Inns help yourself. No black pudding or haggis, which was disappointing, but good sausages and well cooked bacon. Scrambled eggs weren’t great.
I was away by about 0900 knowing that I had about 73 miles to travel. My planned route took me through some housing estates to keep me off the main road but when I looked at it, the road wasn’t busy and there was a rudimentary cycle track, so I hit the A92 for about 3 miles. Once off that I had a lovely ride along lanes until I reached Stonehaven.
There was a large group of middle aged cyclists coming the opposite way and I stopped to chat. They were on a trip doing 30-40 miles a day and a number of them were obviously feeling the pain.
A steepish climb out of Stonehaven on a tarmac cycleway Ied to more country lanes with gentle climbs until I once again came down to sea level at Inverbervie.
More excellent cycle track along the shore to Gourdon which was where the fun started. I realised that there was likely to be some pretty rough tracks because there is no Google street view of the route but, my word, it was rough, with large pebbles across the track.
I GOAPed more than once and made very slow progress until I got back on the A92 and made my way through Montrose which seems to cater for the large support vessels used in the North Sea oil and gas business, and crossed the river Esk, now about halfway into my journey.
More ups and downs on minor roads before I reached Arbroath, home of the eponymous Smokie.
There were a lot of pedestrians, and I dinged my bell a few times. It never ceases to amaze me that if there are two people walking side by side and I ding my bell they inevitably part and go to opposite sides of the way instead of both staying on the left.
From Arbroath I was on cycleways all the way to Dundee, not all tarmacked but all in good condition. 
I passed Carnoustie Golf Links with plenty of players on a sunny Saturday
and reached Broughty Ferry with its sinister looking castle guarding the Tay estuary.
I managed to miss some instructions from the navigators and went much further into Dundee on the coastal path than I had intended which entailed a bit of back-tracking to get back on course; but I eventually found my way to The Travelodge where I am staying, arriving just before 5pm.
