Lost Lanes Scotland

Publishes 1st May 2026 – order now for shipping in late April

By Jack Thurston

JACK THURSTON takes you on a tour of the lost lanes and forgotten byways of Scotland, from the dramatic coastlines and mountain vistas of the Highlands to the blissfully quiet rural lanes of Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders.
LOST LANES SCOTLAND combines engaging travel writing with stunning photography. It will inspire everyone, from experienced cyclists to those just getting started on two wheels. In 40 rides, from gentle spins to multi-day adventures, explore Scotland on its quietest and most beautiful lanes and gravel tracks.

Lost Lanes SCOTLAND takes you on a freewheeling tour of the most beautiful landscapes in Scotland:
• Route overviews and maps
• Best pubs and cafés
• Overnight stops, from B&Bs to bothies and wild camps
• Wild swims, breathtaking views and engaging history
• How to access the rides by train and bus
Get ready for unforgettable journeys exploring Scotland’s coast, lochs, glens and mountains. Stop at historic castles and country houses, mysterious ruins and welcoming inns, all on that humble yet extraordinary transport of delights, the bicycle.

JACK THURSTON has spent his life exploring the British countryside by bike. He co-presented the Slow Cycling series of feature documentaries for GCN+, part of the Global Cycling Network. As the longtime presenter of The Bike Show podcast, his affable, infectious love of cycling attracted an enthusiastic worldwide audience. His award-winning Lost Lanes series has redefined the cycling guidebook and now covers the whole of Britain in six volumes (Scotland, Wales, North, Central, West & Southern England).

 

 

To see a country best, travel its byways. Away from Scotland’s main roads is a network of lanes and tracks that twist and turn through the folds of the landscape. These are roads with stories to tell: ancient routes trodden by pilgrims; thieves’ roads where thousands of black cattle were spirited away; Wade roads built for marching soldiers; coffin roads leading to distant burial grounds; whisky roads where smugglers hid from the excise man. On a bicycle you notice the clues. The weathered milestone half-hidden in bracken. The bridge that’s just wide enough for a train of packhorses. This is time travel at a human pace.

Scotland’s lost lanes come in a few discernible types. The loch road traces the shoreline for mile after mile, the water a constant companion, still as a mirror one day, dark and choppy the next. The glen road follows a stream deep into the hills, usually ending at a farm gate beyond which a 4×4 track invites you to ride further. The coast-hugger clings to the shoreline, rising and falling around headlands, offering endless views to islands and sea stacks, the tang of salt and seaweed in the air. The drovers’ road sometimes takes the most direct route but is often a wilder, lonelier path, away from the places where tolls were charged. The estate road, a Victorian creation, was built for shooting parties to reach remote sporting lodges but, thanks to Scotland’s ‘right to roam’, is now open to anyone on foot or bike.

Science has proven that a human on a bicycle is the most energy-efficient form of travel yet invented. More efficient than walking, running, swimming or any vehicle. As you’d expect of a machine so beautifully efficient, a bicycle is nimble and noiseless. You can hear the world around you. You can stop whenever and wherever you want. There’s no hunt for parking. In Scotland bikes are welcome almost everywhere – because cycling is a gentle way to travel. But ease and efficiency don’t fully explain the bicycle’s appeal. It’s when rider and bicycle are working together that cycling really sings. After wrestling your bike up a climb, you flow as one on the descent, feeling the sway as you lean through the corners. Your quickened pulse heightens the senses. Everything around you has greater intensity: the wind in your hair, the sun on your back, the first spots of rain, the shadows and the light. You don’t just see the landscape, you feel it in your legs and lungs. You travel fast enough to cover serious distances but slow enough to notice everything: the sudden sweetness of gorse blossom on a coastal road, the way light moves across a hillside, the carpet of bluebells in an old hazel coppice.

There are parts of Scotland remote enough and wild enough that you can lose yourself. I don’t mean geographically (though that’s quite possible too), but psychologically. Big skies. Distant horizons. Empty roads. In this vastness, mundane concerns fade into the background. The mental to-do list of everyday life dissolves. You are free to ride away from that restless, hyperactive mind. Your awareness is centred on the fundamentals of the moment: effort and reward, landscape and weather, the primitive pleasure of moving through space under your own power. It’s a form of meditation – mindfulness in motion.

Scotland’s lanes and byways offer almost unlimited possibilities for exploration. This book doesn’t attempt a comprehensive inventory – to do so would fill several volumes and a lifetime of research – but instead showcases my selection from across the country. Each ride is complete as written, but also invites adaptation and improvisation. Make a detour. Add an extra loop. Split a long route into two shorter days, or combine a few routes into a week away. Make them your own. Follow your own instincts as you ride, and you’ll discover things I’ve missed. You’ll find your own perfect viewpoints, your own favourite cafés, your own secret swimming spots. All this is good. The point isn’t to tick off rides from a list but to use them as a starting point for your own discoveries.

Day by day, mile by mile, you’ll amass your own collection of lost lanes. You’ll remember them not as words on a page or lines on a map but through your own experiences: the time the rain cleared and shafts of sunlight lit up the valley below, the bakery where a hot pie brought you back from the bonk, the time you wild camped and watched the stars come out. These are the gifts of travelling at the speed of the land, of choosing to see Scotland by bike. And at the end of the journey, whether it’s a day or a week, you take something of that elemental way of being back with you, an intensity of experience that stays with you long after you’ve cleaned the mud from your bike and returned to ‘real life’.

Jack Thurston, January 2026