Cairngorm Loop Ride Report

This ride was the last thing I wanted to tick off for the year after the 400 and 600km Audaxs and a decent performances (by my standards) at 10 under and GT7 – all of which were filed under the ‘might not get another chance for 20 years’ category.  Before we start, here’s a warning.  This is both long and boring.  If you can’t be bothered reading much, then here’s the ride in numbers:

0: Number of punctures

1: Number of riders

1: Number of randy trackpumps

1.30: Hours/minutes of dry feet

4: number of OS maps required

5: Number of repeats of Rough Trade Shops Indiepop 09

6: Number Pop-tarts eaten

15: KM of hike-a-bike

18.16: Hours/minutes riding time

24.01: Hours/minutes total ‘on bike’ time

289.3: Total km for weekend

4000: Number of midgie bites received in Glen Feshie

Anyway, my Cairngorm Loop weekend ride was massively popular with a total of two people (Tom and Luke – no surprises there) expressing any kind of interest but neither able to make it.

So I just went on my own.  Nevermind, two whole days of peace and quiet is something of a treat these days. (update 04/09: two days!? two minutes is a luxury now…)   The planned route followed this (more or less) http://www.cairngormsloop.net/map.html with a planned stop at a B&B in Aviemore. 101 miles on day one, 85 on day two.  An early start required meant I would travel up to Blair Atholl and Friday, sleep in the car, and ride off first thing on Saturday morning.

Episode 1: The Phantom Midges

I’ve never slept in my car and I know why I haven’t done it before.  It wasn’t very comfortable and I may also have had midges in the car.  I’m not sure though, I could have been imagining them crawling on my face.  Worse, my track pump, which had been making eyes at me for a while now, kept trying it on.  After a rubbish sleep, it was wakey wakey time. After my usual faff about it was a gentle spin up the cycle path beside the A9 before turning north at Dalnacardoch and heading towards Loch an Duin.  First wrong turn, and wet feet after 1.30 but some nice singletrack beside the loch.   Continuing north through the Gaick pass and into Glen Tromie along landrover track, everything is nice and easy.  Break at Feshie Bridge at 65km in 4.30.  Piece of piss.

 

The sun’s beating down now, the trails are dry and fast, and soon I’m round at Glenmore lodge on what’s a long draggy climb up towards the days high point of 800m.  All good so far, and I’m making good progress.  Feel quite pleased with myself.  Almost smug.

Things start going downhill once the uphill to Bsynack Plateau starts. First come the water bars and step ups which are fine  – the first two dozen or so at least – until the path becomes steeper and steeper, and the wind picks up.  A bit of walking is no problem.  Soon we’ll have some singletrack to ping down.  No doubt.

 

Maybe not.  They’ve got a huge vat of santiser and dumped it all over what used to be (remnants remain) rocky-pick-a-line trail.  So instead it’s loose gravel and crevasse width water bars.  Progress is slow – but worse is ahead.  Off and carrying/pushing through to the Fords of Avon Refuge is a chore.  Surely the next section to the top of Glen Derry won’t be so bad? It’s even worse.  Nothing can be ridden now, and I’m carrying the bike.  Man and machine are in perfect harmony – indistinguishable in fact – because the bike is riding me.  Stumbling through the rocks, I don’t feel so smug.  I’m now worried that there may be many, many more kilometers of this.  Will I make it back to Aviemore before dark?  Will I die? Was this a stupid idea?   14km had taken 2 hours and twenty minutes.  At the top of Glen Derry… lo and behold, sweet, sweet, sanitised trail.  Boring trail, with rubbish water bars, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

The descent to Derry Lodge through the glen is a real cracker.  On the way down a walker tells me that the National Trust, under the influence of Prince Charles, on taking ownership  of the land, replaced the land rover track of the lower section with a footpath with massive gaps with the express intention of stopping cyclists riding into the glen.  Sadly, for him,  he inadvertently created some great singletrack.  Riding faster-than-a-falling guillotine-blade down the, rooty, flowey lower section was mountain biking with a thoroughly enjoyable republican twist.  Thanks to Queen Elizabeth’s indefatigability, you’ll no be getting on the thrown, and I rode “your” trails with impunity.  Worse, your mum even has her own MTB clothing company .  What do you have? Sub-wagon-wheel biscuits.

Episode II: Attack of the Clones

The fire road to Linn of Dee was dispatched quickly and the next milestone was Glen Feshie and the road back to Aviemore.  It was about this point where the sky began to darken and things got a bit bleak. This sign was not promising.

 

 

Into Glen Feshie and the double track became a semi rideable semi-bog.  Slow progress again.  But worse, the wind had dropped and ferocious midge horde descended (or ascended?) from the bog.  The rain started, the skies blackened, the midgies attacked, the trail deteriorated.  Only a DoE young team on the trail on a four day expedition (hardcore) and some indie music for company (tweecore).  There was one highlight of a waterfall. Taking the camera out wasn’t an option but I’ve drawn you this picture to illustrate what it was like:

The trail improved after the waterfall.   But then the danger became apparent – a total of four fords of the Feshie.  Actually quite pleasant as my legs were burning from midge bites and with already wet feet it made little difference.  Soon enough I was at the bottom of the path to Carn Ban Mor.  A final ford of the river where the bridge used to be and it was a road blast to the B&B.  Now cold and wet.  Arrived at the B&B totally soaked.  At which point I went through the looking glass – but that’s a story for another time.  Oh, and that Star Wars with Jar Jar Binx was on the telly.  I’ve never seen it before – why is it so crap?

Day 2, episode IV: A New Hope

A cold, wet, run into Aviemore the previous evening had filled my head with DNF and ride home thoughts.  Like a Vietnam veteran my mind had been warped by the harrowing hike a bike experience and I didn’t fancy any more of that.  I cheated  altered the route to include a little more road distance to avoid bits that looked like walking and to ease navigation until I could get my head into the right place.  Having left, and rejoined the road, I arrived at the days first way point: Tomintoul.  Seemed a nice kind of place.

The route turned south following the River Avon, before heading up toward Loch Builg. It was a bit like in Apocalypse Now where Cpt Willard heads up the river to meet Kurtz, but with a bike in stead of a boat, and without the all the mad stuff going on.  And more rain.    Instead only the endless and empty land rover tracks, the occasional ‘Estate’ sign, and derelict  ‘lodges’. With the exception of Tomintoul I hadn’t seen a single person for three hours.  After negotiating Loch Builg, comes the monster climb Culradoch and a long, green and pleasant descent through the forest into Braemar.

 

Leaving Braemar along the River Dee and through Mar Lodge means that the horizon expands and wide, flat never-ending fire road snakes off into the distance.  It’s pretty featureless and the hills to either side have been ’rounded off’ to produce a less foreboding landscape than  the massifs, but one which (for me at least) replaced awe with a dull, smothering bleakness.  Did I mention it was raining?  Yeah, by now it was like riding up a river.

Towards the top of Glen Tilt, the landscape is titled on it’s side and flat becomes vertical, wide becomes narrow and browny purply green becomes nice bright green.  The steepness of the sides gives me vertigo leading to excess mincing.  In stark contrast to much of the rest of the riding, Glen Tilt glows a bright green as I roll down the final 8km to the car – a thoroughly pleasant end to an epic weekend.

 

And that was that.  Not the usual kind of riding I do – if a ride goes on for more than six or seven hours then I’m usually on the road.  In part because I can’t read a map although I managed the whole ride without getting properly lost – but a larger part because I’m feart, especially when I’m on my own in remote areas.  Beyond not getting lost, and not having a greet halfway round, perhaps the most satisfying thing was just how much rugged terrain  can be covered by bike in a relatively short period of time.  Or more eloquently put by David Craig: 

“The moors continue to assert their otherness, passing slowly through the massifs of the Cairngorms, where the moors are a shallow quilt of peat and heather clinging onto the colossal rock-forms of the mountains […] The whole thing had encapsulated what I had come to realise after many years of hill-walking, that the moors are formidable, exacting, but they have a human scale.”

Maybe next year I’ll try it “properly” and camp out…

Strava:

Day 1

Day 2