Culbin by train

The train stuttered and swung its way from the east coast through the familiar litany of towns packed with bored and down cast commuters.  I did not care – I was not there.  A few miles north Culbin lies quiet and secret under the full moon, invisible beyond the infinity mirror windows of the train. 

I seem to remember I was having trouble with riding on sand. The back wheel was breaking away and I was tipping over. Aye, that was it. So I headed for the fire tracks and braved the mud left by the harvesters before breaking away myself into the empty still wood. I aimed for the Buckie Loch just to see. When I got there it was a stony field of downy dried thistles hiding from the sea’s next big temper behind a ridge of stones. The bike and I climbed the stones in a fluid pull on the bars and stopped, stunned and stilled.

Waves dropped quiet on the sand. Not breaking along the beach but just dropping – plop, soosh - in a single second across as far as the eye could see.  White dry sand blew along dark wet sand in swirls. Out to sea gannets speared into the white caps. Rise, cruciform, turn, spear, splash.  Fishermen in endless benediction.

I dropped the bike and sat down. The ridge top was a mosaic of small pebbles. Red granites, white quartz, layered toffee sandstones, smoothed ancient gneiss on its last journey after 3 billion years. Glaciers had gifted these stones to the sea as rough rocks ripped from Cairngorm, the tors of Avon, the hills of the great glen and many others. The sea had loved them smooth as skin, cold as their mother ice under my hand.

It was overwhelming to have all my senses competing at once.  I lay down, head on the ancient stones and closed my eyes – smell of sea, taste of salt, sound of a single wave.

 

Cashing in a full winter's Karma points

After an 18 month long winter culminating in snow for the May bank holiday, a decent July was very welcome. To celebrate the thaw I have had some nice long outings on the bike in the last month. A combination of stunning weather, bone dry trails and a newly refurbished Giant has made stoking up the miles a real joy. 

Highlights include: 

- Inverfaragaig to Inverness via the corkscrew road and the pass of the fair haired lads on a day where temperatures hit 28 degrees.  Only the polka dot jersey was missing. 

- a really nice round from home taking in part of the trail of the seven lochs. A fair bit of road but a beautiful section through the woods between Easterton and Bunachton. I had to go back and do it again.

- a long ride from Aviemore to Inverness on a now perfected Wade route. Follow the forest paths beyond the new estate on the west side of the A9 to Kinveachy then follow the route posted below past Sluggan and Slochd to Tomatin. You can just follow the Wade route from Lynebeg but its sketchy and was a green bog during the driest summer in 10 years - so it might be best to take the minor road to just past Moy where you go back across the A9 to the resurgent Wade road past the battle cairn. Do not take the path marked Wade's bridge - the bridge is worth seeing but the path dies against a quarry fence - but follow the forest road down past Auchbain to the Farr road. Then cross the River Nairn at Faillie Bridge - another fine Wade effort - and up the hill to Daviot woods and on to the Sneck itself.   A fine route for a warm day. Watch out for that river crossing before Sluggan - it seems like proof that Wade was a mountain biker. 

Some random images of the Aviemore-Inverness route are below. You should go find it - it's magic.

Looking back towards Lynebeg - there is a Wade Road somewhere under here

Wade bridge on the Midlairgs burn near Daviot quarry

Trail heaven - it really was this good

This portalavvy appeared on the trail at exactly the point when a thunderstorm broke - I do not think it is a Wade original.

Monument to the last battle the Jacobites won - Wade really did score a few own goals

Access for all!  - err......on second thoughts...

Scumbag motorist in Giant killing shocker

I went out for a ride the other night like so many other nights. The objective hazards on a mountain bike are many and varied - I might have mentioned ice, gorse, streams and gravity in the past - but this time I did not get as far as the trails. 
I pulled up beside a car to turn right but while waiting for the traffic to clear the woman driving the car suddenly started to reverse. I could not get out the way in time and she ran over my rear wheel. Luckily, I managed to unclip so the damage was restricted to my much loved Giant.
To add insult to near injury I did not get her information and she has not got in touch leaving me steaming with anger and £300 in the hole. 
My options are few but I did get some wonderful witnesses and I will keep trying to hunt her down. 
I just hope I can put the Giant back on the trails soon - the weather is grand just now. 

The General's Great North Road

The great North Road - Slochd pass

Today was a shock to the system with the temperature climbing to the dizzy heights of 19oC. Phew....
The only answer was to unearth the shorts, kick the tyres and hit the trails. 
Back in January, we walked a section of General Wade's Military Road from Kinveachy on the A9 to Tomatin. It left an impression and I wanted to go back, do it in daylight and continue to Aviemore. Various logistical problems were overcome by the family's weekend plans which left a car at Aviemore and me and the Bike at the road junction at Tomatin. Happy days......I just hoped I still had the car keys. 
The route heads under the high rail and road bridges which bisect the village of Tomatin, crosses the Findhorn and then turns left to parallel the A9 up to the Slochd. It is an easy angled climb on a fine track with the big brown swell of the Slochd hills filling the skyline ahead. Today, cuckoos were calling and lapwings were squealing in the hazy sunshine and it was a good place to be.
Living in Inverness with family in the central belt and an unhealthy attachment to the Cairngorms not a month goes by without a trip over the Slochd on the 'new' road so it was strange to approach the pass from a different direction. The top of the military road is marked by a large stone where the flowers suggest some ashes are scattered and a another memorial to two shepherds (I hope) who died on the A9. All this is in sight of and ignored by the hurtling traffic at the pass. 
I crossed the A9 ( the new road) and headed down through the Slochd on the old A9 ( the old road) before picking up the Old (Military) Road again and heading up over the railway (the iron road). Are you still following this?
After this the OMR and the A9 part company for nearly 15 miles as Wade took the road the other side of Inverlaidnan Hill and down to the Sluggan Bridge. This is a fine area of scattered pine woods and open views which I know well from cross country ski-ing and it is a grand route for the bike. I joined National Cycle Route 7 for a few miles down to Sluggan where I stopped and took in the peace and quiet next to Wade's fine arched bridge.


From Sluggan the route crosses a tarred road down to Carrbridge and runs out into the woods of the Kinveachy Estate. Watch out for the river crossing - it's half way up your shins on a good day and it is not warm. 
Parts of this route are just sublime as you travel through ancient pine woods on a cracking surface down to Kinveachy where the A9 thunders back into view.  Just after the lodge I went a bit wrong and took a path just to the side of the main road which was muddy and fouled by cattle but in the end it ran back up into the woods to finish with a coast down to Aviemore through sun dappled forestry. 
I have not had a bike ride in warm sunshine since August's Feshie expedition so I thoroughly enjoyed this route.   

Wade was an interesting bloke and he certainly made a mark on the Highlands. This road  was built by the British Army to speed up troop deployment after the 1715 and 1719 Jacobite uprisings. Wade created the first usable transport system north of Perth and was followed by Major Caulfield who in turn was followed by Thomas Telford who completed the job of connecting the Highlands to the outside world.
Wade rose to the rank of Field Marshal but was sacked by the Army after failing to prevent the Jacobites entering England and advancing to Derby during the '45. Ironically, he was taken unawares by the speed of Charlie's advance from Glenfinnan which was made possible by the hundreds of miles of lovely new roads he had built for the ungrateful Teuchters. 

You can't help but think that he should have a bit more recognition in the Highlands but while he waits for a statue I recommend you seek out the spidery lines of his real monuments by bike or by foot.

An echo of firelight

Another tale from Aitken's guide that stuck was the legend of the Craigallian Fire. You can read about it here.
I passed the spot a few weeks ago on the bike and was pleased to see the spot is now marked. If you find yourself down that way be sure to stop and thank those pioneers for setting a flame that still burns. 

The monument reads: 

 Here burned the Craigallian Fire.  During the Depression of the 1930s, it was a beacon of companionship and hope for young unemployed people who came from Glasgow and Clydebank seeking adventure in Scotland's wild places. Their pioneering spirit helped to make the Scottish countryside free for all to roam.

Children of the Dead End

When I was 16, back in the days when we had summers, I walked the West Highland Way through the shimmer of a July heatwave. The Way had only been open a year and it came with a shiny guidebook by a chap called Bob Aitken. The guide contained a great deal of information on the history of the route and, unusually for the time and subject, avoided tartan and misty mountain cliche concentrating instead on the more recent social history of the west highlands.
Some of the subjects it opened my eyes to have already been mentioned such as access but one that stayed with me was the story of the Blackwater dam. 
The dam was built just before the Great War to provide power for the new technology of the aluminium factory at Kinlochleven. It was a monumental undertaking in every way with a massive dam rising out of the wild glen and huge pipelines snaking across the hillside for four miles before plunging down and into the back of the smelter. Amongst the grisly and possibly legendary stories of corpses strewn across the hill towards the Kingshouse, Aitken also mentioned a book called 'Children of the Dead End' - a semi-autobiographical novel by a former navvy called Patrick Macgill which featured several chapters set at Blackwater. It stuck in my mind and I pursued an occasional, haphazard hunt for the book for over twenty years. References to it would crop up in other books in the odd places but the book itself did not surface. So God bless the rise of the internet where I found it first time and it arrived in my eager hands about 10 years ago. 
For a book written during the first war it  is a readable and compelling picture of a long gone and unlamented way of life. Macgill was the basis for the book's protagonist, the wonderfully realised Dermod Flynn. His harrowing descent into navvydom has a horrible inevitability about it as his few choices go wrong and every turn in the road leads towards the twilight world of the Blackwater dam. For Macgill things went differently and he eventually led the life of a successful author and journalist.  Many, many others were not so lucky and remain to this day in the strange, poignant graveyard just under the dam itself. 

Blackwater dam

Our long walk in April led in the end to the dam and the graveyard and I found myself after many years walking in Dermod Flynn's footsteps.  We approached from the north along the old path to the sunken Ciaran Lodge which now lies under the sullen leaded waters. The dam came into view wreathed in smoke from heather burning and framed by the snow plastered hills of Glen Coe.  We crossed the glen underneath the dam, and I wondered at the large amount of ironmongery scattered around,hoping that it represented a link across the century to Flynn and the Dead End.

The dead end

Dermod's cairn

Finally we were there at the gate of the graveyard. I found a large lump rising in my throat and drank a quick toast to Dermod and Moleskin Joe before turning away to the dam before my brother saw the mist form in my eyes. There can be few sadder places in all the deep sorrows of the glens.


Dermod's ghost was not done with me just yet. A week later, I was browsing my father-in-law's bookshelf when I saw Macgill's name on the spine of a book. It was The Rat-pit, the  even rarer companion piece to Children of the Dead End. It had been on that shelf for twenty years and I had never noticed it. It was a difficult read covering the life and living death of Nora Ryan, Dermod's childhood sweetheart. Your heart will break for them and I highly recommend it. 

2013 gear hits and misses

The good 

Very, very pleased with my OMM Kamleika over trousers. I have used these through the winter on the bike with either tracksters or merino leggings underneath and they have coped with low temperatures, spray and mud with aplomb. They have been even better for walking. I wore them for a solid 16 hours on the Bike and Hike during which it chucked it down and the temperature ranged from sleet to tee-shirt weather. After the first (wet) 8 hours I changed the trousers underneath and found them to be bone dry. After the second (dry) 8 hours there was no condensation. The truth is that I forgot I was wearing them. Highly recommended. 

The bad and the ugly

Not at all pleased with my Berghaus Active Shell which continues to let in water and weather at inappropriate times. It is also a very bright red and can be seen from space. Yuk.

Honourable mentions

I have been getting good use out my Montane pertex pullover which seems good for anything short of a hurricane. It breathes, is windproof and gets a kind of equilibrium going when it rains which keeps you dry underneath while it wets out. As with the OMM trousers you forget it is on unless you are working really hard. It's been good for some very long walks and for shorter winter runs in awful weather.It is not robust enough for the bike other than road and easy trails but it's a really versatile, packable piece of kit.
My Hope R4 bike lights continue to provide more pleasure than is decent on dark nights. They are now superseded in the bike tests by cheapies from the far east but I will stick with them for a few seasons yet.
A new pair of Scarpa Cristallos have barely been out the box except for one day in February but they were comfy from the start and gave a great feeling of security from the sharp edges of the new Vibram soles. Crampon compatibility was good and they look lovely - maybe that's just me...........

Wild weekend

We had an amazing two day trip through the heart of the central highlands of which I will write more when I get the time and the right words. For the moment here is a photo of the navvie's graveyard at Blackwater which was the destimation at the end of a 40 mile weekend.

Monster training

Culbin again

We set off from the boy racer car park in Nairn on dry sandy trails into a biting north wind. We followed a mixture of fire roads and glorious single track resembling a BMX track to Hill 99.We climbed the tower just after sunset and then set off. Neil immediately tumbled down the steps at the bottom of the tower, went over the handlebars and into the stove of two squaddies who were brewing up while in full camoflage. It takes some skill to find the one open flame in 40 square miles of forest. As Culbin settled into darkness , our lights went on and we swooped down the rest of the hill and off into the mysterious forest with only the screaming of thousands of geese for company. We reached the cars wanting more of this wonderful place.


Night terrors

Spring's frigid easterly winds continue but gave us a fine evening for a 10 mile walk up to the Orrin dam. This is a strange stretch of country - wild yet partially industrialised with the tarmac road giving rapid access into the lower reaches of the wilds of Ross. Walking up to the dam gave the feeling of entering a different country where the wildness grew with each step. Strange and empty under a bright moon. We puzzled over a light circling, disappearing and reappearing in the western sky, strange lights on the dam itself and eery noises and screams in the woods. At the dam the wind cut through all my layers and I shivered all the way back to the car. It may not have been just from the cold.

Doon the water

April brings blizzards with the Clyde coast particularly badly hit. The following week I had a fine run of 7 miles of trails on the island of Bute in spring sunshine with views out to a snow plastered Arran. Despite the sun the wind remained biting and enough snow lay on the trail to require some comedy postholing. Variety is the spice of life - but now can we have some warmth?

Zermatt comes to Ullapool

A cracking half day on Beinn Enaiglair, a Corbett which nestles under the shoulder of Beinn Dearg. We got a nice early start and scrunched off from Braemore round a boggy but frozen detour to avoid whoever owns Braemore Estate being troubled by our proletarian presence. This new.. erm... path was created as an alternative to the forest track up to Home Loch which you have every right to use. On my next trip I will not repeat the mistake. The path round the hill provided growing and grand views across to the Fannichs and down towards Loch Broom. The hills were plastered in snow and Sgurr na Clach Geala looks particularly alpine with its north ridge curving gracefully up to the summit. 

Once past the big stone the route curved round to the north side of the hill and the temperature plummeted. The path was slick with ice covered in fine powder which slowed us right down. We joined a more constructed path running up the east side of the hill in gentle curves mostly obscured by snow. At about 600 metres the snow took on the consistency of chalk, firm but yielding to a slash of the boot edge to give a good grip. We moved from shade to sun and back but the snow remained the finest neve and we eventually conceded to crampons prior to the final steep slope up a small gully to the summit ridge. The upward motion on the perfect snow under a soft blue sky and warm air was hypnotic but over all to soon. I turned to look wistfully down the gully and thought of other places such as Centre Gully on Ben Lui where such movement can last hours. 

From the summit the views opened north, west and south across that unique Scottish scene of snow, sea and mountains out as far as Ben Loyal and what might have been the Statue of Liberty. Today there was nowhere finer.

Culbin of the sands

Children need routine and my 3 year old boy is no different. It took a fair amount of effort to persuade him that our weekly adventure should go somewhere different to last week’s outing to the treehouses of Abriachan. I used some psychology along with the words ‘woods, beach and fire’ in quick succession and had him hooked and we were off for Culbin forest in the grey morning.

 We bundled into warm clothing and set off along the wide paths towards Tower 99 which was to be the big draw for the day. He made good pace, only halting occasionally to pick up something familiar from previous walks. ‘Old man’s beard!’ he yelled in triumph holding up a branch that was bigger than him festooned with moss. A few wobbly moments followed as he tired and then when I refused to pick up a massive pile of stones ‘for the big tower’ he descended into a wailing cry with some proper tears. I scooped him up while surruptiously dropping the stones and licked the tears from his face..’These ones on the left taste nice but the ones on the right are rubbish.’ It did not work and I left him bawling in a wee sandy hole next to the path. I got myself out of sight , crouched down and and waited and predictably he sprinted up the path and into my arms. Instantly better.

We reached the tower and climbed it nervously. My vertigo reached new heights as I scanned the slatted wood for small boy sized gaps and gripped him tight. He did not seem to like it much either as the wind bit down from the north and we headed down after some lip service to the views out as far as Caithness.

At the base of the tower the year had moved on from winter. The red trunks of the Scots pines  threw out some dappled light and meagre warmth so we huddled close on the bench to drink our flask and eat muffin treasure from the picnic box. His face looked back at me, framed with a flapped hat and lined with tears and chocolate and a challenge in his eye. ‘Are you enjoying this?’ I said fearfully. ‘Yes.’ Time to head to the beach, then.

We wandered off down a steep dune in the firm direction of the sea. He walked for a further half mile before he began to trail behind and held his arms up. By then, the wee legs had done nearly 2 miles and I could not say no so I swung him up on my shoulders and we jogged down to the edge of the water. As we stepped out from the margin of the forest the north wind picked us out. He looked up and said  ’This is a cold place.’ No fooling him today, this emerging outdoorsman. We turned quickly and found a sandy spot in the shelter of the great pines which line the shore. I scooped away the needles to make a fire pit and we construct a small pile of twigs, paper and one hidden firelighter to create the magic in front of his eyes. I thought it best to obey his mum’s instructions and prevent him from seeing the actual act in case he decided to replicate it in the living room so I distracted him with some pine cone gathering as I applied the match. The fire got going quickly and raised  a pall of smoke high in the pines.  I could picture a forestry commission swot team descending on me with beaters so I bottled it and smothered the fire quickly. We tidied the pit, packed and headed back to the car with a satisfying smoky flavour clinging to us.

We sped the journey up with joint Gruffalo recitals and some walks and some carrys get us back to the car with a sense of a day seized and a mission accomplished.   

Culbin’s aura of peace lingered on us for the rest of the day along with a faint, sweet smell of wood smoke.At the tower the seats carry a poem which summed up our day.

Hill 99

I stood one day upon the hill

And felt my shadow wheel full circle

I stood one day upon the hill

And saw the heather turn to purple

I stood one day upon the hill

And smelt the tang of marsh and sea

I stood one day upon the hill

And knew my soul returned to me

I stood one day upon the hill

And heard the coast birds pipe and call

I stood one day upon the hill

And dreamed of sailors in a squall

I stood one day upon the hill

And felt my gritted teeth bite the sand

I stand this day upon the hill

Knowing my heart rooted in this land

A night with General Wade

We followed the remains of Wade's great north road from Kinveachy to Tomatin on a dark, windy night in the name of Monster training. 10 miles through the dark woods became oppressive as the trees pressed in between Sluggan Bridge and the Slochd and it was a relief to emerge onto the cycle path beyond the pass as the moon rose at last. 

A hard night hike for January. 

On the slide at Slochd

A fine day on nordic skis at the Slochd. Such sport in Scotland is brief and has to be grabbed while it lasts - the trails are probably already bare after some rain and rapidly rising temperatures.

I hired the kit from the ski school at Slochdmor and skied out to the memorial stone above the Dulnain river and back in beautiful sunshine and a rapid thaw. Part of the route forms the western edge of the Cairngorm National Park.

The softish conditions made for a steady glide which becomes a bit meditative - you could go for hours given the chance. 

The picture does not do the dayor the snow conditions justice - I picked about the thinnest spot on the entire route.

Winter bites me on the bum

After an extended bout of flu over Christmas my first night ride of the year ended in disaster when a  patch of black ice on the descent of Dunain hill up ended me and brought me down hard on my rear. I lay still for a long time in the darkness badly winded and moaning before heading down the hill gingerly. Funny - it was the same ice that I passed on the way up and thought that I had better avoid on the way down. 

No bones broken but a few lessons learned. Ice is not sticky but it is quite hard.

Four outings to kick off another winter

December now and the sun hits the horizon at just after 3 in the afternoon.  We have had quite bit of snow and the temperature has hovered around freezing for two weeks now. Time to man up and face the winter.

Run

I headed out to the pass of the fair haired lads late in the day as the sun and the temperature sunk low. The trail up to the pass was just covered by snow and was not disturbed by any trace of a boot or a tyre. Occasional fox prints was the closest I got to company. Once at the pass I dropped down the zig-zags on the other side toward the loch. From somewhere out on the water far below I could hear the commentary from the Jacobite cruise boat drifting up in the gloaming. When I reached the forest track I turned and jogged back up with some short recovery stops. Hill reps is the official title but it does not feel much like training when you are out on a path clinging to the side of the great glen high above the loch. The evening was bone cold but beautiful. 

Bike

It took me a good 30 minutes to prepare man and bike for a night out on the snowy trails above the town, I stuck to familiar trails as a concession to my wife's concern at the wisdom of heading out alone in sub-zero temperatures on icy roads. The canal path was a ribbon of silver under my bike light with light snow concealing slick black ice but as long as I made no sudden course changes the wheels adhered well enough to keep me upright. Once in the wood the bike light was thrown around by the powdery snow to create a bright black and white movie of a trail. I stopped at the bench overlooking the town and took it all in for a while. The strange thing was how warm I felt despite the epic frost settling  all around. Every other Invernessian had thought better of it and stayed in to watch River City. I hit some traffic on the rip roaring descent narrowly avoiding a head-on with a deer caught in the headlights and then having to duck to accommodate a quick strafe from a tawny owl. I got back to the house after an hour scarcely able to stop from giggling out loud. Night biking must soon be either taxed or banned - you just cannot have this much fun for free.

Walk

Three of us headed out straight from work to get in a few miles of training for the Monster under the full moon. We headed up the good land rover track from Lynebeg quickly discarding the torches in the bright moonlight. Up on the hill top there was a covering of a couple of inches of crunchy snow giving perfect conditions for night walking. All around snow covered hills glowed in the moonlight as white clouds floating over the jet black valleys. 

It was just too good a night to go home so we trailed out along another track southwards guessing correctly that it would turn back to the road at some point. The detour meant a cold fording of a wee stream and a two mile march up the side of the A9 but it was a small price to pay for such a grand night stolen from the early winter. 

Hills

The exploration of gorgeous Glen Feshie provided another great day out. This one featured 4 sports in one day with cross country and downhill biking, a bit of winter hill walking and the option of a bit of orienteering all provided. 

I biked in from the end of the public road along the perfect tarmac of the estate road to Feshie lodge where the track deteriorates as it passes out into the beautiful meadow at the where the glen turns east. From there a decent track ran up the hill to a small pass leading eventually west to the Gaick forest. After a toughish climb of about 300 metres I discarded the bike and headed off along the track towards Leathad an Tobhain - a Corbett sitting out in the wilds between the old counties of Inverness and Perth. As  reached the intervening hill I was getting a bit concerned about the depth of snow which was now ankle deep. The decision to wear trainers was looking marginal for frost bite. I rationalised that I would be fine as long as I kept my feet dry and then promptly fell into a patch of unfrozen bog up to my knees. Still a bags a bag and I was too close now to turn back. The summit was frigid with a vicious wind seeking out those wet toes so I lingered only long enough to eat my piece and note that the GPS read an interesting 3005 feet. Not a Munro though. Back to the bike for a descent of only 30 minutes to the car. Phew.

While I saw no wildlife at all I did get passed by two argocats and one landrover on the hill track - an outrageous amount of traffic - they might need to consider dualling it. All three stopped to chat continuing the impression of Feshie as one of the better estates. They are by most accounts trying hard.

A soaker in the central belt

After a week in the squalor of Paris I needed a quick hit of fresh, clean air and the Campsies provided by the loch load on a wet and windy Wednesday morning. These are lovely and under-rated hills within 30 minutes of George Square. From the south they are visble as a green rampart to the north with a profile as familar to most Weegies as their mammy's nose. The tops are boggy and difficult away from the paths meaning they are totally empty on all but the best of days. From the north they present some fine corries which St.Tom of Weir described as the Cairngorms in minature. Tom loved them and for you that should be recommendation enough.  Lets face it - if they were south of Birminghan they would be a national park. 

My route took me up from the Crow Road to the level felltops on a boggy but obvious path but my time was limited and the top of Cortma Law was out of reach for the day.

It was great to be up there with an cold easterly streaming over the tops of the fells carrying stinging rain on the point of sleet. 

It is days like that when you want decent gear and regrettably my newish Berghaus Active Shell jacket let me down. I could not control it in the wind with the funny wee internal hood toggles working loose in seconds allowing rain down into the front and when I turned round to returnto the car  the jacket rose up over my bum continually. So within less than an hour of challenging but hardly extreme weather I was wet front and back. 

The jacket was a replacement from Craigdon for  a leaky Montane Superfly discussed above. Am I just unlucky or is the design of these light weight jackets just compromised for weight and style?

The jacket currently retails at £200 - steep for something that does not keep yer nuts dry.

Summer's over

The north wind is back along with shorter nights and crap telly. The 25 minutes of sunshine we had more than made up for the biblical rain. 
Still, night biking starts soon - more to follow......

The empty quarter by bike

South of here there is a huge stretch of wild country running almost to the Tay. It is bounded by gentler lands on three sides and the A9 corridor on the west and human intervention is limited to some tentative roads into deep glens and the broad valley of the Spey with its outdoor industry, distilleries and occasional farmlands. It would be wrong to call this land a true wilderness since much of it is shaped by the hand of man. It is streaked with forestry and grouse moor burnings and in place land rover tracks reach high on to the hill. But in the main it is glorious country with rolling hills, big, brown rivers, huge skies and it pretty much empty of humanity where you can travel for days without meeting tarmac. All this makes it a grand place for adventure.   

Right in the heart of this place lies a group of hills known as the Ring of Tarf. While the name invokes Middle Earth the reality is a hard country of peat and bog with few paths and little in the way of logical routes. We traversed the Ring about a year ago and found it to be a real challenge and maybe not something that you would choose to go back to more than once but during the trip we also twice crossed the through route from Glen Feshie to Blair Atholl which looked a fine way to travel. I hatched a plan to take the bike from the familiar tracks of   

Inshraich Forest through the full length of Glen Feshie and then to pick up the old drove route from Speyside to Blair Atholl across the watershed of the Geldie, Tarf and Tilt rivers. On the map it is an awesome inviting slice of Scotland and a quick trawl on the web showed that it has been done by bike. The weather forecast showed three dry days. The only remaining question was whether I was man enough....

I crossed the Feshie by the only remaining bridge south of Feshiebridge itself and headed up the glen towards the small bothy of Ruigh-Aitcheachan. The path was rough and required a fair amount of pushing - panniers just do not lend themselves to anything technical. However, much of the route through the middle part of the glen was sublimely beautiful with mixed pine and birch woods and open meadows filled with clouds of rising butterflies taking flight as I passed. This was to be the pattern - tough ground for biking amongst incredible natural beauty. Equal parts inspiration and frustration.

The woodland thinned out beyond the point where the glen turned east just as the track ran down and into the Feshie. The depth of the river required portaging the panniers and bike separately across a short meander meaning 6 crossings of the river in total. Luckily, it was reasonably dry and the river was low but in spate conditions you would have to follow a slight path further up the hill. From there the track continued through the open upper glen until it petered out with around 4 miles still to go prior to Gelide Lodge. This proved the toughest section since it crossed the watershed between the Feshie and Geldie. There was a particularly tough section up and over the Eidart Bridge – it might be best to cross the river where it meets the Feshie if condition are right. Eidart Bridge itself has about six months to live and goes at severe with a bike and panniers.....you have been warned.   

Geldie Lodge is remote in anyone's book and would be a big disappointment to anyone turning up expecting a full Scottish breakfast. Its roofless ruin looks out towards the southern ramparts of the Cairngorms across a bleak desert of peat and heather.

Today it was quite busy – 4 other tents and a resident population of a few billion midges. The midges made dinner a challenge but by adopting a policy of walking up and down the track while boiling, cooking and eating I managed to get a few calories down.  I also made some tea but by then I had had enough of fighting the wee bastards and retired to the tent. I needed to sleep with a midgie net on for the first time ever. It was not a pleasant evening.

In the morning they were worse and I was up and away into the grey morning by 7am. The first stretch took me past the semi-ruin at Ruigh Easlaidh and onto the complete ruin of Bynack Lodge, sited amongst some tall pines.

Bynack lodge – August 2012

Bynack and Geldie lodges mark a kind of reversed terminal moraine of human activity in these remote glens. They were built after the retreat of the crofter and during the brief re-advance of the sporting estate – a short window between the croft and the motor car when these far flung outposts were needed to reach the deer and the grouse.  The decline and fall of these places are well enough recorded elsewhere but for this generation only the sad erratic remains are left high on their raised banks. They lend much to the atmosphere of loneliness and isolation which is found in Glen Geldie.  

Beyond Bynack the track gradually deteriorated until it was only rideable in parts. The upper part of the glen opened out into a large flat meadow ringed with steep hills. Through a side glen I could see out to a misty Carn Bhac which was just shrugging off the morning haar to bask in the August sun. From the meadow the path turned westwards and into the narrow ravine of the upper Tilt clinging to the steepening north bank. I traversed this with a lot more pushing than riding before emerging on the flats beside the glorious Falls of Tarf. This is worth the visit on a dry day – it must be biblical when in spate. Once over the bridge it is a long but mostly downhill on good landy tracks to Blair Atholl through gorgeous Glen Tilt with its policy woods giving deep shade. The track follows the River Tilt which is fast, brown and bubbling. The day was perfect August with high white clouds in a deep blue sky. Sheep bleated high on the green hillsides stretching away up to Beinn a Ghlo – a pastoral scene like a vertical England and a grand place to be on a day like this.  

A tough route requiring real commitment even in gentle August but I am not convinced about its suitability as a bike route. It might lend itself to a solid one day push on a full suss unloaded bike by a better rider than me but without solids skills you will be off and pushing for a fair distance as you cross the two watersheds. The Empty Quarter is not the place to have a big off.

As a footnote there were proposals up until the sixties to drive a road through Feshie and Geldie to Deeside and the plan was well advanced and widely supported locally and in political circles. Some token opposition was raised by what would now be called the outdoor lobby but I have not yet found out why the route was never developed. The good news is that while you just can’t access Glen Shee from Inverness for a day’s dodgy ski-ing, you can revel in a huge stretch of wilderness  I think that’s a result. 

Hills from hell

From a wee niche under the summit tor of Coileachan I could look down the long miles to the road tucked under the bulk of Beinn Dearg.  It looked awful. A short steep slope to a small kettle lochan in the corrie of Meall Gorm, followed by a rough step down into the glen and then a few miles of rough path and muddy slop down by the river.  It did not appeal and I looked around with the abstract thought of finding a better route.  But the shadows had lengthened, it was growing colder and short of growing wings my only feasible route was down in the general direction of the slop. 

At least for the first half hour I had gravity on my side but once I reached the loch at the bottom of the corrie it was all hard. Something of an animal track ran along the steep shore of the loch but it regularly blinded out or stopped short above a steep sided peat hag.  Up and down a dozen times but no easier route appeared for the duration of the lochan.  Once the outflow was reached it only got worse as the route descended into a battleground of monstrous hags rising unseen like brown  waves across the down slope.  Adding to the battle was the sodden underfoot conditions meaning every foot fall  pushed a thick mousse of mud up to my ankles.  Eventually I reached the river and after a further half hour of heather bashing and clambering over the top of eroded banks I reached a vestige of a path. Nearly there.

I sat by a plank bridge and ate the remaining food trying to persuade myself that I was still having fun.  This was supposed to be a fast afternoon raid round 4 Munros with a minimum of kit and in trainers but it had turned into a real fight.  I trogged on in growing darkness and eventually reached the car by headtorch after 7 long hours.

The mugging of the Monadhliath

I had an interesting wee opportunity ride into a wild estate somewhere south of Inverness on Sunday that gave pause for thought. .

I followed a circular track over a fairly high hill.  It was obvious that the track was new, built for comfort and was also being rapidly expanded deeper into the Mondaliath.   

Hmm.. the Monadhliath – a difficult child.  If you look at a large scale map of Scotland it appears that this  area is one of the biggest remaining areas of wilderness left. You could form the impression that it had some protected status or designation. However, the truth on the ground is ugly. Roads are being driven in from all directions with no apparent control over the quality or impact and the whole area has actually been designated as a favoured area for wind factory development. The rate of degradation is frightening – it so fast that many of these roads are not visible on Google Earth or on online OS maps.  You would be entitled to ask why this is happening.  

Well, the locked gate at the road end of the track I followed gives a hint as does the stripy heather and the myriad of very visible traps at the side of the path. It is an aggressively managed shooting estate. A quick search on the internet will leave you none the wiser as to who the responsible  owner is but it does tell you about prosecutions for raptor persecution, illegal traps and a small matter of a £ 2.5 million wind industry subsidy that you and I are generously bestowing on the estate incuding - incredibly - payments for turning the things off when demand drops.

It could be different.  High on the hill a couple of misplaced dotterel were doing their best with chicks and there were a few mountain hares. These are indicator species which show that the Monadlaith is a wee cousin of  the Scottish Arctic across StrathSpey and could be a fine wilderness if we just loved it more.

The evidence strongly suggests that these estates are not fit custodians of our country – they are ruthless business people with no respect for the mountain environment unless it produces a profit. We cannot trust these faceless exploiters with the future of our wildernesses and our wildlife.