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.

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.

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.

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. 

What season are we doing next?

I biked into Glen Einich in occasional snow snowers towards the northern corries of the Western Cairngorms. From Aviemore they looked like an advert for Lapland and as they got closer the illusion did not fade. From around 800 metres the snow cover was mostly intact - in recent years that's unsual for February but for the first week in May it is pretty unique.
I ditched the bike at the ford of the Beannidh Beag and strike out over the heather moors and glacial bluffs towards Braeriach. On the tundra like foreground I passed a small herd of reindeer which were a long way out from Glenmore but looked the part as light snow fell from the darkening sky. One of the hinds sheltered a tiny days old calf between its legs.

The ground steepened up to the snow line. Given that its May it would be reasonable to expect what the ski resorts call 'spring snow' or as it's also known slush. However, almost from the start the snow was bullet hard taking a good slash with the boot edge to get purchase before a steep, intact snow slope at 1000 metres forced me into crampons. I stomped upwards and on towards the summit as snow devils chased each other across the plateau. At the top the views encompassed the deep green spring of the Spey valley to the north and the massive ice age chasm of the Garbh-coire to the south. This might be the finest view in Scotland but it is no place to linger today as the ice age makes itself felt on the north wind. I retraced my crampon scratches over that wonderful white wilderness of the plateau and dropped down towards the Einich in thickening snow showers. Inside of two hours I was eating chips in Aviemore spaced out by the contrast of all the seasons in one afternoon and looking up longingly to the deep shadowed corries of Braeriach's late winter.