Quiet ride in the Cairngorms

Luckily the weather forecast was spot on and I arrived in Aviemore just as the heavy rain was stopping and sky brightening. I headed down towards Glen Feshie wanting to explore this area more by bike ignoring the honey pot trails of Rothimurchas.

Love Feshie

The ride went South from Glen Feshie following the river for a good while, passing some dilapidated farms/crofts with expansive views of the Glen Feshie Munro's before swinging West through forest to  Drumguish where I picked up the Badenoch Way back to Feshie Bridge.

Ruin!

Some of the great Badenoch single track

The ride was great and had everything on it, forest track, single track, mud, dry, no people. I'm going to look at the map and see how I can extend it to explore this amazing area more.

Whats best, East or West...?!

I've managed to get a few good days climbing in over the last couple of weeks. A week or so ago I went back to Latheronwheel on the East coast between Helmsdale and Wick. It's a great spot with fairly friendly sea cliff's to climb.

Gives an idea of Latheronwheel

The routes are fairly compact, no bigger than 18-20m, and generally you abseil onto non-tidal platforms to start from. Highlights were Guillemot Crack, a great slightly overhanging off width HVS (loads of handholds on the sides of the wide crack luckily), and another HVS (the name escapes me!) which starts in a shed sized cave just above the water line which we had to traverse into.

Great rock at Latheronwheel

Poor Jack had to belay in the cave with a rising tide (the cave does flood out apparently) whilst I climbed out of sight on the wall above! Luckily it all ended well apart from nearly losing a coat that Jack briefly sent for a swim in the sea before fishing it out. There are loads of great routes here, and I've never seen any other climbers here!

Out to sea, the Isles from Ardmair

Then this Saturday just gone I headed to Ardmair near Ullapool with Loz and Jack. It was great to tempt Loz out from 'house work' for a climb (he's near the end of a house build).

Acrimonious Acrobat a stunning E1 at Ardmair

On one of the few VS's

The Highland pain factory

I'd wanted to go and ride in the Ardverikie area (The castle was used in the Monach of the Glen TV series) for ages, which is fairly close to Ben Alder, a fairly remote Highland spot. The forecast looked reasonable... but no better than that so we went for it.

From Loch Laggan easy but long estate tracks head East to the river Pattack, before turning South to Loch Pattack. It was nice scenery and easy cycling but the weather looked like it was deteriorating and it was quite cold and exposed.

Wet! The easy section

By Loch Pattack we had every item of clothing on and I was a little anxious about the next section as the cloud and rain rolled in... Strangely at Loch Pattack we bumped into 3-4 horses that seemed excited to see people.. To me a strange place to keep horses, with no fence boundaries for miles and miles. They can't get many visitors so their over excitement meant a quick exit over the interesting swing bridge.

Loch Pattack

Luckily the weather did improve as we headed West, only half way round the 45km loop. The route is basically 2/3 on easy estate tracks, but 1/3 of it goes over a high pass of 800m. After a crazy river crossing where we nearly lost 1 bike as the tyres started floating away as I waded up to my knees we started the momentous push up the pass.

I can't lie this was horrible and took hours getting the bikes up to the top at 800m. It was wet, boggy, steep, unrideable and I very much questioned the route and why we were even there! I was starting to get conscious of time and worried that we really had to push on if we were going to get back before darkness... I worried that the other side (downhill) may also not be rideable and a massive time drain if like the ascent.

Finally over the pass and a rideable track again

Wish I'd shot in Raw this would have been good to change

But I didn't have to worry the decent had been well maintained (I guess for stalking purposes from the estate side) and it was almost worth the push (actually not quite) to drop back down to the warmer and sheltered safety of Lochan na H-Earba.

Cold and wet, trying to smile!

What remained was a pleasant 10-12km flat ride through stunning Highland scenery back to the van in the last light of the day. A hard day, glad I'd done it, but probably wouldn't ride this particular route EVER again :-).