after a bad start on friday of popping down to my bike at lunch to find my front purgatory completely flat and a pool of sealant on the carpet - and my rear soft as chuff - it was looking like a bad weekend.

tube in the front , few blasts from the mountain morph and we were off - allbe it at a higher pressure than intended.





Heading for the hills on the deeside way - a reasonable warm up for a friday night

into to ballater , had a fish and chips from the phoenix as the rain threatened.

Pushed on up the glen to loch muick where i met a few bemused campers on the shores confused by the sight of a cyclist at 11pm at night heading into the glen and not out.....






The road to queenies (thats the strava name)



had glas allt shiel to my self - although with some damp paint on the walls so i took the middle of the sleeping platform well away from the walls - although i still managed to get some on my MAdison roadrace jacket - what detergent for getting gloss paint out of light weight waterproofs without ruining them :S Was good to see the bothy in good shape with new windows and a composting toilet - its been over 10 years since i last looked in with Dundee uni.




from there i came out the bothy and went up the allt sheil path directly behind it - there is / was an easier path onto lochnagar - i have ridden down it but either its a different path or it was erroded heavily but i was short of time so pushed on anyway.




its a 3 hour shove/ride/shove/ride. Had a few walkers looking at me like i was mental being up there on a bike.

from there i took over to loch callater and down the epic singletrack - highly worth the push no doubt about it . - not any photos from there i was having too much fun !

Headed into braemar for a late breakfast at the bothy. ok food but at 13 quid for soup sandwich and a coffee i was a bit aggrieved - but hungry. - pop over to taste around the corner for better pricing and equally as good food.

from there i headed up the road to linn of dee and cut through to white bridge and glen tilt.





Good dry singletrack through here on saturday - i wouldnt bet my last dollar on it being ridable today - or for the rest of the month after the rain we have had the last couple of days. - Took the fealar lodge lightening strikes up to the top and then came down gleann fearnach to the road at bridgeend before finishing up over the moors.

Arrived in a nick of time for the ceilidh i was attending.

Late start on sunday due to a late finish on saturday night and i drove with the wife up to aviemore. We rode up to the rocks on the larig ghru just for the descent , met a teacher from california at the fork back to glenmore - unfortuantly after all the good weather we had his week in scotland consisted largely of rain :(





was nice to be riding an unladen bike for a change.

After a late lunch Jayne headed off back home with the car i headed off towards the Gaick.





- other than the axle casing snaping i cant think of a job that would be made easier by stripping your front axle off in a ditch up a glen. - speaking as someone whos rebuilt a land rover ninety from the ground up including all internals of the axles.



It was a stunning night up on the Gaick. I made it back to phone signal on the south side above calvine just in time to let dan know where to meet me the next day and then bedded down just above the treeline to stay out of the midges.

- my camera went flat there , dan has the rest of the photos - will update when i get them off him.

Great trip there - fair play for heading up to Fealar lodge rather than the easy cruise down Glen Tilt - the only time I've done that was doing the Cairngorms Loop!
Must do that trail over Lochnagar at some point...

yeah i didnt want to go down the A9 cycle path from blair atholl - the climb over moulin was much more appealing.

action shots now.

so for those that know the gaick - i bivied out between the mobile phone mast and the "monument" didnt like the look of the ruin on the cliff edge but evidently others have been using it. The morning was driech and my survival zone bivy bag decided it no longer wanted to be waterproof - everything under the tarp was dry inside - everything outside - my knees down was wet. The pipedreams DWR coating did its job and only the nylon was wet - my down was still nice and fluffy and insulating. - i managed to dry the sleeping bag off under the tarp before putting it all way but my bivy was soaking inside - deal with that later.

i rode down to meet Dan in the morning and we rode back over the Gaick.









we headed up from drumguish into the woods and over into feshie - significant changes to the trail down there with huge swathes of land just missing after the winter(and currently)heavy downfall. - riding along following the swooping riverside trail and suddenly its a cliff face and you have to make a right angle turn in land off the old trail to stay riding.

We headed round below einach path and over the cairngorm club footbridge up to drakes hut and down gamnha singletrack and headed for glenmore - which its worth noting do a special of - a baked tattie + filling , salad, crisps , soup and a big wedge of cake for £8.95 - it was a big plate of food and just as nice as the food at braemar only without the bitter aftertaste - in the glorious 22 degree sun i had my bed roll out drying off from the morning.

from there we heaaded through the ryvoan pass and up in towards an lurg - which is a fair pull when the fargo weighed near 60lbs (some compulsory items in his kit weigh a fair bit)



we decended into the first river crossing where i met a group on their gold DOE heading for the caterthuns in my old stomping ground of clova - turns out they were from Brechin and one of them lived next door to an old team mate.

the trail was incredibly dry and unbelievably ridable - even the unridable lines seemed to be flowing through and out - riding over rocks that even i thought i was being hopeful of getting over - did ground out my chainring a few times but the 29er just ploughed through.

We arrived at fords of avon at about 18:00 and there were a couple of orange tents set up - imagine that on a monday night at fords of avon of all places ..... and a bit further on i could see a couple of fastpackers with less kit than us pitching up on the other side of the river on a shelf above the trail.

We chose a pitch suitably far away from the orange tents so not to encroach but not far enough away to end up in the bothy toilet. - how ever a further 2 groups of the orange tents arrived ..... makign a total of 24 people in one arranged group which i thought was a bit irresponsible but hum ho - they were german and probably knew no better.





cooking tea on the bruler with just enough wind to keep the midges at bay - hence why ive kept both sides of the tarp off the floor to keep a through breeze.

and the piece de resistance of this trail - the larig au laiogh descent into derry .



Unfortunately our descent was somewhat spurred on by the contents of the otehr thread - we had to get to inverey to make a phonecal for the mountain rescue to recover one of the germans who had broken his ankle.

Without requiring assistance from the MRT our selves we managed to raise the alarm in an hour and a half from being asked - even the hardiest of moutnain runners will struggle to beat that out from fords of avon :D

with the alarm raised dan headed off down glen tilt - and i took off down the road to ballater - ducked onto the deeside way and returned home SOAKED TO THE BONE ! torrential downpour from the minute i got to derry lodge.

460km all in , tired legs today and absolutely no way i was riding to work :D

Thats definitely pushing the limits of a Fargo - well impressed! I've done the Gaick loads of times and can't place the 'ruin on the cliff edge' but I always seem to be knackered and therefore staring into space when going along it - whereabouts is that?

It's marked as badnamblast on os map 42 I think

Has no glass in the roof lights and fierce stinks

Tis herehttp://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=27 ... &ay=773837

That's the badger.

I slept between the cairn and the mobile mast on that map behind a wall

Oh Aye I do know that one - thinking about it I've twice seen an adder on the trail just at that point....

dont mean to keep resurecting this but i forgot about these photos off the new camera.(olympus toughcam TG4) show how grim saturday morning really was. - the other photos above were a mix of motorola moto G 3rd gen and dans iphone 5.



thats the waterfall on the Allt Shiel path - at about 500m altitude.



The bridge at 800m.



The last lug to the top.
medium - low vis.

Great trip. I was away in Uist with a dodgy signal and couldn't wait to get home to see the photos!

aye you had good weather an all ya bam.

Last time i rode back from lerwick it pished with rain and was a terminal headwind from lerwick to inverness

Last time i went to mull with bike it rained for 4 days.

Last time i went to arran it rained the whole time i was there

Last time i went to raasay it was a force 9 gale and other peoples tents blew away

Last time i went to skye - it rained most of the trip
-
so im a little reluctant to book a trip to the Hebrides based on those experiances even though on the right day it wont be beaten by even the most tropical Caribbean islands :D

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-h ... s-36605377

Windy as feck almost all week though - I took to wearing earplug in the tent as the noise of fabric flapping was driving me demented.


In your report to talk about the damage in Feshie. I actually put a line of rocks across the main path as I had visions of someone steaming along in the dark and not seeing the "cliff" edge!