52. Cairngorms tour

3rd – 7th June 2024

Sunday 2^nd June 2024

The last (and first) time I cycled in the Cairngorms was in 2011 on a Prestwick Cycle Challenge ride.  This was in the dark ages before Strava, and so even though I know I’ve ridden there, Strava doesn’t, which annoys me.  So last year I planned a tour to correct the anomaly.  Surprisingly swiftly, my solo trek was ambushed and before I knew it, nine mates had offered to accompany me!  This was fine by me: just needed a touch more organising.  In the end, only eight of us actually signed up which made for easier accommodation arrangements. In the end, one chap had to pull out unexpectedly, so only seven are riding this week.

So today, Jim and I set off at 10am for the long drive north to Pitlochry where we took a 28 mile pre-tour ride alongside Loch Tummel.  As you know, lochside rides are always flat.  Except when they aren’t.  And in this case, the distance included over 2,000 feet of ascent.  I saw this as good practice for tomorrow when we tackle the Cairnwell Pass. Simon Warren in his 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs book advises that the approximate time for that particular five-mile climb is 26 minutes.  I feel it’s remiss of him not to offer an alternative time for pensioners with loaded panniers, however.

Today, I cycled past a couple of hydro-electric power stations and lots of nothing else.  Oh, and cars.  There were plenty of cars with kayaks strapped to their roofs heading the other way on the single track road.

When we arrived back at the hostel, the others had all arrived, and after a shower and a brew we all headed off for tea at the Auld Smiddy Inn where I had haggis bonbons to start followed by venison pie.  A bit clichéd?  Perhaps, but it was very good.  At least I understood what I was getting from that part of the menu.  One option was offered for starters which I really couldn’t understand.  I couldn’t even name the languages used to describe it.  So what exactly is “Roasted Aubergine – Chimichurri, ras el hanout, dukkah, tahini, espuma feta cheese”?  I could grasp that the main ingredient was aubergine, and that it also had some feta cheese, but that’s all I could decipher.

Now I’m filled with good Scottish fare, I am looking forward to tomorrow when the adventure begins.

Monday 3rd June 2024

The wall to wall sunshine was a delight to behold this morning.  Quite unexpected in this part of the world, but very welcome.  Even the wind was favourable, blowing us along for the first 15 miles.  This was helpful since the first five miles involved climbing about a thousand feet beginning right outside the hostel door.  

After 16 miles when we turned north we knew that the initial climbing was just a warm-up for the main event which was to climb the Cairnwell Pass (no. 65 in “100 Greatest Cycling Climbs”).  The pass itself started off very gently which fooled no-one.  When the gradient began to increase, it was moderated by the gorgeous scenery all around us.  I never noticed the pain increase so taken was I with the views of the mountains in full sunshine.  Up to a point.  When the gradient rose into double figures the muscles in my thighs began to make themselves felt. Thankfully, the gradient never exceeded 12%, and even that was right at the top.

The café in the Glenshee ski resort was huge and almost empty and we all chose lunch from the extensive menu whilst enjoying the views, happy in the knowledge that the biggest climb of the trip was over. 

When I was ready to leave, I was conscious of the drop in temperature at that altitude and dressed appropriately for the long descent.  People didn’t believe me when I said that “it’s downhill all the way from here”, but 25 miles later I was happy to be proven right.  And in addition, it was wind assisted.  Happy days.

In Braemar, Dave had a minor panic when he couldn’t find his phone, and so he spent five minutes searching and re-searching his bags for the thing. Behind him, we were all muttering amongst ourselves, thinking up reasons why we shouldn’t be the one to cycle back up to the café with him to search for the phone. He found it in the end, however, but this pattern was repeated twice a day. By then, we were ready for another café stop so we found a pleasant place which was sheltered enough for us to eat outside.  There was rather a long queue, but this wasn’t a problem since we were well ahead of schedule.   

The route then took us along the A93 right beside Balmoral Castle, but I didn’t see it, nor any royalty.  There did seem to be a few car rallies on this road though, and I saw several cars which I initially took to be Caterham 7s with Dutch plates, but thanks to Google lens, I now know to be Donkervoort D8s which are made in the Netherlands.  Who knew that the Dutch made cars?  Later on I saw nine Mercedes sports cars in convoy, but these had German plates.

We arrived at the hostel an hour before it opened and we had to fill the time somehow which is why you find me sat in a local pub enjoying the McEwans 70/- ale.  I’ve not seen that for years.

I was last in Ballater in 2011 and I have been reminded that we ate in the same restaurant then and although the outside looks vaguely familiar, (the Balmoral Bar) I have no recollection of the place.  My eye for a photograph hasn’t changed in the 13 years.  I’ve just checked my pictures from 2011 and they are surprisingly similar to those I took today.

Tuesday 4th June 2024

We had a DIY breakfast this morning after buying provisions in the Co-op last night.  I was first in the dining room and as I was tucking into my muesli, a French lady also staying in the hostel spoke to me in very broken French asking whether I was with the group of cyclists.  I said yes, and she then went on (mainly through mime) to explain, as I thought, that she heard one of us snoring in the night (one of our group is particularly loud) and so I apologised on his behalf and we both had a laugh.

When the rest of the group came down she once more mentioned the snoring, but this time it became clear that she was apologising to us, since one of her family snores loudly too!  Anyway, since we had both apologised, entente cordiale was preserved and an international incident averted.

The snoring wasn’t a problem for me at all, but I admit to being disturbed in the night by a lot of shuffling and something which sounded like furniture being moved about.  I never found out the whole story, but in the middle of the night I think someone in our dorm hauled his mattress into the corridor to get away from the snoring. He then moved back in after getting trodden on by people using the bathroom during the night.  I’m kinda glad I slept through all that.

When we left at 9.15, we were all dressed in wet weather gear because… well, have a guess. 

By 9.30, the rain had stopped and we headed East with a strong tailwind helping us along.  The longest part of the ride today was northerly, but the crosswinds never became a problem.  Lunch in a café in Huntly was very well timed since it was then we had hailstones.  Scotland in June, eh?  At least it kept the midges at bay.

Any advantage we gained from today’s route being relatively flat was lost due to the wind during the last 20 miles.  We’re now sizing up our options for tomorrow since the 15mph westerly is set to continue and we’ll be heading due West.

At Keith, the whisky drinkers (70% of the group) fancied visiting a distillery, so Jim and I (who never touch the demon drink) headed off towards our destination.  Once we saw the sea in the distance, we couldn’t resist getting closer, so we abandoned the route and diverted down to Portgordon.  If you’re ever up this way and fancy going, save yourself a trip; there’s nothing there. Apart from the sea.

Our accommodation is in the Red Lion Tavern tonight, but this was only chosen since there were no hostels nearby.  Price was my priority when booking, so once again, if you’re in the region, note that there may well be better places, although perhaps none so inexpensive.  But the rooms are lovely and spacious, and because of a last minute cancellation from one of our group, our snorer has his own room.  One thing that struck me about the room when we returned after a walk was that there are no windows, just a Velux skylight, so there was little ventilation and no means of shutting out the light.

Dinner was taken in the very pleasant Gordon Arms hotel at the end of the high street.  It was steak night, so several of our party enjoyed steaks, but I was more than happy with my Balmoral Chicken.  I’m trying to cut down on food miles, and I assumed that my chicken had walked it from the Balmoral Estate, although I may have been wrong.

The route for our walk afterwards was suggested by the barman in the Tavern.  We were directed towards a local viewpoint, but after half a mile I was expressing doubts about the direction.  Viewpoints should be on a hill, right?  So why were we heading downhill?  After abandoning the aim to find the viewpoint, we then tried to find the Speyside Way, with a similar lack of success.  The area looked looking suspiciously like a dogging site (so someone mentioned: I wouldn’t know) and I’m sure that the midges which were congregating would have caused some issues if it were true.  The area had little to recommend it, so I went back to read a book whilst the rest of the group went to sample more whiskies.

Wednesday 5th June 2024 

Yesterday, knowing where I was staying last night, a friend texted to ask “How was the soup?”.  It took a Google search before I found out what he clearly knew (and I didn’t) was that Fochabers’ main claim to fame is to host the huge Baxter’s food factory just outside the town.  However, even cycling within a few hundred metres of the site, no sign (visual, auditory or olfactory) alerted me of its presence.  I was expecting a road sign or an increase of heavy vehicles or even the great smell of scotch broth, but nothing.  I felt robbed.  So how was the soup?  I haven’t a scooby.

The cycling day started at 08.30 with a complicated first few miles navigating the excellent cycle paths out of town before heading off on minor roads to visit Lossiemouth.  This town (and huge RAF airbase) wasn’t on the initial route, although I personally wanted to visit it again, knowing it to be a lovely town.  At 8am, two of the group asked whether we could divert there, since it was only six miles off course, so I readily agreed and drew up an alternative route.  I really enjoyed seeing the place again, although it was too early (and too cold) for an ice cream (I’d recalled that there were three ice cream shops in a row on the front). 

I cycled past the Typhoon air base before heading South to Elgin, which was also on my list of places to visit.  Somehow, though, when I re-joined the original route, I’d managed to by-pass the town centre and its famous ruined cathedral, so I never saw it.  I was very disappointed, but didn’t feel I could drag everyone back to see it. I already knew that the town had lost its marbles years ago, so I never bothered looking for them.

Sometimes the raw numbers of a ride do not describe the true picture. Today’s trip of 70 miles with 3,000 feet of climbing at 12 mph average sounds like a doddle.  However, once you add in 7.3kg of luggage, rain, hail, a stiff 12-15mph headwind with temperatures dropping to 6°C the story changes.  An additional feature was that this was done wearing shorts and summer cycling mitts!  Any stops required 5 minutes for my hands to thaw out before I could function.

We stopped at a farm shop just outside Kinloss for food.  The café area was large, but very popular, and there were no tables left when we turned up.  The staff very kindly suggested that we could eat at a table in the kiddies’ play area which was OK, but rather unusual and led to a few raised eyebrows from some of the mums there. 

The weather was dry when we entered, but a heavy rain storm occurred as we were eating, so although the bikes copped it we were OK.  It was our turn to get wet when we were just outside Forres.  During the downpour, three of us sheltered under a tree for ten minutes which led to the four in front to wonder where we were and to send out a scouting party to find us.  It’s good to know that we were missed.

At 50 miles we faced our only climb of the day.  Here the road rose over 1,000 feet along an old military road and went directly into the wind.  At this point, despite the cold, my ears were burning as the others began muttering about the route planner taking them over a hill just as they thought they were home and dry.  There were also retrospective grumblings about the 12 mile detour at the start just to see some closed ice-cream shops.  But in my defence, everyone can now claim to have been to the seaside on this trip; an important aspect of any holiday in my view.  At least I wasn’t in charge of the weather.

We hadn’t booked any food in Inverness.  “It’ll be fine”, they said. “It’s a big city with loads of restaurants!”. However, finding somewhere which can take seven covers, sells good beer, inexpensive food, and ideally have live music cruelly limited our choice.  After a few false starts, we settled on the Revolution bar, which had room for seven.  To be honest, it was almost empty, but it did market itself as a cocktail bar, and so it was perhaps a bit early for the revellers to have arrived.  Once settled, we then discovered that it didn’t sell ale, there was no music and once I’d decided on having a pizza, I was told that they didn’t have any dough, so pizzas (and many other things) were off the menu.  I enjoyed my meal, but afterwards I decided to pass on the pub crawl round town looking for live music bars.  I don’t know what I missed, and the others didn’t tell me.  What goes on tour stays on tour.

Thursday 6^th June 2024 

Well, what a day this has turned out to be!  I thought the weather yesterday was cold, but what did I know?  To be fair, the weather wasn’t all that bad for the Scottish mountains in February.  Except that now we were in June, and not all that high up (<1,000 feet).  Whenever I’ve gone hiking in mountains previously, I’ve always been aware of the dangers of exposure and taken appropriate actions to prevent it.  I think today was the only time I’ve ever felt threatened by exposure when I was on a bike.

The morning started fine with a six-mile climb straight out of Inverness in dry conditions.  The temperature was around 10°C after ten miles but then over 15 minutes, it dropped to 5°C.  We were only about 500 feet so we couldn’t blame the altitude.  And then the rain began, making conditions even more grim.  The café where I had planned to stop for a coffee was at 21 miles but before we reached there, conditions worsened still further.  The rain turned to hail and the mercury fell down close to zero. 

My Garmin failed at this point, probably affected by the water.  Its display screen began to show all manner of data which I didn’t recognise, so I put it into my pocket to keep it dry; it was reading 2°C at that time.  We had all been sheltering beneath trees at various points on the way which was OK for keeping a bit dryer, but then the cold began to soak into our bodies, and keeping moving in the rain and hail became a preferable option to keep ourselves warm.

We regrouped with one mile to go to the café at Tomatin and at that time I decided that if the café wasn’t open, I would call on a random house and ask for shelter.  I was that cold and wet and becoming desperate.  As it turned out, the café was open and I was able to eventually get warm over hot cups of tea (and liberal use of the hand-dryer in the gents).  It was fully five minutes before my fingers had sufficient feeling and grip to undo the strap of my cycle helmet.  I say this about me, but all seven of us were in the same boat.  Goodness only knows what may have happened should any of us have suffered a mechanical breakdown.  There’s no way I could have repaired a puncture in those conditions.

I was in the café for perhaps an hour before I had warmed sufficiently to re-start the ride, although I was still very wet.  Once I set off, my Garmin had lost all of my personalised settings, and even deleted my profile, but still seemed to continue recording.   At the finish, my ride showed that I’d done about a mile less than everyone else, which was perhaps the bit cycling into Tomatin.

Amazingly, as we were thawing out in the café, the sun came out, and the view from the window was beautiful. It was hard to imagine just how bad conditions were just an hour beforehand.

I reached the highest point of the day at 24 miles and then enjoyed a pleasant ride down from Inverness to Aviemore.  The brisk wind soon dried off my clothes. Looking back on the day, the climbing wasn’t too steep, and the wind less of a problem than I anticipated, but that middle bit – well, I’ll never forget it.  Now that I have survived, I will no doubt enjoy the retelling of it, but I think on balance I’d have preferred not to have experienced any of it in the first place.

Another thing I’ll never forget is that three people in our group (who’d all experienced exactly the same thing) looked me in the eyes and asked very seriously if I was alright.  For the first two, I just said ‘Yes, I’m fine’, but when the third person asked I said ‘I think so. Why do you ask?’ he said, ‘Well, you’re shivering uncontrollably’.  I felt very grateful that I was amongst such good and caring friends, and simultaneously guilty because I hadn’t asked the same of anyone else.  Perhaps I’m just not a good person.

I’m presently reading a book by Paulo Coehlo and tonight, a quote jumped out at me; “…after all, to live means to take risks”.  Very apt, I thought.

After our (as I thought) life-threatening experience, we continued on to Grantown-on-Spey (with a tailwind) where we popped into a café for a late lunch.  Well, it wasn’t late when we arrived, but the service was so slow, we spent well over an hour there.  The food, once it arrived, was excellent.

One other memorable moment from today included cycling for a while down the A9. This road is really a motorway in all but name, and for much of its length, there is a cycle path running alongside it, often making use of the ‘old’ road after the new dual carriageway was built to straighten out many of the bends and flatten the humps. Thankfully, the stretch that we cycled along was fairly quiet, downhill and only half a mile long.

We arrived in Aviemore at 4.30 where Dave had to leave us, since he has this thing he calls a ‘job’ and every so often, he has to go to meetings.  One such was in London on Friday, so after a shower and a change of clothes he shot off to catch a train back to Pitlochry leaving the remaining six to find a restaurant in town.

We chose a pleasant venue (with a stupid name – the Skiing Doo) which served huge portions, which we thought would suit us well, but the portions were so large that none of us managed to finish our meals.  That’s really not like cyclists.  (Does hypothermia cause loss of appetite?  Or was it just the late lunch?)

Overall, since none of us died, I can declare the day a success, and one that none of us will forget for a while.  There aren’t many photographs from today, and any of me will probably be blurred due to my shivering.

Friday 7^th June 2024

Our last cycling day.  :-(. 

I was reassuring my friends this morning by describing today’s route to them.  It’s just 60 miles, with (probably) a cross wind for the first 35 miles, then a strong tailwind home.  The good news (I said) was that there was only one climb today which starts at 15 miles and ends after 35 miles.  For some reason, this last bit of information didn’t cheer up any of them.

Anyway, the first section was on very pleasant, quiet roads, many through forests with red squirrels.  The rain was infrequent and light, so wasn’t a problem and the trees provided shelter from the wind. 

We stopped for a break at the Highland Folk Museum just outside Kingussie before the climb began, where Jim embarrassed himself by letting us all into the café through a locked gate rather than coming through the proper entrance.  Well, the gate wasn’t actually locked, but clearly should have been.  Thankfully the museum was free to enter, so it’s not like we were sneaking in without paying.  We satisfied the staff by taking care to exit through the entrance once we left.

Near the summit, we called into the Dalwhinnie distillery where some more whisky tasting went on, even leading to a sale.  The onward journey was taken very steadily, since the value of goods in the panniers had substantially increased.

Overall, the long climb was very gentle and even with the brisk crosswind, we were soon at the summit of the Drumochter Pass and ready for the most terrific descent.  Fifteen miles riding on super-smooth tarmac with a tailwind on a dedicated cycle track beside the A9 brought smiles to everyone’s faces.  It only took a few moments’ effort to scrape the dead midges off our teeth at the end. 

A late lunch at the House of Bruar was close to the end of the cycling week.  The venue appeared to be targeting a better class of customer than us; well, at least customers with bigger wallets than us.  It offered a fantastic selection of foods including lobster, crab and langoustine but I just had soup and a hunk of crusty bread.  Many of the others chose to abuse the salad bar, overloading their bowls substantially. well, there’re barely any calories in salad, so they needed to pile it up high.

Once we were back in Pitlochry, I rescued the car from its home for the week on a gravel car park besides a play area and parked at the hostel.  I then went for a walk to see the Pitlochry dam which was beside a huge hydro-electric power station which had a salmon ladder. I didn’t see any salmon.  Perhaps they were all on the fish counter at the House of Bruar restaurant?

We had decided earlier in the week that Friday would be curry night, so the Prince of India was selected for the final meal.  This Bangladeshi restaurant was ideal for the final night where we could share the food among the group.  The next venue was a large pub which was showing the Scotland vs. Finland football match so I sat silently through that and kept my own council.  England were also playing Iceland that evening (and lost) and so I was finally able to give my own insights on the match. If they lost to Iceland, what chance would they have against the bigger teams like Sainsbury and Tesco?  At that point, I left the party and went back to the hostel to read a book and relax.

For me, the tour was a great success.  I have now coloured in a lot of the area around the Grampians which I had ridden before Strava, but actually, there was only a five mile stretch of road before Blair Atholl which I knew I’d ridden before.  Coincidentally, the Strava segments on that stretch shows that I rode that stretch on 7^th June 2014, ten years ago to the day!  Overall, including the pre-tour ride, I covered 343 miles and climbed almost 16,000 feet.  There were seven (and later six) of us riding this week and in total, I estimate that collectively we cycled nearly 2,200 miles during the week and had no punctures and barely any mechanical troubles. Ian did break a spoke in his rear wheel, but never noticed until we’d finished, so does that really count as mechanical trouble? It didn’t cause any inconvenience. Veloviewer enthusiasts may be interested to note that I also picked up about 470 new tiles.  There was a slight overlap with previous rides, but not much.  Overall, this has felt very much like the old Prestwick Cycle Challenge rides which were always at this time of year with a similar group of people.  Now all that’s left of the tour is just the 260 mile drive home tomorrow.