Weather: grey
Miles: 35.04
We headed down the road to last night’s pub for breakfast, but the door was locked so we had to look hungrily through the window at the B&B people gorging themselves until one of them took pity and let us in. Trainwreck popped by to bid us farewell and gave Tom some homemade whisky barrel shaped valve caps as he’d got a puncture when we met them the day before. Once we’d paid up according to the random and cheap pricing structure (I think it only existed in the barmaids head) we popped back to the hostel and readied our steeds, the wardens even came out to see us off! The Scots may claim to be inventors of many clever things but they’re not so good at street signs, this did give us the opportunity to get a piccy of Paul on “Firemans Lane”.
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| Fireman Paul |
The first stretch of the ride was an easy spin up Glen Avon, starting on tarmac with an accidental detour which unfortunately people noticed, including some confusing automatic gates that didn’t want to open, so we went through the side gate, at which point they decided to open then didn’t show any sign of closing. We left them open after the farm boy told me they were automatic.
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| Glen Avon |
Glen Avon continued for many miles, at Inchrory we passed the sissy track to Braemar and headed into the unknown on a good landrover track, weaving up and down the hillside above the river. We saw a few groups of rich people in 4x4s along the way, including some fishermen standing in the river; I think they were probably surprised to see bikers in “their” valley.
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| More Glen Avon |
It was lunchtime before we got to the end of the track at Faindouran Lodge although I managed to choose an unbreezy spot and the midges herded us onwards after one sandwich.
The way became increasingly difficult with a boggy track weaving round a sea of stones. It was much easier to ride off piste then try and follow the tyre tracks through the bog. The valley thinned until the track was forced up the side, meaning we had a bit of pushing. Before I expected it the track became rideable again, clinging to the steep sides, soon the valley opened out again to reveal the shelter at the Fords of Avon and a bit more pushing. We lazed around the midge free shelter for a while then had a cool wade through the fords.
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| Fords Of Avon |
Our destination was the Lairig an Laoigh, only 40m or so climb over a few km, which I told everyone would be rideable. The track started off OK, a bit boggy and some challenging boulder hopping moves, eventually the boulders got a big bigger and we had to get off and drag the bikes, reminiscent of the horrors of the Lairig Ghru. Thankfully it didn’t last long and the last stretch to the col was rideable, revealing the expanse of Glen Derry.
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| Lairig an Laoigh |
As promised the downhill was rideable (if you didn’t have drainage ditch fear) and got more flowy lower down. As the gradient eased the trail got faster with drainage ditches compete with bike friendly bypasses.
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| Upper Glen Derry |
The trail forked and we crossed over the river, climbed a wee bit then hit a little slice of gnarly, rooty, rocky, twisty singletrack downhill heaven through the Scots pines (on this section I didn’t have time to fear the drainage ditches). The fun continued until we dropped into the back of Derry Lodge.
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| Glen Derry singletrack |
To finish the day we picked up a few miles of express fireroads (with a cheeky climb) to take us to the road. From the road it was a few miles to Braemar via the rather posh Mar Lodge and Victoria Bridge.
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| Mar Lodge |
In town we met up with Dawn and set to some coffee drinking outside a posh hotel in the town centre hotel whilst we were waiting for the bunkhouse to open, the sight of Andrea and Julia all covered in slart caused one woman to pull a classic face of disgust. The bunkhouse was all ours for the night and nicely appointed. Dawn had brought all sorts of edible goodies for us from work and was cooking for the ladies so the rest of us searched town for somewhere nice for tea and ended up in a twee tea shop with a good selection of bottled ale. None of the pubs served proper beer so we all ended up in a hotel bar drinking John Smiths with the Shearings brigade.
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