Saturday – Blair Atholl to Kingussie

Weather: sunny/overcast

Miles: 37.21

We were up bright and early, leaving the hostel at 8am for the short drive to Blair Atholl. We abandoned the cars at the Old Bridge of Tilt, faffed a bit then headed off up the estate road into Glen Tilt. Glen Tilt goes on a bit but the track is easy going and the towering heather clad hills and meltwater scoured river take your mind off the numb body parts.

Glen Tilt

We steamed past Marble Lodge and Forest Lodge and just as the track started to climb out of the valley we took an offshoot and hit the first singletrack of the holiday taking us to the suspension bridge over the Falls of Tarf.

Bedford Memorial Bridge, Falls Of Tarf

From the bridge we continued up the technical but not too steep climb that clings to the edge of the Allt Garbh Buidhe ravine (don’t fall in). At the other end of the ravine the landscape opens out and the trail traverses the flood plain for a while. The next stretch introduced us to the joys of water channels, unfortunately Andrea and Andy misjudged their hops and ended up with punctures, introducing us all to the joys of midges.

Allt Garbh Buidhe

The singletrack eventually turns into an old estate road that took us past the ruin of Bynack Lodge and through the Bynack and Geldie Burns, which Tom took the opportunity to sit in. Along the way we met another group of bikers with touring tyres and panniers going in the opposite direction, not sure they would be enjoying the singletrack as much as us. We picked another landrover track that followed the Geldie Burn upstream and had lunch by a ford.

Fording the Geldie Burn

As the track headed towards the ruins of Geldie Lodge we peeled off onto technical singletrack crossing into Glen Feshie. This started off nice and rocky but got a bit boggy towards the watershed with the bog munster claiming Paul at one point. The trail crossed the River Eidart on a reassuringly solid metal bridge just above a spectacular set of waterfalls, taking us into Glen Feshie proper and the fabled singletrack.

Glen Feshie singletrack

The upper Glen Feshie singletrack weaves around the landrover track, providing rocky puddle splashing fun through the heather. When we reached the valley floor we kept to the east bank using stony and grassy landrover tracks and a couple of traverses over landslides to avoid fording the river. A little more singletrack across the moraine moguls took us to the bridge near Achleum where the ladies were treated to the spectacle of an old chap unashamedly stripping off and diving in the river.

Glen Feshie

Across the river we hit tarmac for the first time in 30 miles and picked up fireroads for the final offroad stretch through Inshriach Forest past Baileguish to Drumguish. Anlong the way we crossed paths with a large group of cyclists with matching lycra and weird accents (more of them later). A few miles of road cruise took us to Kingussie (a twee chav infested town) and the bunkhouse for 4 o’clock.

Baileguish

The Laird’s Bothy was clean enough but had noisy metal stairs and most of us ended up with a cold shower (the grumpy man we met said he’d had 3 days of cold showers but the owners told us the boiler had turned itself off). We couldn’t get an early table in the posh hotel (or maybe we were too scruffy) so we ate in a fawlty towers-esque hotel with a poor overworked barwoman, the beer choice was dismal but the food was fine and I went for the double carbs option of lasagne and chips.