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Scottish Coast to Coast (Many Pictures)
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Posted 7 years ago
As always, it’s been a while since I’ve started a thread on the site but thought I’d share enough pictures from our recent trip to bore the life out of you. This was our 5th Scottish coast to coast adventure and our 6th unique crossing of the country (One year was a C2C2C!).
Our start point this year was Glenelg, where we had our traditional foot/finger/bike in the water before setting off round the hilly coast road to Corran.
Next it was time for some offroad, starting with a steep push above the River Arnisdale:
After many undulations, the height was all lost in a steep and loose wild descent down to Kinloch Hourn, before being regained in a road climb from the bay.
Loch Quoich.
The route plan had us going back offroad at the end of Loch Poulary, but a mutiny from the crew who were worried about missing dinner had two of us shoot off ahead to Invergarry to make sure we didn’t go hungry!
The next morning had us enjoying some easy riding along the Great Glen Way, before turning off for Glen Spean with a wee bit of singletrack cutting off the corner at the Commando Memorial and dropping us into Spean Bridge.
After a restock of snacks and stuff to cook for breakfast, it was time for some proper mountains!
After much sweaty climbing, we reached Lairig Leacach Bothy.
As we proceeded towards Loch Treig, the path gradually degraded.
With time pressing, thoughts turned to dinner as usual, but this time I was to push on alone to get us some dinner from the Corrour Station restaurant. Loch Treig flew past and I made it to Loch Ossian with barely enough time to check in to the hostel, make the beds, ride to the station, order food, have two drinks and take some pictures, before the stragglers rolled in demanding sustenance. The food was beautiful too, well worth the effort!
After a night listening to the loudest snoring man on the planet, we were up bright and early to go and take a look at the new track which appeared to have been built from the loch towards Rannoch Station. I had been expecting this section to be rough and take a while, but the whole stretch had been rebuilt right the way through, with some seriously high speeds reached on the descent towards Rannoch.
Next up was some easy riding along Loch Rannoch to Craiganour Lodge, where we turned North towards Loch Garry. More straightforward hill tracks followed, with a short hike/bike section at the watershed. Here again, there appeared to be lots of hydroelectric work going on of some sort. Once past Loch Garry, it was just a matter of turning right and following the A9 cycle path down to Calvine, giving ourselves an extremely early finish for once!
Day started with an easy cruise along to Blair Atholl to stock up on food, before climbing up towards Beinn a Ghlo, at which point someone took a rare picture of me.
The first target was Shinagag, before starting a climb up and out of the glen, with a lovely lunch break in the sun.
A speedy downhill to Glen Fearnach was next, where some people were far too keen to be back on tarmac.
So keen in fact, that another mutiny was hatched and I was left to do the climb over to Spittal of Glenshee on my own whilst they had a mad dash on flat roads to get dinner and not be beaten by me going the long way round to Glen Isla.
The climb on the Cateran Trail was long and steady, with only the last section causing me to have a wee push to the summit.
The bulk of the descent was pretty rough, especially on the churned up grassy sections, making me glad of the extra comfort of suspension.
Next was a quick road ride down and across to Glen Isla, unfortunately being narrowly beaten by the roadies. The great food in the hotel made up for my loss though.
We were up handy the next morning, as we had a fair distance to cover to Stonehaven and Stu had a train to catch home to Inverness. We got some easy miles in the bag on quiet roads as we headed to Edzell for lunch.
A bit further on and we finally got offroad again in Drumtochty for a loooong climb up into the forest.
It was hot and sweaty, so we stopped to look at the wind farm and enjoyed some breeze on mainly downhill tracks through Fetteresso Forest.
We popped out near the top of the Stonehaven half marathon route, meaning more downhill cruising towards the town, which was waiting to greet us with a thick wall of haar for our troubles. Plenty of time for victory photos, before heading back uphill to the station for the train to Aberdeen.
Anyone who made it this far down, thanks for persevering!
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