Issue 156 – Arran’ a good time – Singletrack World Magazine

Amanda, Rhys and James are reunited for further confirmation that ‘enduro-packing’ is a great idea.

WORDS AMANDA PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES VINCENT

I am spreadeagled on a rock slab. James is holding my right arm and taking half of my weight and Rhys’ fist is hooked around my left upper thigh taking the rest of it. Time stands still for a moment and I try to process the gravity of the situation. If I fall, it’s definitely going to hurt at the very least. Worst case is that I continue falling for about one hundred vertical metres. If James lets go, Rhys is coming with me. If Rhys lets go, I’m taking James down. My left hand is flailing around looking for something to grasp, and my feet are pointed up to the sky being totally redundant. I breathe my stomach out as far as I can to see if more contact with the rock makes me feel safer, but I lose stomach traction through my laughter. Why am I laughing? Is this actually as perilous as it seems?

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“ENGAGE YOUR FEET!” Rhys’ urgency cuts through my internal dialogue and reminds me that this is, in fact, a bit risky. The fact he’s also laughing assures me that we might not die.

“I’m going to have to let go,” James admits, and I dramatically exclaim that he can’t ever let go. I feel Rhys grabbing my ankles and forcing my feet onto the rock, I look up at James and he doesn’t look very stable. I lift my feet back into the air because I’m so disorientated that it feels like the right thing to do. James lets go.

No More Tears

I’ve kept it no secret that one of two things will happen on a bike ride with James Vincent. I either cry, or I have a hissy fit about carrying my bike instead of riding it. The tears tend to come through exhaustion from being tested to my absolute limit on Lake District tech, but we’re not going to the Lakes this time. I’ve also been swinging a kettlebell around throughout winter, so I’m almost looking forward to the inevitable hikeabike just to show how resilient and independent I’ve become.

Back in issue 138, James, Rhys and I went on our first-ever bikepacking trip together and the story went down as well as the actual adventure did. We’ve been making noises about doing part two ever since – more ambitious, yet with better planning. Realistically, there’s a limit to how ambitious we can be for an overnighter, given the amount of kit needed to be safe in the mountains with the added weight of camping and camera gear, so the answer is to go on a longer adventure. To cut short a six-month-long WhatsApp conversation – we’ve chosen to go to the Isle of Arran, and in the process chosen to ignore Hannah’s warnings of how the weather there is so unstable that we may not even find a running ferry.

Who You Gonna Call?

On the drive to the ferry port in Ardrossan, there’s a maintenance worker on the hard shoulder of the motorway in a full Hazmat suit spraying what I assume is weed killer along the verge. I queue Ghostbusters to come up next on Spotify, which leads to James and me belting it out at full volume, dancing away on the passenger bench of the van while Rhys tries to focus on driving. Shortly after, on a come down from such a joyous occurrence, I wonder if we’re going to have as memorable a trip as last time. One ascent of Helvellyn versus a long weekend on Arran should offer plenty of opportunity for a good tale. I just hope we have a good time.

Ardrossan to Brodick

We park up at Ardrossan ferry port and there’s a mad rush of activity as I give James all the bike bags, tent and sleeping equipment he’s borrowing, and he hands me the bike that I’m borrowing. I guess our plan to be better prepared has failed already since I get a bike I’ve never ridden before and he hasn’t test-fitted the baggage to his. As it turns out, if you get the right tools for the job it’s hard to go wrong, and he’s got his bags on in no time. While we’re faffing, Rhys checks the weather forecast and decides that now is the time to shave off his winter beard. So he does… in the car park…

The Ardrossan ferry terminal is an absolute breeze to navigate by bike. There’s a sign for cyclists to Wait here for boarding and you’re guaranteed to spot some touring bikes parked by it. We join the back of a healthy queue of bikes and start comparing luggage. For our enduro bikes, we’ve all had the pleasure of borrowing a full set of ORTLIEB waterproof bags in the form of a QR saddle bag which is dropper-post-friendly, a 9L Handlebar pack (or in James’ case, a 15L Handlebar pack) and an Atrack 25L backpack. The touring bikes we’ve parked behind all have ORTLIEB panniers that look weathered, loved and relied on. Such different bikes and baggage, yet we’re all just cyclists hoping for a smooth crossing and some sunshine on the other side for our differing adventures.

The plan is to ride north along Glenrosa Water, an off-road path along the river, along the ridgeline between Cìr Mhòr and Caisteal Abhail and down to Lochranza, where we’ve booked a campsite. Wild camping is legal in Scotland, but as part of our plan to ride on multiple days, we have decided we want access to a shower.

Brodick to…?

At Brodick, we reluctantly push our bikes down the ferry ramp that we all really want to ride off and do a quick bag check in the sun, and gosh, it’s really warm. I didn’t bring any short-sleeved tops due to the chilly forecast, but I’m already regretting it and wondering if my long-sleeved merino is tatty enough to just cut the arms off.

Having realised nobody has any snacks, we ride to the first of many Co-op food shops along the coast and cram as many sweets as we can into the remaining spaces in our bags. We don’t need food for the evening as we’re staying at a campsite with at least two pubs nearby, and there are so many Co-ops here it would be silly to carry everything over a mountain.

In less than 3km of riding, we’re at the start of our river path. The ease of rolling off the ferry and onto a trail with multiple food shops in between makes me feel safe and prepared. We’re winning. The sun is out, the ground is dry, this bike fits me, the bags all fit well, we’ve got a hot shower and a secure campsite waiting for us, James is hopping around with a camera in his hand repeatedly muttering: “I can’t believe the weather. I cannot believe this weather.” Rhys looks like F1 driver turned gravel pro Valtteri Bottas with his new car park facial hair; it’s all adding up to be quite overwhelmingly perfect.

Glen Rosa river path is stunning. In the far distance, you have a striking view of Cìr Mhòr, a very sharp mountain with an obvious saddle to the right. Goatfell is teasing into view back there too, and directly to our right, there are multiple blue plunge pools just begging me to jump in. I suggest a swim, but neither James nor Rhys are keen yet since we have a very long way to go before Lochranza. It’s also very hard to tear ourselves away from this path as it gradually ramps up in technicality.

As we near the inevitable hikeabike up the ridgeline we begin to consider the shorter route of going up and over the saddle, since there are some clouds rolling in and this route has already taken us longer than anticipated. During our deliberations, a fell runner hurtles effortlessly toward us through a host of boulders and ruts. He asks where we’re headed, and upon hearing our thoughts on the saddle he looks sceptical and suggests we stick to the original plan. He tells us the saddle requires three points of contact with the ground, both up and down it. There’s further discussion once he’s set off into his tenth hour of running, but we decide to go for the saddle as it is significantly shorter in distance, and using a bike as a walking pole isn’t something we’re inexperienced in.

Saddles Are for Walking

Part-way up our hike, two young guys dressed like they’ve just come from a heavy metal gig stop to chat. Since they’ve clearly just come from the direction of the saddle, we ask what they think of us taking bikes down it. Some shrugs, exchanging positive glances and vague nods are all the assurance we need that it will go, so we settle into the hike (with no complaints, I might add), and try to keep hydrated as the sun steals our energy.

If you have ever ridden in Torridon and enjoyed the huge, smooth limestone field, you’d love the saddle of Cìr Mhòr. It’s much the same – big rolling rocks with infinite grip, only as you get closer to the end of the formation here the valley ahead opens out and makes you feel so tiny that you might need to hug the earth just to get your consciousness back where it belongs. What stands out the most is the ’end of the world’ feeling you get standing here as the descent isn’t visible. It’s like standing on a cliff edge.

Stuck in Limbo

I’m not sure how I got into this position on the rock slab, and I’m even less sure of how I’m going to get out of it. Rhys fell quite a way down the rocks with his bike on his lap and scrambled back up to help/save me. I have a word with myself and deploy my five-second rule that I only need in really dire situations: commit to a move and execute it within five seconds of choosing it. I have to do this or else I’d forever be stuck on stepping stones in a stream not knowing where to put my foot next, or at the top of a steep chute on a trail holding people up. So the decision to get ground contact with my toes, let go of James and lunge toward Rhys all at once is about to be actioned, and James lets go of me anyway. I survive, we laugh, we stress about the next part, and this process is repeated for almost two hours until we’re back on ridable ground. As it turns out, the grown-up fell runner was the one to listen to.

The rest of the route down to the road in Sannox on the east of the island would be great fun with a fresh pair of legs and no time restraint, but we’ve kind of run out of time to make it to Lochranza, so our enjoyment is hindered by a need to make a new plan. We decide to eat dinner somewhere and then wild camp, and revel in the fact we have all our camping gear right here with us.

Sannox to China

There is nowhere to eat. No Co-op food shops, no takeaways, nothing. Not even an emergency hotel with bar food. We scour the internet for a solution, and it seems that the only one is to ride all the way back around to Brodick on the road. It’s either that, or camp here with no evening meal, no breakfast, and a long journey to sustenance in the morning. So we commence a coastal time-trial on our huge bikes with chunky tyres and not a sliver of aerodynamics to assist us, and we don’t stop pedalling until we get to the Chinese takeaway with a warm and inviting red glow coming from the logo.

We sit on a bench in the dark and tuck into our gourmet meal. I’m not sure if it’s the chef or the desperation of the situation, but this is the best Chinese I’ve ever had. Between mouthfuls, we conclude that sleeping on a grassy verge near the Chinese isn’t ideal, and recall passing a really nice-looking campsite at the beginning of today’s route.

Glen Rosa

The sun has a big stretch of its rays and finally finds us. This doesn’t deliver a gradual warm-up – it’s immediate and I’m instantly too warm. I take my bobble hat off first, like taking the lid off a boiling pot, and try not to make too much noise as I do so. I don’t want anyone to think I’m awake yet. I’m still too hot so I gently open my sleeping bag and a chorus of zippers gives the game away – we’re all awake. So I might as well get up and make a brew.

We arrived here in the dark – not the lame Yorkshire dark where you can still see outlines – it was Arran dark where you can see only stars and whatever your headtorch is aimed at. We appear to have set up camp on a perfectly flat spot near the river with a toilet block not too far away. This wasn’t part of the plan; however, this mishap has been executed perfectly.

The topic of conversation over coffee is whether or not to leave our tents set up here and, with the bulk of the weight off the bikes, do an out and back up to the summit of Goatfell. Goatfell is the most popular or well-known mountain on Arran, and an article by Sanny in 2018 suggested it’s very rideable and very good. After much deliberation, we decide to ride to the Lochranza campsite as directly as possible, set up camp, dump the bags and ride some of the coastal trails today while we recover from yesterday’s hikeabike-up-and-back-down-again.

Lochranza

Lochranza campsite is a stone’s throw from Arran distillery, on the north of the island nestled deep in hills that completely shelter any indication of there being a coast nearby. This campsite is far less rustic than the honesty box style of Glen Rosa, and after I’ve been shown the microwaves, fridges, showers and laundry room, we choose a nice spot to call home for the night and put the tents up in the sunshine.

Realising that loading the saddle and bar bags up with camping gear is the enabler for spontaneous decisions, I lose any aversion I previously had to riding a fully loaded mountain bike. I do love bikepacking, but I thought of myself as a credit card bikepacker when it came to mountain bikes because, in theory, you can’t fully enjoy the ride with bags on. But it’s simply not true – if anything it’s far more enjoyable taking yourself to a new place, following your nose and the weather forecast, and knowing you have everything you need for a good night’s sleep. That said, I’m really looking forward to a pedal out with just the top tube Fuel-Pack full of snacks and a bit less pedal power required.

The Best Ten Minutes of Rhys’ Life

Straight out of the campsite is a path that gently climbs up and over the saddle between two hills, and takes you all the way to the coast. The contour lines on the map are very close together between this path and the campsite, and on the way up we see multiple trail entrances that look like they go straight back to valley bottom through a series of jumps, moguls, fallen tree drops and loamy heathers. We’ve spread out almost immediately due to varying energy levels, Rhys ahead as always and James still carrying the weight of all his camera gear further back with me.

Rhys has stopped. He’s off his bike and pointing at the side of the trail. As we regroup, he calls out: “Snake! Oh my god, it’s a f***ing adder. It’s a black adder!”

He’s very giddy but stays calm enough to guide our eyes to the aforementioned snake. James and I naively stand and gawp at it, impressed with his snake identification skills but completely unaware that it’s the only venomous snake in the UK until he tells us so. James asks him several times if he’s serious, and finally accepts the truth, but the conversation abruptly moves on when Rhys finds a freshly cut deer antler. He grabs it, holds it to the sky and we all celebrate the find. But wait! Another adder. And then another…

Rhys attaches the antler to the straps on James’ backpack, while stating this has been the best ten minutes of any bike ride he’s ever had. We’re all really excited and stay together for the remainder of the climb to discuss the snakes and how the antler must be fresh because the end was all soggy and it was in such an obvious place, one of the walkers up ahead would surely have seen it.

As we reach the top, the sea finally comes into view. It takes a moment to process what I’m seeing because the water is so perfectly still it seems to be just a continuation of the sky. The water is like glass – there’s not a single ripple. We’ve got huge patches of heather and gorse surrounding us, the gorse filling the air with a sweet coconutty smell that instantly makes you think of summer holidays, and a very long descent going down to the right with, seemingly, no perilous features. Just a fast, classic mountain bike trail of grassy mounds, tame rock gardens and a steep drop down the left-hand side.

The trail all the way down to sea level is fantastic, just fast and flowy with the most incredible view of the coast. Just before the end, it becomes extremely technical with a qualifying rock drop into some very tight and steep switchbacks. I have to push to the part I want to start on, and really commit to the exit onto the beach as there’s a challenging boulder problem to navigate.

Bad Choices Make Good Stories

At this point of the ride, if we could see into the future we would pedal straight back up the descent and take one of the many off-piste trails down to the camp that we spotted on the way up. But with a lack of crystal balls or local knowledge, we decide to take the coastal path around to the Lochranza Country Inn. This is, in all honesty, the second toughest hikeabike I’ve ever done, despite the overall gradient being 0%. There has clearly been a landslide of some sort, and the path is buried by gigantic boulders with no way around them. We struggle, our recovering carrying muscles no longer in recovery, but in a harsh contrast to the scramble we find the trail at the other side of the boulder field to be one of the nicest paths we’ve ridden, simply because we can actually ride it.

Isle of Arran

The Lochranza Country Inn has a beer garden in the sun that overlooks the boats on Loch Ranza, and a fantastic food menu with plenty of options for a range of dietary preferences. They have Wainwrights on tap, which happens to be what the three of us drank before our ascent of Helvellyn on our last trip, so we merrily put the day to rest and discuss tomorrow’s plan. James bumps into an old friend who arrived here by boat, just to add to the series of memories that might challenge us to think that we’ve been daydreaming for most of the afternoon and eventually, we pedal the short distance back to the campsite for a whisky nightcap, purchased earlier from the distillery.

Tucking into bed after hushed giggles about how ridiculously beautiful this island is, and how many memories we’ve already made, I feel so content that I’d happily just have a lie-in tomorrow and then a chilled day at the beach. I do wonder if they’ll remember that we’ve agreed to go up Goatfell before catching our late afternoon ferry.

We’re Going to Need More Coffee

Fortunately, this campsite is sheltered from the morning sun, so I don’t wake up in an oven hours earlier than planned. I do, however, wake up feeling like we can achieve a lot today so I get up and out to make coffee far earlier than I’d usually be capable of. I know that James is very keen to go up Goatfell for many reasons, but the main one is that these clear skies are unheard of. So I’m going to try my best to make it happen for him.

Our morning is relaxed; none of us have bothered to use the showers we were so keen to have access to but we have used the on-site kettle after running out of gas for our third brew. We pedal to the castle and waste a good amount of time taking a photo with the drone, then continue on to The Sandwich Station and waste no time ordering huge breakfasts that could fuel a full day out. As we sit on the coast in the sun, sipping our fourth coffee, listening to the birds sing and watching the seals roast and baste themselves on the rocks, we almost forget we have a job to do. It’s just so easy to lose track of time here. It’s forced us to switch off, tune out and chill out.

Goatfell

Eventually, we make our way back toward Brodick to head up to Goatfell. On the road section, we get caught up in a running race. They’re really fast and while struggling to overtake the lead runner, in the opposite direction we see our fell runner from day one who waves and shouts hello. He must be thinking that we took his advice and didn’t go over the saddle, since we’re all still alive and fully functioning.

Thanks to yesterday’s coastal scramble we’re all aching, and decide to stash the bar and saddlebags in the woods at the bottom of the mountain. The ‘dark sand’ colourway makes them easy to hide, and I make a What3words note of where they are. From here, it’s a typical Munro ascent. It starts off pleasantly, winding through woodland, and ramps up to being very technically challenging until it finally is no longer pedalable. A German hiker coming down the path asks me if it’s a ‘good idea with the bicycle’. I act like it’s a great idea, but just below the surface, I’m craving an ice cream and some seal spotting.

As we gain more height there’s a cloud rolling in, threatening a light rain and disrupted views, and my resilience fades. I give up on the push at roughly 350m altitude out of a possible 874m. Rhys and James push on to around 650m, but also can’t face summiting this mountain on foot just to walk back down a large portion of it. It’s really not as rideable as some previous write-ups may suggest. Our descent back down is slow and awkward. Some of it goes well, but you really need to have a bit of flow into it, which is near impossible given the erosion along the path.

We remember to grab our bags, and a sense of relief hits me as I reattach them. They symbolise good choices and manageable adventure and dictate that I’m in commuting mode now, not death-gnar-seeking mode. We’re back to being on holiday. Back down on the coast, we’ve got some time to kill before the ferry, so we find a nice beer garden in the sun, take our pads and outer layers off, and enjoy front-row seats to watch the dark cloud as it envelops Goatfell. We escaped just in time.

Nobody Fell

Hindsight is a tricky thing. You could taint memories of a good time by thinking about what you could have done differently, and there’s no denying that we could have made better route choices. As we consider this, we recall all the funny things that happened, we admire the antler, we realise I haven’t cried once, and – even more surprising – nobody has had a crash. We look at the photos of the sun setting on the glassy water at the north of the island yesterday, and the photos of the castle today where we didn’t have a care in the world, and personally I don’t regret any of it. The act of carrying your bed around and choosing where to make it each day is so freeing, and allows you to chase the sun, or head for a certain trail you want to ride or sandwich shop you’d like to eat at. Follow your nose, your heart and the forecast, not a plan.

After several beers, we head for the ferry, and there’s some confusion at the terminal about which way to go. James takes a left, I continue straight and we collide, resulting in me falling off and somehow landing on both knees with such force I can’t hold back the tears. I guess Part Three of Enduropacking will be the one with no tears…

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Mark Alker

Singletrack Owner/Publisher

What Mark doesn’t know about social media isn’t worth knowing and his ability to balance “The Stack” is bested only by his agility on a snowboard. Graphs are what gets his engine revving, at least they would if his car wasn’t electric, and data is what you’ll find him poring over in the office. Mark enjoys good whisky, sci-fi and the latest Apple gadget, he is also the best boss in the world (Yes, he is paying me to write this).