Hi

Has anyone done this route?  www.theracingcollective.com/xduroscotland.html

Just back from the Capital Trail and looking for the next wee adventure, and this looks great.  Anyone done it, recommend a bike (XC mountain bike or CX bike?), two or three days, route finding easy enough, places to stay if not bivvying, anything else that would be useful to know?  Looks great but there doesn’t seem to be much out there about it!  Any advice or input welcome.

Many thanks, Fraser

Did their one day CotsDuro18, was great fun with a fab crowd. Dave of TRC visits these pages so may be along to answer.

ive done the xdurowales route an it was ace in a gravel bike.

Off to do the badger divide in a couple of weeks, which i think is pretty much xduroscotland.

yep – pretty sure its the badger divide route.  Breaks into three quite well with stops at Fort Augustus (Morag’s), Loch Ossian (SYHA) and Lochearnhead (Tomrannoch Bunkhouse)

Gravel Bike is fine.  The wild but mild thread has some useful stuff too.

Limited food in Fort A, so plan your arrival (or fill up at Abriachan on the way).  Top route in the great glen is surprisingly tiring.

Route finding wan’t too complicated.  I probably have a gpx, but the TRC site looks like it has what you need.

Highly recommended!

Thanks folks. I’ll have a look at the wild but mild thread. Good that a gravel bike will do.

Did this event at the weekend. Great route, lot of climbing and hard work into the wind at times. Most folk on gravel bikes and me on a hardtail which was good for day 1 as the descents were fun without getting too battered. Yesterday was more of a slog as there was a lot of tarmac and cycle paths where the gravel bikes effortlessly went away from me.

We were down to loch ossian by 1930 after starting at 0900 but I think most folks were there closer to 2200. Pretty epic route and weekend all round though.

bigmandh – nice one, thanks for feeding back.  I’ve not got time this year, so it’s pencilled in for 2019.  Does the guidance of 40mm tyres on a gravel bike seem about right?  I’d got a Canyon Inflite or Singular Swift, so need to decide what to use.  Cheers, Fraser

Yeah I’d say so. 4 of us started together, me on mtb with 2.0, others on cx/gravel bikes, 1 with 40mm, 1 with 38mm and 1 with 32mm! Everyone has different preferences and beauty of these type routes is there’s no correct answer. I’d say 40mm spot on though for balance as was pretty bumpy on Saturday and lot of tarmac and fast rolling gravel yesterday. If doing again I’d go on cx bike which takes max 38mm (but would go 40mm if I had the bike that took that width).

Nice one, that’s really useful to know.

Just starting to make plans for this in May 2019. Any further thoughts or advice from anyone? Cheers!

All booked – staying in Laggan, and Killin, so over three days. I’ll pass on feedback on what it was like, but very much looking forward to it.

Hi, interested to hear how you get on, was thinking of trying it over 2 days, might be a bit optimistic!

BigR, two days too tough for me, and reckon three will be lovely, though the first day is going to be hilly!