Aberfeldy to Dalwhinnie – 47 miles
The dawn sky was clear and pure up at Glassie farm, graded white on the eastern horizon to dark night blue above our heads. The combination of huge vistas and deep calm demanded a moment of stillness and I stood in silence by the front door of the bunkhouse drinking it all in. Julian and his wife were up already, busying themselves about the main house and the various old barns that had been converted into guest accommodation. I tried to imagine this place when it was a working farm with a few cows and sheep, lost in the clouds and mist. It must have been a raw and isolated life.
We’d had the foresight the night before to book breakfast down at the Ailean Chraggan Hotel, so once we’d saddled up and posed while Julian took a photo for his archive of two-wheeled visitors (‘No lazy leg,’ Phil said) we braved the steep and stony track down through the forest, fingers gripping the brakes, minds locked in fierce concentration. I felt a new surge of gratitude towards Ian from the Bike Works for fixing Tim’s front brakes.
The full Scottish at the Ailean Chraggan was fulsome and Scottish, with haggis taking pride of place on the plate alongside egg, mushrooms, a slice cut from a strange kind of square sausage, tomatoes, bacon, beans and the rest. Jools and I chose the vegetarian option, though I envied the haggis. During breakfast we held our usual pre-ride conference (you could call it ‘briefing’ but that would give the whole thing a misleading aura of military efficiency). Normally, its purpose was to try and refine our route to avoid as many hills and climbs as possible. We were busy shovelling eggs and haggis down our gobs, heads in our mobile phones, pouring over the Komoot and OS maps, when Jules looked up with a puzzled expression. ‘Er…Andy, there’s no road for about twenty miles of this route.’
How could this be?! I launched the OS Maps app with a surge of panic and followed our planned route west to Corran Ferry, where we were due to be met by my friend Rich. And there it was, or rather wasn’t. The route was fine until it reached the tiny station at Rannoch, on the main line between Glasgow and Fort William. Then nothing! Nothing!! Oh the horror. Nothing except 20 miles of open moorland and bog, criss-crossed here and there by the faintest and tiniest of dotted lines.
The plan, hatched back in March when I told Rich about my LEJOG adventure, was for us to ride from Aberfeldy to Corran Ferry where he would collect us in his van and put us up at his home in Strontian, at the eastern end of the Ardnamurchan peninsula. For months, I’d been nurturing pleasant visions of a night around the fire in Rich’s garden, with beer and good food and other soulful comforts. Rich and his partner Lara used to live in the same street as us in Bristol and their son Arlo became our son Alfie’s first real friend. Sometime in the middle of the naughties, they’d decided to move to the Ardnamurchan peninsula and ever since, until the pandemic deleted such delights, we visited them once a year, immersing ourselves in the wild beauty of the most westerly strip of mainland UK. Rich was very excited by the whole LEJOG idea and had taken three days off work to be with us. That very morning he was planning to drive to the supermarket, an hour away in Fort William, to stock up on all the necessaries. A royal reception was in the offing.
But there was no road. No way for us to get there, not without the help of a helicopter, or jetpacks, or, with extreme physical effort, mountain bikes and zero weight apart from small backpacks containing essentials. But on heavy touring bikes with panniers? No way. Twenty miles of bog without paths is no laughing matter for two-wheeling sexagenarians, albeit a moderately fit ones. Jools called the number for the small café at Rannoch Station and one of the staff there told him that he’d heard of a few people who had crossed the vast bog westwards and made it to Glen Coe, but they were extreme sports types with square jaws and boulders for muscles. ‘It’s more a case of hike and bike,’ he said.
We spent a while searching anxiously for alternative routes. Perhaps we could go southwest along the A road to Crianlarich, then north through Glen Coe. But that would be over 80 miles, and there were many posts on biking forums relating the hellish experience of cycling along the A82 through Glen Coe–no cycle track, only two narrow lanes, heavy traffic including fleets of tourist buses. It just wasn’t realistic, or in any way desirable. Going north to the great Glen then south west to Fort William and Corran Ferry? No, that was even longer, way outside our maximum daily mileage.
It slowly dawned on us that there are actually very few possible routes for cyclists hoping to cross Scotland south to north and avoid main roads. There’s one that goes west from Glasgow and over the Kyles of Bute to Knapdale, then up to Oban, Fort William and along the Great Glen to Inverness. It’s long and roundabout, and involves two ferries at least. The other route, the N7, goes up through central Scotland to Aberfeldy (though there are cycle routes from Glasgow and Edinburgh that join this central axis), then up through Pitlochry and round the Cairngorms to Inverness. The latter is the route we were on and should have continued on. But back in March, fired up by the thought of seeing Rich, I had entered ‘Aberfeldy to Corran Ferry’ into Komoot and out popped a seemingly bona fide route across Rannoch moor to Glen Coe. It was pure fantasy. We’d been Komooted in the most dramatic way.
“Er…did you not think to check the route before,” Rich asked very reasonably when I called. I had to confess I had not. Instead, I had placed my faith in Komoot, an app that almost always gets you from A to B on reasonable surfaces, perhaps with a few short off-road experiences to remind you what a wonderful invention tarmac really is. But this was the perfect storm of Morganisation and being Komooted. Or, in other words, an embarrassing shit-show. I apologised profusely to Rich, promising to come and see him soon, and returned to my veggie Scottish breakfast with a heavy heart. Jools was already busy finding accommodation in Dalwhinnie, a small town with a large whiskey distillery up the N7. He quickly secured a bunk room at the Dalwhinnie Old School Hostel and a table at The Lodge Bar. We ate up and I left feeling dumb and thoughtless.
It was drizzling steadily as we set off along the banks of the snaking Tay. The route undulated through pine forests and fields. The mountains were hidden behind a grey curtain of wetness. Cycling is about endurance at times like these. We turned north east and the track steepened radically, warming our sluggish muscles. Eventually we came to the old footbridge over the Tummel River. Pitlochry lay on the other side. Tim, normally calm and steady in most situations, was visibly perturbed by the idea of walking over this bridge that seemed to bounce with your every step. The Tummel rushed below. But steady gaze and pursed lips he made it across and we cycled down the main road to Escape Route, a café and bicycle shop all rolled into one. Under the shelter of a verandah we peeled off layers, and I noticed that my merino base layer was dripping wet. The waterproofing on my old Mountain Equipment shell had completely gone. While the others downed coffees and a variety of A-grade cakes (Tim ordered three I seem to remember), I went into the bike shop and was persuaded by the slick and forceful sales person to buy a high-end fully breathable cycling rain jacket. It gave me a good shape and the look of a ‘serious’ cyclist. Kerching.
North of Pitlochry, we joined the old A9, a largely abandoned road with many patches of bald and scrappy tarmac, that runs alongside the new dual-carriageway, a monster artery that serves the entire north east of Scotland. That morning, during our breakfast panic, I’d read an article by the formidable Scottish journalist and nationalist Lesley Riddoch about the terrible state of the cycle route that runs the along the A9, and the culpability of the various faceless infrastructure companies that are tasked with maintaining it. This had put the fear into us, but riding on the A9 itself was and is, by all account, a dance with death, so there was little choice but to embrace the potholes. But the cycle path turned out to be more than acceptable, even recently re-tarmac’d and beautifully smooth along certain stretches. We passed Killicrankie, Blair Atholl and Old Struan, rolling those delightful Scottish names around our months, as the rain eased.
Not long after Calvine we stopped for lunch on some rocks above the rushing Tummel. Down below were pools and little waterfalls that taunted us with the possibility of an idyllic dip. But the rain, the steep climb down to the water dissuaded us. And so did a new (for us) phenomenon, another thorn in paradise: midges! I’d been reading about them for months, about all the possible protections and remedies: face nets, DEET, Smidge, midge-eating machines. But in the end I had decided to place my trust in the advice of other cyclists who assured me that as long as you keep pedalling, I’d be fine. When you stop, there’s a period grace that lasts about five minutes, the time it takes for the little critters to realise that dinner has arrived in their midst and to start signalling to their fellow blood-suckers to come and have their fill using a special scent. The onslaught begins with an indefinable itch in your hair, on your neck, your hands and arms, and soon becomes a generalised cloud of unbearable itchiness that blights the pleasure of the most beautiful landscape. Jools, ever resourceful, produced a bottle of Smidge and we sprayed and slathered, but even so, it became clear that a long and lazy lunch by the river was an impossible dream, so we moved on.
The landscape became balder and bleaker as we approached Drummochter Pass, the highest point on the entire N7 cycle route. We could hear the distant sound of gunfire and saw a convoy of black Range Rovers crawling along a track on the opposite side of the valley. Some Russian oligarch or oil sheik on a shooting spree with their entourage. We explained the phenomenon of grouse shooting to Tim, how large chunks of the Scottish landscape have been sold over to this exclusive pursuit, and how it helps to dash any hope of the Highlands regaining their original natural diversity of flora and fauna.
At the pass we stopped to refuel with wine gums, energy bars and ‘sheep droppings’, congratulating each other for having accomplished the famous seven mile climb to this point. Though far gentler than we’d anticipated, the path up to Drummochter is a challenge that has taxed the minds and muscles of End-to-Enders since the earliest days of cycling. Just before the summit, Jools set off into the imposing mass of hills ahead of us swinging his jacket round his head and uttering whoops of victorious joy. I managed to snap him before he became a dot on the path ahead. Then there was a gentle glide down to Dalwhinnie, which had the feel of a truck-stop lost in a desert of bog and heather. It’s plainly a ‘cleared’ village, in other words, one that was created in a totally ad-hoc way by deracinated tenants during the Highland clearances of the early 19th century. The houses are strung out along the main road in a seeming random way, give you a sense of shapelessness, of a village without a heart.
The Lodge Bar however had a big heart, thanks to the warm welcome of the couple, originally from Colchester, who now run it. Its list of whiskies runs to several pages, and its menu, though basic, is designed to fill the gaping bellies of cyclists and hill-walkers. After our arrival pints and midge-troubled cigarettes, we went off to check in to the Old School Hostel, where Lee, the owner, delivered another heart-warming welcome. He told us that he had travelled the world for many years and had dreamed of opening his own establishment armed with all the lessons he had learned staying in hostels across the globe. It was housed in a solid old Victorian manse that had served as the village school for 134 years, until it had to close in 2012 because there were only three pupils in attendance. The place was very clean and very comfortable, with a roaring fire in the downstairs sitting room, around which we hung our rain-soaked clothes.
Back at the Lodge bar we ate bowls of spaghetti bolognese or lentil dal (Tim had both), and rounded off the evening with several glasses of Dalwhinnie whiskey. The doyenne told us that to get the full flavour, it was advisable, after your first sip, to add three drops of water using a small pipette. Something in the reaction of water and whiskey opens up the doors to malty heaven. Tim was very excited by this information and she gave him a pipette so that he could try it for himself. His whiskey-tasting habits will never be the same again.
Andy Morgan
