walkhighlands

Share your personal walking route experiences in Scotland, and comment on other peoples' reports.
Warning Please note that hillwalking when there is snow lying requires an ice-axe, crampons and the knowledge, experience and skill to use them correctly. Summer routes may not be viable or appropriate in winter. See winter information on our skills and safety pages for more information.

Deeside Way ("Line") part 4 & 5

Deeside Way ("Line") part 4 & 5


Postby GravelInspector » Sun Aug 18, 2013 12:08 pm

Date walked: 11/08/2013

Time taken: 4 hours

Distance: 24 km

Ascent: 195m

Register or Login
free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).

Continuing on the Deeside Way from Peterculter.
Annoyingly, the official way departs from the railway line a littel west of Peterculter, putting you onto (quiet, country) roads for 3-4 miles before you get back onto cycle paths. There's another brief detour onto the road at Drumoak village, but at least there are pathways if you're not confident on the road (cyclists should be, but ... some people aren't. Bloody cagers in their cars!) before you can return to the rail line by bearing left where the metalled footpath crosses to the right (north) side of the road.
Continue along good pathways to Crathes village, where the map indicates that you can continue behind the houses, but we missed that and found ourselves back on the road for several miles (acquiring a 30-car long tailback ; tough on the cagers). In retrospect we should have turned back down the road to the Durris bridge for 150m, and continued along the rail line, but the signposting is poor here.
We arrived at (my, planned) stop point and had lunch and juice at the Deeside Railway station and sidings before turning back and actually finding the route back to Crathes village without the road and the tailback. Still ineffective signposting.
Return to Peterculter was unproblematic, though tiring ; I realised that Oksana's (new) bike was rubbing a brake block, and didn't have a cross-head screwdriver with me to adjust it.
Home for the week's work, then back onto the bikes for a rain-threatening day. We parked up in Crathes village (I didn't know about the parking under the road bridge at Crates Castle road junction ; turn towards the castle, then immediately turn right again and park among the bridge footings).
There was a "Steam Cavalcade" going on at the Railway ; looked interesting to me, but Oksana didn't like the noise and smoke, so we pegged on.
The way was generally good, though a little muddy in parts, into Banchory. In the town, you cycle through several linked parks, and eventually arrive beside the town centre.
Here we met confusion ; I thought that the route followed the railway line, but the signpost pointed towards the South Deeside road, over the bridge. We persisted trying to find the rest of the railway line. It's visible, but on an embankment too narrow and tree-grown for cycling, so we ended up pushing on back onto the A93 ("Yeuchh!") until we could turn up the side road towards Inchmarlo golf club. Here we regained the railway line through woodland paths behind the cricket club pavilion. After a steep drop at a removed bridge (too steep ; Oksana walked down, and my back wheel was going sideways by the bottom), we parallel another too-narrow section of embanked line, but then lost it again in woodland. Following good forest tracks, we returned to metalled road at "Newton of Leys".
Half a kilometre on the left we met the line again, and decided to turn back to the car. This section of the line still has bare ballast, which is not a nice cycling surface. In several places the path is blocked by overgrowing or fallen trees, which need clearing. At East Mains, new housing has been built (compared to the 2010 maps on the site) which you have to loop round and through before regaining the forest tracks behind the houses. We then continued back towards the cars with the only incident of note being a large patch of what I think are wild strawberries and Oksana calls "земляника" ("zemlyanika"), which probably translates to "wild strawberries". And very nice they are too. "were"
We picked up the 4-part map for the Deeside Way from the bike shop in Banchory on our way back to the car.

I'm moderately annoyed by the way that the obvious line of "follow the railway line" has been broken up by various developments. Some are unavoidable, I suppose (the embankment through Banchory town itself is very narrow), but the houses at East Mains obviously post-date the establishment of the route there, so there was no real reason preventing a continuous route being established.
For some reason, the map parts aren't displaying in the correct order.
Attachments

2013-08-17-ODL-Crathes-Banchory.gpx Open full screen  NB: Walkhighlands is not responsible for the accuracy of gpx files in users posts


2013-08-11-ODL-Peterculter-Crathes.gpx Open full screen  NB: Walkhighlands is not responsible for the accuracy of gpx files in users posts

GravelInspector
Stravaiging
 
Posts: 20
Corbetts:4
Fionas:1   
Joined: May 16, 2012
Location: Variable

Register or Login
free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).



Can you help support Walkhighlands?


Our forum is free from adverts - your generosity keeps it running.
Can you help support Walkhighlands and this community by donating by direct debit?



Return to Walk reports - Scotland

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: RayK, simp25 and 74 guests