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On only the second day of our week in the Cairngorms, Neil and I decided to have a relatively easy day (which in retrospect was not our best decision as it meant the next four days would be getting harder as we got more weary)
In what was to become a familiar feature of the week we arrived at Linn of Dee car park, and quickly hopped onto the bikes before the midges hopped onto us. The weather was still favourable and made for a pleasant ride out to Derry lodge, and then headed west for Luibeg.
The ground got progressively rougher, testing my bike skills (and by now my aching sit bones), but we were able to keep riding as far as the river crossing just before Luibeg bridge. We ditched the bikes at this point, and started up the well made path up the southern flank of Carn a'Mhaim.
The path bypasses the south summit and leads onto the ridge and up to the fairly undistinguished cairn at the summit proper. The cloud cover was down and there were no views so we decided to walk back to the south summit for a quick photo.
We then descended back to the bikes where we stopped for a few minutes for lunch before saddling up and heading back to Derry lodge and on to the car park arriving just 3 hours 20 after setting off.
Arriving back at Braemar we found that the weather forecast for the next day was very poor - deep joy
