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Yes I know the title is a contentious issue and the purists will be screaming and probably not read the rest of the report
But I am one of those folk who prefer to use a bike if the terrain is suitable. I must emphasise that I am not a keen or a good cyclist, I do like cycling but as yesterday demonstrated, my bike handling skills on 'bumpy' terrain do have room for improvement, more of that later.
My original plan was to head west over the weekend to tackle CMD Arete. Another 3 Walk Highlanders were also studying the weather forecast and keeping fingers crossed, you would have thought that at least one of the days would have been half decent - wrong. So CMD will have to wait a bit longer before I pay it a visit
My backup plan was the 2 southern Cairngorms via the 'white bridge' and the forecast for the Saturday looked quite favourable. I had posted my intentions via the usual channels and Hugh (Borderhugh) popped up out of the background. I had never met Hugh, but after a few PM's a plan evolved.
We arranged to meet at Linn of Dee and start cycling at 8am. As usual I didn't sleep very well and was up and on the way north well ahead of my planned departure time
Once north of Perth I didn't encounter a single vehicle heading north so I arrived at the car park just before 7.30.
I had just started getting my bike out of the car when Hugh arrived, so after introductions and the usual faffing around making sure we hadn't forgotten anything we set off on our bikes.
I wasn't sure how far we would be able to cycle and as it turned out we made good progress and the track only had a couple of inclines that required dismounting. There were a few puddles and the track in parts was not what I would call ideal cycling terrain. In other words it was rough and bouldery.
Whilst cycling along Hugh and I were attempting to talk to each other, but when you are being shaken and battered there was alot of repeating
One good thing about our question and answer session was we covered quite a few miles without too much difficulty.
White Bridge?
Hugh was hoping we would be able to leave the bikes near the ruin of Geldie Lodge, however when we reached Geldie Burn we decided that as the Geldie Lodge was on the other side of the burn, there seemed little point in trying to struggle across the burn with bikes
The bikes were parked and locked together, just in case there were some passing bicycle thieves
Now it was time to start walking, but the first task was to cross the burn via the 'steeping stones'. I can imagine this could be a problem after a spell of rain, but our boots only got a slight dunking
Geldie Burn and the stepping stones
Geldie Lodge ruins taken from the banks of the burn
Path builders?
I was curious to work out how far we had cycled, so using the WH GPS planner I worked out it is 12.4km, which if you are one of the purists is quite a walk
Once across the burn, it was just a matter of following the path that went in all sorts of directions and eventually came to an abrupt end just to the NW of Scarsoch Bheag.
The path
Hugh posing
We had obviously wandered too far south, but because we could see the shoulder leading to our destination it was just a matter of plodding uphill through the heather. As everyone knows walking downhill through heather is easy, going uphill is a nightmare as you have to lift your feet higher than usual. Just before we reached the shoulder leading to the summit, I could feel my left leg cramping above the knee and that continued all the way to the summit
I had a bag of crisps to get some salt into my system, but I suffered the same problem on the next ascent
The weather had actually been favourable, a couple of very light showers, but it certainly wasn't what you could call a nice warm summers day
I had my jacket on for most of the day and we both put our gloves on just before we reached the summit of Carn an Fhidhleir
I didn't take my usual quantity of photographs, mainly because there wasn't very much that was worth photographing
I know a few walkers will disagree with the previous sentence, but the majority of the landscape is very 'samey', rolling undistinguished hills. The real Cairngorms could be seen in the distance but even when zoomed are barely distinguishable.
Hugh on the summit of Fiddler
Looking across to our next target An Sgarsoch
We didn't hand around too long on the summit and set off across the large plateau, before heading SSE down the shoulder. We knew we had quite a descent down to the peat hags and it turned out to be almost 300m. There was no obvious path so we picked a point across the other side of the hags to aim for. Luckily the peat hags weren't as bad as they could be, the peat was quite firm so it wasn't long before we were heading uphill again. The bad news was that the initial climb was again through heather, which probably explains why I was cramping again, but I soldiered on knowing that the summit wasn't that far
Half way up the climb we found a path and also saw a chap heading in the opposite direction and looked to be on a mission
The summit of An Sgarsoch was a bit more interesting than the previous one, with a large cairn and shelter.
Summit of An Sgarsoch
After a photo's we started our descent, once again there didn't appear to be a path so we surveyed the ground ahead of us and we decided to head to the east of Scarsoch Bheag. We knew that if we continued heading north we would eventually pick up the path.
As before, the terrain was the same - heather, peat hags and damp squidgy areas
We made good progress and it didn't take us too long to reach the path, after that it was plain sailing back to the burn. We were reunited with our bikes and noticed another bike parked next to ours.
The ride back to Linn of Dee was ever so slightly downhill and hardly any pedalling was required, that was the good news, the bad news was that the track seemed even bumpier going back. Both Hugh & I caught our pedals on the side of the track. Luckily Hugh was in front when my pedal caught the grassy edge of the track so he missed me coming a cropper, which was almost in slow motion. I came off the bike but fell on the grass, no problem, so I got back on my bike only to find my chain had come off ggrrr
So after a minute or two faffing about, getting fingers rather oily, I got the chain back on and set off trying to catch Hugh up
The rest of the cycle back was uneventful, not what I would call enjoyable, maybe if my bike had suspension it may have been a bit more pleasureable
The last bit of the ride was on tarmac and what a treat
A big thanks to Hugh for his great company and patience glad you managed to tag on An Socach later
Next Glenfinnan, hopefully this week