RSS FeedsNorthern Excursions. The Highland Adventure May 2006. Day 2.
by Andy on Monday, May 15th, 2006We reached the exit from the forest back onto the road from the day before. Tom hurriedly checked the map and sped off nonchalantly down the road like he was glad to be escaping the grips of the forest. Mark followed and then me. After about five minutes Tom stopped, turned round and pissed off back up the way we had come. Without word the other two of us followed like conformist sheep. We returned back to where the water point had been and then entered the forest back onto the Great Glen way. We picked up some water and slogged up the fire road, it felt good to be making progress again. Along the route there were newly built specialist mountain bike routes to the right which looked very tempting to just blast down. However we pressed on deciding to try them another time on another visit. The Great Glen way thus from here became a pleasurable well surfaced wide fire road which swooped it’s way through picturesque open landscape and forested sections. We split up, as I rallied ahead, followed by Mark with Tom at the rear. I enjoyed this section and took it really fast, savouring the chanced to dig in and get my head down on mountain bike suited terrain. The track swooped back on itself as we lost height and exited the forested area into baron hillside. After about fifteen minutes of pedalling I stopped and admired the viewed closely followed by Mark, steaming away on the hardtail with the pannier rack intact. Tom followed after a few minutes and was annoyed that we had not waited for him. However, his mood soon changed for the better as he agreed that the track was fun. He still complained veraciously about the SPDs and contemplated using the army boots on the clipless pedals, much to my hidden amusement. The weather was cool, moist and overcast, but it didn’t feel wrong or annoying, it was to be expected in this geography and because of the cycling I was boiling hot anyway.
Eventually the fire road track re-entered the forest and almost seemed to end however, on further inspection, it became apparent that it was actually the beginning of a very tasty singletrack downhill through tall dense forest.
After tentatively joining the trail the trail dropped away ahead of us, begging for the brake lever to be let off, causing me to charge away like a roller-coaster plummeting after chugging up to the summit of a big dipper. The downhill was fantastic with steep flowing sections, and tight switchbacks. I absolutely revelled at the challenge. The huge bag weight did make manoeuvrability a little sketchy and slightly dangerous however, it was great fun. Soaking, slippery rocks jutted out of the mossy eroded ground just dying to give the bike a pinch flat (a type of puncture characterised by two thin holes cause by the rim pinching the inner tube against the ground, often called a snake-bite) especially with the extra weight. We stormed on down through the hazy forest with rays from the sun creeping in through the canopy sparkling on the trail ahead. We stopped at about half way, cheering to each other over the amazing find of this great trail. After taking some photos and scoffing Kendal and flapjack to renew dwindling energy we continued on and eventually after exiting the forest, traversing a couple of fields we reached the road approaching Drumnadochit on the foot of Loch Ness.
Reaching the road was depressing. I didn’t want to be near other people. I liked it in the forest and up in the open landscape like a roaming ape. We rolled into the small town looking for some bike spares for Mark and Tom was after some lunch although I wanted to carry on and not waste time. This led to some arguing. Tom, I felt, was stubborn and determined to get some lunch. Mark was an intermediary in this situation. After about fifteen minutes of deadlock, I began to warm to the idea of getting a hearty lunch however Tom seemed to be going off the idea and warming to the idea of carrying on so, basically, we couldn’t win. At least that’s how my twisted mind perceived it. Stopping at a small corner shop, we stocked up on supplies of Kendal and a couple of packets of flavoured rice with some spare coinage. At this point I should have got some money out of the bank, but I didn’t, feeling that in the wilderness money was useless. We could always catch some game in order to eat. I sat outside the corner shop on a raised bit of pavement and put on my full waterproofs as the weather decided to trickle annoying rain down onto the greyness of the urban area. The cars and people flowed past all looking the same. I couldn’t help but despise the people half living their lives, or at least that where my mind wandered at the time, absorbed in our adventure. Mark and I came across a road biker who stopped to talk to us who was cycling to Inverness. I thought, why go all the time on the road, where is the fun in that and thankfully turned to stroke my mountain bike, whispering sweet nothings to it. I sat and my mind drifted off into introspective wonderland feeling a bit of a lemon. All dressed up but going nowhere. I eventually saw Tom and Mark walking back.
“Are you getting any lunch then?” I said.
“Nah, just went to the loo mate.” Tom nonchalantly expressed.
Mark noticed his bike tyre was down, so we fixed it, but soon realised that we didn’t have a shraeder valve (the large car tyre type) so Mark, in a spark of intelligent thought, went up to the garage to use their pump. Tom and I saddled up and hauled ass out of there. Our direction was towards the village of Cannich which was about nine miles down flat road through the valley in an area called Straithglass. We had no idea what the next section would be like but I plodded on under the direction of Tom who had fallen into the role of navigator for the trip at this occasion. Tom found the program “Memory Map” on the net which means a route can be plotted across an electronic OS map which is loaded in. This way is an excellent method of preparing a route. The program gives distances, is easy to use, printable and has a three dimensional function for certain areas of the map. I was very impressed with Tom for finding this program. After using it, it seemed like there was no better obvious way of planning the route. It was at the very least, incredibly convenient.
Tom and I met Mark at the garage, his tyres pumped up now and we started slogging along the road towards Cannich. At this point, I was feeling pretty fresh with plenty of energy, wanting to press on. Mark was obviously starting to flag a bit, as he was often falling behind. Tom started off showing plenty of go but started to deteriorate for reasons that came to common knowledge after about ten minutes of riding. We stopped at the side of the road to wait for Tom next to a herd of scruffy, long-cowpat-encrusted-haired cows. Tom turned up in a fowl mood, dismounted his bike, and complained bitterly about the pace.
“I cant keep up at this pace, we are going too fast. We have to slow down.” Tom said.
“No worries, ok that’s fine.” I added.
“Is it better if we ride at our own pace?” Mark commented.
“I think its better if we stay together as much as we can.” I warranted. “We’ll just slow down.”
“These fucking long-Johns are cutting off the blood supply.” Tom winced as he climbed onto the bike. I didn’t envy him a bit grinning conspicuously. I couldn’t believe he was wearing those excessively tight light nylon ball-crunchers. It was evidently complete madness. To top it he changed into the army boots and put boot to SPD, not a match made in heaven, for sure. More like firing greasy piglets from a canon across an ice-rink.
Slogging on through unsurprising terrain the road weaved its way along the flat land. On one side of the road was patchy hedgerow and large fields with scattered livestock. On the other a gentle hill with occasional dwellings. The weather was horrible with grey depressing skies and drizzle. I felt worried because we were only on the second day and Tom and Mark were flagging and seriously began considering detouring far from the intended route to take a short cut. I felt like at least seeing where this seemingly endless road was taking us. The mood was down trodden, as we hoisted our bedraggled selves along the surprisingly energy-sapping tarmac. We stopped to rest for some dried fruit and sat down on a road-side barrier together for a few minutes. Tiredness was setting in but I felt my mood rise as we joked to each other and the humour descended partially into absurdity as it tended to in times of tiredness and dismay. It was a strange feeling, the seriousness of the situation was building and the mood dampening to a point and then going full circle and resetting to another equilibrium of partial insanity. It was a reassurance of still being alive but on the verge of the unknown. At this point Tom was the only one who really had a spatial layout of where we were heading in his mind because he held onto the map, so it was, for me, biking constantly into oblivion. It could also have been the sugar injection from the fruit that lifted the spirits. We continued, each brow of the next gradual incline holding promise of something more exciting for about fifteen minutes.
Without warning, like breaking through the surface of water and taking a big breath, we started to descend as the road cut down into a fog covered valley. Visibility was nil. It was an incredible relief to feel the wind and cool rain on my face, I nussled my chin into the top of my jacket to stop droplets of water getting down my neck. The descent steepened and I put pedal to metal accelerating until I had ran out of gears. I careered at full whack down the soaking road with driving rain in my face and spray from the road saturating me. Water ran in a steady stream from my helmet, my shoes were two sponges, my leggings like drenched second skin. My legs flew round like crazy pendulums spinning out in twenty seventh gear. At first I barely noticed the amazing valley revealing itself to us through the mist on our right. The change in landscape emerged in glorious dark reds and deep greens as a stunning and startling change in terrain. It was like dropping off the edge of a plateau. At the bottom of the hill we steamed across a bridge over a raging river that reminded me of a river in Austria. This then reminded me of having heard Ewan Mcgregor say that Austria reminded him of Scotland. Scotland is indeed in a class of it’s own compared to anywhere else. To add to the great feeling we had rolled right into our destination, Cannich and decided to find a youth hostel. We asked for directions at a caravan site and headed to an independent youth hostel because the YHA one wasn’t open. We reached the hostel which was a prefabricated building. Going inside the building was incredible. The feeling of being out of the rain was beautiful with warmth and shelter. There was no one at reception so we waited. It was a ghostly place, decoration from the nineteen seventies style and reminded me of the film, The Shining. There were a couple of jokes of calling “Here’s johnny,” far too loud down the empty corridors and not really considering the people living in the building or the whereabouts of the landlady. I sat back in the sofa chair which felt like the ultimate luxury compared to the bike saddle. After ringing the reception bell about ten times and trying to call for assistance on the reception phone a lady finally appeared from one of the rooms like she had been there all the time and just ignored us (the next crazed group of bikers who had been away from civilisation for too long). We asked her how much it was to stay the night and it was ten pounds each. We hardly had any cash and so embarrassingly raked out what we had onto the floor. It amounted to about twenty one pounds. The land lady accepted the money, very kindly, and allowed us to stay. I felt most joyous at this achievement of bartering with one of the locals.
We had two small rooms. I shared with Mark and Tom had a separate room because he had such nasty habits and hygiene. The place was surprisingly cosy and featured a wonderful drying room and the hottest shower I have ever experienced which was heaven on earth. Cowering down in the shower was the only way to cope with the heat with periodical leaping in and out. However, it created a blissful thawing sensation that was second to none. It was amazing to experience such extreme temperature changes without causing limbs to self-voluntarily drop off. The feeling of putting on dry clean clothes was quite divine and felt like slipping into fine tailor made luxury garments even though it was just a t-shirt, fleece and walking trousers.
The place had a huge albeit dull and cold living room with a big wood burning stove and a big kitchen adjacent to it. The hostel was used quite often for school groups on adventure trips in the hills and it reminded me of outdoor trips I had done in secondary school. Tom made a cup of tea and we sat in the lounge and chatted, basking in the comfort of being out of the rain.
That evening we asked where there was a good pub to eat and it seemed we had two choices, one was a hotel, which we found out was closed in about nineteen fifty two, and the other was a working men’s club style pub which was evidently the centre of night-life in the small town. We stored the bikes in a barn out the back out of the rain. I was dubious at first about leaving them but I was too tired to be bothered to find a more concealed place and very hungry. We walked happily down to the pub and walked up to the bar. We were promptly asked if we were eating and herded back around the corner out of sight of the locals who obviously had some sort of aversion to foreign people entering the pub. Either that or eating under the age of thirty in public was a criminal offence. The interior design was like a seventies German motorway service station and fairly clinical. I would have rather sat in the nice cosy old bit of the pub. However, it was inside and the prospect of hot food and a pint of the local ale kept me more than happy. Our order was taken by a lad who looked about fifteen years old and more likely to try and nick your phone than ask what you wanted to eat. However he was fairly polite and accommodating. I ordered steak and ale pie and chips. When it came it wasn’t amazingly good but satisfactory and along with the ale and a whisky to finish off induced a hazy warm tiredness. After sitting contemplating the tastes of the different whiskys, we headed back to the hostel and retired to the comfortable beds and I slept like a dead person. The next day posed a monstrous challenge as we were planning to cycle to the bothy or Mark and I had the prospect of spending another night in a ten pound Aldi tent which was about as waterproof as wrapping one’s self in cling film and jumping in a swimming pool.