I’m back! I survived a cycle ride from Inverness to Glasgow with only wet shoes, and eventually a flat rear tyre, to show for it.

The trip was a fantastic experience, with even heavy rain on Day 4 (the second day I failed to cover as it happened in this blog) failing to, er, dampen my spirits. Indeed, Day 4 was probably the most spectacular in terms of scenery, but I should cover the trip in chronological order. And that means going way back to the first day I descended into radio silence, the day I travelled from Pitlochry to Killin near Loch Tay.

Pitlochry to Killin

Pitlochry is a lovely little town, not far from another famous battleground at Killiecrankie, with a picturesque town centre that isn’t too busy. There’s a large hydroelectric dam nearby, with a salmon ladder running alongside – the idea is that the fishies can still jump between the concrete tanks to swim upstream. It must be a spectacular sight in the breeding season, but I suspect this isn’t it! (And perhaps the salmon would have been in bed by the time I wandered down there anyway…)

Sadly, the route out of Pitlochry is not particularly thrilling. It’s largely flat – good for a rest on the bike – but runs along quiet country lanes for most of its length. At one point it crosses an ex-railway bridge across a stretch of river, now a privately owned road, but even that isn’t particularly inspiring. Eventually you reach the town of Kenmore at one end of Loch Tay, where the heavens opened and I sought refuge in a cafe.

Several (several!) cups of tea and a light lunch later, the rain had cleared up and I was ready to get on the move again. The view from Kenmore is beautiful as you climb up above the loch, with the water seeming to stretch out endlessly into the distance. What rather sours the panorama is the fact that you know from your Sustrans map that the other end of the loch, 17 miles away at the town of Killin, is where the cycle route is leading you.

Cycling alongside a loch may be lovely, but 17 miles later even the prettiest view is going to get old. Add to that an constantly undulating route (none of the hills severe, but each less welcome than the last), and you feel rather glad when you reach your destination. As it happens, you tumble into Killin quite unexpectedly – one minute you’re barrelling down one of the many downhill sections, the next you turn a corner and encounter a group of old biddies from a coach tour standing around in the middle of the road. Good job I was braking already!

Killin’s location on the River Dochart, with its miniature waterfalls tumbling under the town’s bridge, makes it a great place to spend the night. I fell asleep to the sound of running water. Sadly, I awoke to the sound of water falling from the sky…

Yes, before I’d gone to bed I’d stolen a look at the weather forecast and was dismayed by what I saw! There was an unseasonable low pressure coming in from the Atlantic, bringing with it heavy rain and, later in the day, high winds from the southwest – headwinds for me, in other words. Not really what I wanted to hear. As Sunday dawned with diagonal rain hammering on the windows, I was tempted to abandon the day’s cycle and get the train instead.

Unfortunately, the nearest train station was over 15 miles away on a trunk road – not a very appetising prospect, and I would get soaked to the skin over that distance anyway! In the end, encouraged by some friends of my B&B host, I decided to chance the day’s ride as planned…

Killin to Balloch

I was glad I did! The route from Killin to my eventual destination at Balloch was by far the most spectacular section of the entire ride. Just outside Killin the route climbed into the hills on an old railway line, eventually popping out on the defunct Glen Ogle railway viaduct, now part of the cycle route. The views from the viaduct are amazing – if you have been over the Glenfinnan viaduct, as seen carrying the Hogwarts Express in THOSE films, you have some idea. It was still raining, I was soaked, but I didn’t care.

Just as well really – before Callander the rain held off for an hour or so, but as soon as I reached the town it fell again with a vengence. I locked my bike to the nearest immovable object and headed into a cafe, where I attempted to hide until the rain had passed. It was no good – eventually I had to leave in the pouring rain, heading onwards to Balloch. By this stage the wind had picked up too, blasting me backwards every time I tried to pick up speed. I resigned myself to making slow, wet progress; by this stage, at least, I was so wet I couldn’t actually get any wetter.

The rest of the way to Balloch was spent alternately cursing pine woods (the route passes through some forests I’m sure are lovely, in better weather), hills, rain, wind, cars (only occasionally did these pass me, but I knew their occupants were warm, dry and probably feeling pretty smug), and once, during a mercifully dry spell, punctures. Eventually though, I made it – at 8:30pm. Never before have I been so glad to arrive at a good, old-fashioned Youth Hostel, shared rooms and wet clothes hanging on every available surface and all.

But to reiterate, Sunday was the best day. There may have been rain, there may have been strong winds, but the spectacular sights en route more than made up for it. You always dry off eventually.

Balloch to Glasgow

By comparison, the route from Balloch into Glasgow city centre was an absolute doddle. It was predominantly along pancake-flat old railway paths and riverside paths, with the odd town centre route thrown in. In Dumbarton, I had an excellent opportunity to get soaked again as the route led me into an underpass – luckily I spotted just in time that the ‘puddle’ spreading across its mouth was a good two feet deep! Although hardly inspiring as a cycle route, the Balloch to Glasgow section was a welcome respite from the rigours of the previous days’ journey through the Highlands, and gave the encouraging impression of arriving into the city with plenty of energy to spare. Only the fact my shoes were still dripping wet reminded me of the previous day’s hardships, which were well worth it.

There are no pictures for the last two days of the journey, because the rain made it difficult to stop and take things out of my bag without everything getting soaked. Don’t worry – the iPhone camera would make the places I passed through look rubbish anyway. It’s the rules.

Footnote: the puncture repair made between Kenmore and Killin lasted all the way through the rainy journey from Killin to Balloch, the on-and-off rainy journey from Balloch to Glasgow, the journey home, and a commute to and from work. The patch eventually blew off just as I arrived home – an extremely considerate time for it to give up the ghost.

Thanks patch! You have now been replaced.

There was no exciting travel blog yesterday because the place where I was staying managed to have hardly any mobile phone signal. The blog tonight will be extremely short because I am very tired! :(

In fact, it will be THIS short, aside from saying that I’m by Loch Lomond. And still drying out. Night night!

Wind! A cyclist’s worst nightmare, whichever direction it’s coming from.

If it’s blowing in from behind you, it bowls you merrily along without you even being aware of its presence, giving you a misleading impression of your cycling prowess. But you’ve got no closer to being Lance Armstrong – it’s the stiff breeze doing all the work. In that sense, wind is treacherous in a way that snow and ice can never be. At least you know where you are with ice – usually on the floor or wrapped around a tree.

Cycling with the wind in your face is, on the other hand, a miserable experience. Every effort to pick up speed seems in vain as the wind pushes you back to a crawl. It’s like cycling uphill, but the only payoff comes if you turn around and go back the way you came.

The day began in wind-free fashion in a morning during which I redefined “taking it easy”. After a leisurely breakfast and many cups of tea, I headed all of two miles down the road to Newtonmore, where I stopped off at its free Highland Folk Museum. What was intended as a flying visit (it would be rude not to visit a free attraction!) soon turned into an entire morning spent poking around recreations of 1930s farms, 18th-century Highland crofting communities and a couple of great “flat-packed” churches and schools, supplied as corrugated iron sheets for assembly in situ. Truly the Ikea of the early 20th century.

Not long after leaving Newtonmore, full of more tea and a cake, I had my first encounter with my old enemy, the wind. It was blowing from directly the direction I was travelling. When I was researching the trip, I’d read that Scotland’s prevailing wind is southwesterly, making a journey from north to south the better option if you want to avoid it in your face. I decided that the other advantages of a north-to-south route outweighed the danger of being hindered by wind – I was regretting it today!

A late lunch in Dalwhinnie, only about 15 miles from Kingussie, showed just what an effect the wind (and, admittedly, my lazy morning) had made. There I met two blokes who were travelling from Pitlochry to Kingussie, the opposite of my journey. They were nearly home and dry and I had over 30 miles to go!

The wind had come on the day I would be crossing the most exposed and isolated point on the trip, the Drumochter Pass. With a summit of 1516 feet, climbing it would not be much fun on the best of days, but climbing it with a wind of 15mph+ in my face (according to the BBC weather web site) was slow work. Luckily, the scenery is spectacular, even if it runs close to the A9 most of the way (and immediately alongside – separated by a crash barrier – at times). Eventually I made it to the top, heralded first by a sign on the nearby railway line – the highest point on the rail network! – and then a similar sign for travellers on the A9.

As soon as I got over the summit, the wind abated. Don’t ask me why – you’d think the hill would have protected me from a headwind as I was climbing it, but it seems the opposite is true. The rest of the journey into Pitlochry was comparatively plain sailing – helped by the long, enjoyable run down from the views of Drumochter and some very quiet, decent roads.

Many of the roads used by this part of National Cycle Route 7 are old sections of the A9, either abandoned entirely as they were superseded by the faster, safer route of the new A9 built a short distance away, or simply reclassified as traffic moved over to the new road. These reclassified roads are great – wide and well-surfaced, as they would have been in their A9 glory days, but now almost entirely devoid of traffic. But it’s the sections that have been entirely abandoned, save for their new life as a cycle track, that are most special. They’re narrower now, as the undergrowth has been allowed to creep in on both sides, but the surface is still good and the white line leads you down the centre. Even the metal holders for the cats eyes are still in place. The only trouble comes when the white line continues straight into a newly sprouted mound of earth deposited by one of the new A9’s massive embankments…

I’m writing this while sat next to the river at Pitlochry, still broad daylight at 9:45pm. It would be very relaxing, if it wasn’t for the fact that Pitlochry Drum-n-Bass Fest 2010 seems to be taking place on the opposite bank! Oh well – you can’t have it all.

Rain! The last thing I was hoping to see, yet when I stepped off the train at Inverness it was falling from the sky by the bucketful. Luckily, it didn’t last too long and the weather satisfied itself with looking mean and moody for the first part of the ride.

My bike has, not to put too fine a point on it, some reliability issues. If a piece can fall off my bike, it probably will (and a lot of the time, has in the past). Just last week, while I was out roaming the countryside, a screw fell out and the pannier rack fell off.

Today, the bike wasn’t going to let me down. Not far out of Inverness, one side of my front mudguard fell off its mooring, leaving it flapping disconsolately through the moving spokes of the wheel. Luckily, the exact same thing had happened on the other side months earlier, so I knew exactly what to do: buy some sticky tape and Sellotape it back together! My amazing repair has, so far, been good as new – on both sides. As for the ominous creaking sound that one of the pedal cranks has developed on every revolution… we’ll have to wait and see.

The rain reared its ugly head again soon after, so I took the opportunity – and the excuse to get out of the rain – to go to the visitor centre at Culloden, the site of the last battle to be fought in Britain. Predictably, the heaviest rain was reserved for the guided tour of the battlefield, but it was worth seeing. Around 1500 men lie buried in just a few long mounds to one side of the battlefield, the result of a fight that lasted about an hour. Makes you feel lucky that those days are behind us.

Now that the weather has picked up – it was sunny, though with a fairly strong headwind, for the rest of the day – it’s still light at ten to eleven in the evening here in Kingussie. Crazy stuff.

Tomorrow promises a shorter journey than yesterday, and hopefully better weather. We’ll have to wait and see what sort of day it is for mechanical defects!