Gravel riding in South Scotland

 I bought a book a while back. Gravel Rides in Scotland. While I was getting on with my MSc, all kinds of plans were hatched as to what I'd get around to doing once the whole thing was finally finished. There were grand ideas to take off the entire of April and just go and do stuff. 

Unfortunately financial reality means that isn't really too much of an option, but we did get a short week away just recently. Lynne has a new gravel bike- if you count last August as new: a flat bar Vitus which seems to be the most comfortable bike I've seen her on. The idea was to take both bikes to Dumfries and Galloway after work last thursday and do some riding. Hopefully getting Lynne on some of the smoother and easier gravel before I headed off alone for some bigger rides. 

Gatehouse of Fleet:

We stayed in the van in the Spar carpark in GoF. The Spar was very well appointed (Apparently it is hilarious that the bit that I look at first/judge a shop is the home baking section. But there you go). Anyhow, it is a good Spar, and the toilets in the carpark are open 24/7. 

We took a roadride in on the first day, going over to Kirkcudbright, cycling into a headwind the whole way. A few coffee stops were taken to get there (with the new vacuum bike flask), and a few wrinkles were ironed out. I attempted to get waffles in Kirkcudbright but was thwarted by the fact that they were still "out of season", and wouldn't be back on the menu until- well... next week. Great. 

The ride home was a lot faster, considering that we had a tailwind. 

Day 2 was the gravel ride in the Book. It went North from GoF up Route 7- the cycle route that seems pretty ubiqutous around this part of Scotland - on a decent and quiet road for a fair old way. Eventually the road gave way to some fairly small gravel which was very rideable and proved to be a lovely introduction to what was to come. 

Under a viaduct and onward northwards through varying grades of gravel, the biggest and gnarliest of which never really lasted for very long. Northwards past Loch Grannoch towards Clatteringshaws Loch and the turn East along the forest road- which was still being kind of dressed and prepped for the motoring tourist season. Essentially it's an unmetalled road that relies on people driving slowly in order for it to stay well made. (that, and issues with environmental washing away)- so we momentarily shared the road with some pretty significantly heavy rollers and road equipment. 

The surface was pretty decent, though without mudguards we'd have been pretty covered in crud by the end of the road. Although we stopped at the Otter pools, we saw no otters except the stone one. 

On the way back was the worst section of gravel of the day- we were on a dismantled railway, and part of it was pretty much like they had just taken the railes and sleepers away and left the hardcore with nothing else on it. Fairly uncomfortable, but only lasted a short amount of time. 

Stops became more frequent as we got towards the end and fatigue took over, but we were a very happy pair who dropped down into GoF at the end of the day. Lovely day out. 

Aberfoyle

I dropped Lynne off at Carlisle in the morning and continued north to Aberfoyle. It's a place that has re-christened itself as "gravelfoyle" for the large amount of riding around it. There is a decent 60k loop in the book, so it seemed like the right thing to do to blast around it in the afternoon. And yes. It was brilliant. The vast majority was easy going gravel. Fast underwheel, easy to ride, generally wide open double track, and although there were plenty of people around, it still felt pretty empty. I didn't spend too long taking photos as I was just having too much fun. 

Stuc a Chroin

Took a rest day from the bike and attempted the Stuc a Chroin Fellrace route. Don't really know it, so took a map and a gpx on my garmin for nav through the forest. What I *DIDN'T* know is that my garmin was set to re-route itself to the most "popular" route whenever I left the original route, and there was a fair amount of forestry work that had gone on around the place. So I spent a frustrating few hours attempting to follow a gpx route on my watch through a forest- where the forest AND the GPX kept fecking changing without me realising it. 

Oh I cursed. Once out of the forest nav was fine and I blatted over Stuc and Ben Vorlich and back, and I ignored the GPX on the way back as well and just kind of followed my nose. A lot easier on the way down. But Jeez! That garmin thing had me totally flummoxed and doubting everything.  

Callendar Monster Loop

At 130k of gravelly goodness, I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to get around this entire loop without cheating especially after 5 days of increasingly heavy exercise. (no, I wasn't going to have a rest day, this was the last day of decent weather). Downloaded the route onto the wahoo (no, I havent had any issues with that- only the bloody garmin), and headed off from Callendar (all day parking for £3.20) into the hills. 

The road uphill soon gave way into Gravel, and within 30 mins I could have been in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The section from here towards Comrie was fantastic. I was fresh, eating every 35 mins thanks to the alert I set up on the wahoo and the gravel was rideable and remote.

Simply amazing riding- and once the gravel had run out, it was quiet back lanes down into Comrie before a short main road section before jumping onto estate paths up and over the hill towards Balmenoch. Some of these sections were pretty steep and had me right into the red- other sections were steep AND loose which was an additional uphill challenge. 

Despite having gone through the relative civilisation of Comrie, it was soon as if the moor was the middle of nowhere again. The remoteness of the landscape was incredible. What was fantastic was that the day before I'd be on the tops of the hills looking into the Glens, and today I was biking through them at quite a pace. It's great to travel in both places by different methods. 

The Dam at Loch Turret came and went- with me expecting to see a few more people... thus far, on the moor, I had seen a grand total of- uh- no-one. And thus it continued- basically for the first 3 hours of the ride- except for the short section through Comrie, I saw no-one. It was only after joining the A-road north towards Craignavar that I saw anyone else. 

Despite it being an A-road, the views were still incredible with stonkingly high hills on either side as you ride down the glen to the turning along the glen over to Loch Tay. Inevitably into a headwind. 

There was also a farm at the entrance to the glen which had about 6 tracked vehicles (Hagglunds) outside. The track, at present, was fairly decent to ride along. Was it about to get a whole lot harder very soon?

Well, the answer was yes- but only in a headwind kind of way. Under tyre it was pretty rideable the entire way to Loch Tay. It took a while, and the scenery was breathtaking. Some of it was gravel, some was grass. There were the inevitable uphill slope, but nothing horrendous (apart from getting increasingly tired

The ride down to Loch Tay was superb, and then a hard left onto a very quiet road- all the way back along the Loch towards Killin. It's a long long way along that loch, but once I got to Killin I had the bit between my teeth and didn't want to stop. Not far to go now!

The route 7 comes through here, and there was a fairly long, but steady climb along a disused railway before a superb long and easy descent to Lochearnhead. 

By now there are only 35km to go. You could take the easy route back along route 7, but I figured that seeing how the rest of the route had been so much fun, I should continue with the marked route from the book. 

Minor mistake. The next 3 km up Glen Almond were utter purgatory. Even if I was fresh I don't think it would have been bags of fun. Maybe I had been spoiled by the quality of the riding thus far, but crikey. This was like being on a grassy, boggy, gnarly XC course that needed fairly regular expressions of brutal power to get up short inclines before sending you down to the bottom of the next one. It was here that I finally had to walk a section that was simply too brutal for my legs to cope with.

 

Still- once up and through this section (which took far longer than I would have liked... I needed to have a bit of a talk to myself)- the downhill through forestry roads back onto the 7 felt so easy, as did the final run in to Callendar. A superb, long, brutal and excellent day, capped off by the fact I got to the bakery 20 mins before it closed. Good times.