I changed my plans to give me an easier day today. Only 60 miles instead of 100 miles. I felt I had earned it and it actually made a lot of sense. For one thing I wanted to make a trip to the bike shop in Pitlochry. They had saved me from disaster on my OS maps trip in 2022, when I realised I had no tyre levers with me! Later that same day, as events transpired, I suffered my first blowout of the whole adventure. Sometimes you feel things are meant to be.
The full version of that story is documented in a previous 2022 blog post. But today – as a preventative step – I felt it wise to procure new cleats for my shoes, since bike shops hereafter until Cape Wrath would be very hard to find. I was also buying spare parts for cyclists I would be meeting in a couple of days. Anyway, it ruled out an early start and I wasn’t motivated to ride 100 miles to Inverness if I didn’t need to. Which, as it turned out, I didn’t, because there was a much cheaper accommodation option available after 60 miles in Aviemore, leaving me with a long, but not too long, day after that. But more of all that tomorrow.
My morning shower got me functioning and the bike shop was as helpful and welcoming as could be. The staff all seemed too young to be out of school, but they knew their stuff, and the correct shoe cleats and brake pads were duly purchased. At this point the sun was shining warmly, so I administered sun cream like you should. It perhaps lasted an hour. After that, we were back to the now well established Scottish summer weather of grey, cloudy skies and the ever present (although so far unfulfilled) threat of showers.
The trouble with giving yourself more time is that you tend to use it up. I was possibly three miles up the road when, at the top of the Pass of Killiecrankie, I succumbed to the roadside sign offering a bacon sandwich. It wasn’t just any old bacon sandwich, however. This one was offered, along with a fine pot of tea, by the National Trust for Scotland, and it was every bit as good as you would expect from such a fine and upstanding institution. The location was close to a famous battle site in the first Jacobbite Rising, when “Bonnie Dundee” led his men to victory in support of the exiled James VII of Scotland (James II of England), who had fled to France when the Crown was offered by Parliament to James’ own nephew and son-in-law, William of Orange and his wife, Mary (James’ daughter by his first marriage).
Despite being outnumbered by more than 1,000 men, Killiecrankie was the Jacobite’s only victory of this uprising. They chased the fleeing Redcoats through the Pass of Killiecrankie, resulting in the famous Soldier’s Leap, which you can visit today. But I needed to accumulate some proper miles, so I rose up myself and began to pedal. I got several miles this time before I was tempted by a whisky shop close to Blair Castle. Knowing that I was now on the verge of some very empty and unforgiving country, I paused and was offered a taste of the newly released Harris Single Malt, whose brand new distillery in Tarbert I visited in 2022 before they had quite got it ready to go. According to the man in the shop, it’s quite popular. He put it down to the special bottle, which can be made into a lovely lamp when you finish the contents. Worth considering.
After that I followed the National Cycle Network (NCN) route 7 signs which took me all the way to the remote village of Dalwhinnie, 20 miles along the only sensible route available. There are many mountains that get in the way around here, so the railway, the main A9, and the bike route all follow the same winding valleys. It took me well away from my NNW straight line for the first time in the trip. But I didn’t have a choice.
Despite all the mountains, it’s not especially pretty up here. Austere is a word that came to mind. It is a mostly treeless world of dark, brooding, round topped hills that don’t lend themselves to pretty pictures. But the cycle route was good to ride and kept me away from the noise of the traffic, often by using long abandoned sections of the old main road. The road peaked after a long and gradual climb at the top of Drumochter Pass, the highest point on the NCN at 1515 feet above sea level. And from there, it felt a lot more down than up!
Dalwhinnie isn’t much of a place. It calls itself “Scotland’s meeting place” but there isn’t an abundance of opportunity for those looking to meet one another. It is a significant road junction and has the last petrol station heading west for 55 miles. It also has a famous distillery with a fancy visitor centre, aimed primarily at foreign tourists; and a rather nice cafe, The Hive, aimed at passers by like me. There were a number of cyclists enjoying their soft seats.
Eventually I found my way down to the upper reaches of the Spey Valley and the linear towns of Newtonmore, Kingussie and, finally, the rather ugly mountain resort town of Aviemore and my journey’s end. It attracts a lot of visitors and I imagine it makes a good base for all sorts of wonderful activities in the Cairngorms and elsewhere. There are certainly no end of outdoor shops to equip all the visitors. But the town lacks character and the architecture is brutalist, with the exception of one large hotel and the railway station. Getting a meal tonight was harder than I had experienced anywhere recently, with waiting lists in place in the first couple of places I tried. So I went for a curry instead. Straight in and very tasty.
