Across Scotland by Mountain Bike - The Full Story: Day 6

Back to Day 5

Glen Tanar to Glen Esk (22 miles)

So, we were nearly there or so it was starting to feel.  Just one more big push - literally as it turned out.

It must have rained during the night as the tents were wet in the morning.  The midges were pleased to see us again.

I managed to leave my black cycling gloves on the black floor the tent but of course I didn't realise until the big yellow bag was closed up and strapped into the trailer.  I was wearing some lightweight 'anti-midge' Rabs and along with the leggings, cagoule and midge net, I quickly felt too hot as we pedalled away from the camp.   To be too hot or to get eaten?  Tough choice.  I decided to forget about it and take in the view. 

I'd been wanting to ride this track for months.  This was new ground for me, crossing from one major valley system into another major valley system.  There's something very exciting about traversing a watershed.

After a couple of miles we got our first glimpse of Mt Keen. A patch of grey cloud covered the summit crown like a badly fitting wig.

Mt Keen from Glen Tanar

Although the route we had to climb up was visible, I didn't take too much notice of it.  From this distance, foreshortened by perspective, it didn't look that steep.

Shortly before the Shiel of Glentanar, the road forks and we crossed the Water of Tanar for the third time that morning, onto the Mounth Road.  Tell me someone, please, how is this pronounced?  Is mownth or mownt or moonth or something else, like , oh I don't know... blancmange? 

The start of the Mounth Road

 

And as we moved ever closer to the foot of Mt Keen, it still didn't look like it would take the two hours that Ballater bike shop boy had advised us would be needed to reach the shoulder,

 

 

 

At the foot of the slope, we looked up and agreed this was going to require a lot of Jelly Babies.  So, loaded up with sugar, we set off.  I checked the time as we started the climb.  Even at this stage, I thought we could cycle some of this.

The lower, 'easy' section of the climb up Mt Keen

Indeed, mainly as an act of bravado, I did manage to crank the pedals briefly on 2 or 3 occasions before accepting the futility of it.  This was going to take a while.

After 45 minutes, I'd risen 150 metres in about 1 km, to the point where the track splits into two more or less parallel branches.  I waited for Hilary to catch up.  I had little choice - the Jelly Babies were in her bag.

The start of the upper part of the climb

Resting before the next big push

We rested here for 5 or 10 minutes, digging deeper into the bag of JBs and listening to some gun fire coming from down in valley.  There was another 150m of ascent to be done.  We discussed whether to take the left path or the right.  They both looked unpromising - equally steep and rocky (steeper and rockier than the lower section.)  We chose right, though whether that was the right choice is open to question.  It kept us away from the edge of the corrie and the most tightly packed contours drawn on the map.

It was slow going.  Pushing 14kg of bike, 7 kg of trailer and another14kg of bag up the steep, boulder strewn side of this mountain, I started to get an idea how it might have been for Scott's party, man-hauling sledges up the Beardmore Glacier.  Only it wasn't as long or cold of course.  In fact, it was anything but cold.

On the upper section of the climb up Mt Keen

Making slow progress up the next 50m, Hilary decided she would carry the bag up on her back and then go back down for her bike and trailer.  She passed me on the way up and again on the way down.  Reaching her bag another 50m higher, gave me an excuse to stop and let her catch up but as she was still going quite slowly, I dumped my stuff, got out the poles and hefting her bag onto my back, moved it up to the top of the slope.

The track gets steeper and the rocks bigger

Returning back down, I got back to pushing and with straining knees, feet slipping on loose rocks and a degree of pig-headedness, the bike and trailer inched their way upwards over increasingly bigger boulders. 

Some (barely) action shots

I passed the time considering what sort of person it is that would think it a good idea to bikepack over Mt Keen.  I haven't reached a conclusion yet.

At almost exactly two hours from the foot of the climb, I crested the shoulder and collapsed into the heather waiting for the JBs to arrive.  Looking back, the hills beyond Glen Muick and the granitic bulk of Lochnagar were silhouetted against a watery sky.

The route to the summit of Mt Keen

From the outset, I don't think we ever really had any intention of going across the top of Mt Keen.  The route from here to the summit looked at least as steep as the last 150m, although the map suggests it's even steeper.   I'm not sure it would be that much fun to ride down it either.  The track down the far side looks much easier.

This was as high as we were going

 The singletrack section round the flank of the mountain is a pleasant ride in the main, although as with other bealachs I've walked over, they seem to take longer to traverse than you would think from  the map.

Singletrack round the flank of Mt Keen

From the far (southern) side of Mt Keen, it's a screaming descent down into Glen Mark.  In this case it wasn't only me screaming.  I was in competition with the brakes which were complaining at the task of applying Newton's third law to neutralise the effects of gravity on a mass of 110 kgs.   That's a lot of those SI Newton thingies for four tiny squares of grippy stuff to apply.

One of the more gentle sections

The descent was mostly made technical by virtue of its steepness.  I stopped worrying about the trailer behind me and put all my concentration into keeping the bike going in a straight line as we bounced off boulders and over bumps and drainage channels.  At one point it seemed as if the track was about to plunge vertically straight down and we approached the 'edge' anxiously, relieved to find the gradient was eased to something reasonable by the thoughtful insertion of a couple of hairpin bends. 

On the edge of the abyss - looking down onto the ribbon of track following

the Ladder Burn to the valley floor

I arrived at the bottom on a massive endorphin high.  If it hadn't been for the walk up, I'd have done it all over again, though probably without the trailer this time.

The end of the descent

We rolled on past Glenmark farm and stopped for lunch by the river, just opposite Queen's Well, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert took refreshment from the artesian well in September 1861.  Albert died in December of the same year and looking at the water in the well today, you can't help wondering if the two events were connected.  Actually, it's now known that he died of Crohn's disease.

Queen's Well, Glen Mark

We lay back in the long grass, soaking up the warmth of the sun and I stripped down to my figure hugging, black cycling shorts.  The timing for this wasn't ideal as the Blairgowrie ladies walking group appeared out of nowhere and strolled past us.  The experience was almost too much for everyone.

We could quite easily have just stayed there for the rest of the afternoon but the plan had us camping at Tarfside that evening.  Somewhat reluctantly, we got back on the bikes (oh, yes, I put my clothes back on first) and rode down the valley scattering Blairgowrie ladies hither and yon in our wake.  (We didn't really.)

At the end of the track is a house and a gate.  As Hilary was shutting the gate, she commented that what would be really good now was a sign advertising teas.  I thought she was joking to start with because right behind her, on the gate post, was a sign advertising teas (and ice cream.)  And so we discovered the House of Mark and sat in the back garden with a large pot of tea and a couple of Magnums.  You should call in if you go that way.  They get a lot of walkers and mountain bikers coming through -  and they make a damned fine pot of tea. 

We had one more hill to climb for the day, to cross the col between Cairn Robie and the Hill of Rowan, with its conical monument known as The Maule Monument or Maule's Cairn.  The only details I can find about this on the web, say that the monument was constructed in 1866 by Lord Panmure in the memory of seven members of his family.  The story we were told was (I think) that it commemorates the death of a group of people who decided to go over the hill as a shortcut to church one Sunday and got caught out in a blizzard.

Monument on the Hill of Rowan

Dropping down the LRT  towards Tarfside, we came across a dozen or so LandRovers blocking the entire track, requiring us to drag the bikes and trailers up onto the bank to get past them.  It was only then that I noticed 30 or 40 people carrying shotguns, walking off the hillside towards us.  There was nothing where we joined the track to indicate there might be a shooting party further ahead.  Anyway, we didn't wait to chat.  I didn't want to spoil their shooting and I didn't especially want them to do anything which might spoil our day.   The final descent into Tarfside was rapid.

And here the day and to a  certain extent the rest of the trip, went off plan a tiny bit.  I'd not been to Tarfside before but I knew there was a recognised place where people camped.  In all of my meticulous planning for this trip, I had forgotten to find out exactly where this was.  I suppose I'd assumed that if it wasn't obvious, we would see someone to ask but when we got there, the place was deserted.  They were probably all out shooting things. 

Added to this, we were enticed by a sign advertising hot meals until 6pm, two miles down the road at The Retreat.  It was a bit gone 4pm.  We reasoned we could pop down the road, have something to eat, find out where the camping was and then pop back up to Tarfside again. 

The first problem with this plan was that, when we got there, at about a quarter to five, they had already stopped serving.  Apparently, they only serve until 6pm on Saturdays.  They didn't advertise this on the sign because it would have needed more paint!  And I thought Yorkshiremen were supposed to be tight.

The next problem was that contrary to what the Ordnance Survey might suggest with their fine cartography, there had been quite a loss of height between Tarfside and where we now found ourselves and neither of us felt like doing any more uphill that day.

And then there was this business with the guns.  We had one more off road section to do in the morning.  It was about 3.5 miles, starting from Tarfside and passing by Cowie Hill and the Clash of Wirran down into Glen Lethnot.  What we didn't especially fancy was a long slog up onto the hills only to find a shooting party letting rip on the other side.

The people at The Retreat told us that there was a campsite further down the valley and so after a brief conflab, that is where we headed.  It turned out to be a long 7 miles down the valley and we got caught by a black rain cloud that had been closing in on us since Glen Mark.  The campsite had the feel it was about to close for the season but it had hot showers and we found a comfortable place under the trees to pitch the tents, although this wasn't actually in the campers area.

Glenesk campsite

A bit of me still feels that we missed off the end of the ride but I think the fact that we had met one shooting party that day was a good reason to keep off the hills for the final day.  It didn't seem worth the risk, just for the sake of three and half miles of off-road cycling.

I can't remember if I plugged into Babylon Circus or not but here is another track anyway. 

Tomorrow we would reach the sea.  It actually looked like we might be going to finish this.

On to Day 7

Across Scotland by Mountain Bike - The Full Story: Day 5

Day 5: Braemar to Glen Tanar (33 miles)

We were now over half way with all the major obstacles behind us other than Mt Keen, tomorrow.  OK, the contours looked a bit close together but we weren't planning to go to the top, so how hard could it be?

The sun was shining and there no midges and we sat on the grass to eat breakfast. Well, we ate a breakfast bar, so I suppose you could say that we flirted with the concept of breakfast.  Hilary shared hers with one of the many ducks which seem to own the site.

OmNomNom!

Today's route to Ballater would largely stick to the valley, through forests and minor roads.  Rather than take the road out of Braemar to Invercauld Bridge, there was a track shown on the map which runs under something a feature known as the Lion's Face.  Seasoned Challengers will  be familiar with this but I'd not been that way before.  We asked the camp site lady if she knew what it was like.  Yes, she said, she sometimes went running that way but it was a bit steep and rocky and she preferred the road.  She thought it would be too rough to cycle.  It didn't look that steep on the map and if you could run it, we reasoned, it was unlikely be that rocky.  So we ignored her advice and turned right out of the camp site to pick up the cycle track across the road.  It was a bit of a steep pull to begin with but it quickly settled down into a reasonable gradient, on a mostly grassy track sprinkled with the occasional tree root or rock for added interest.

Lion's Face track

A level section through sun dappled woods gives way, on the corner, to views west along the River Dee and north over to Braemar Castle.

Braemar Castle

From here the track descends below the rocky outcrop of the Lion's Face (hard to see the likeness from close quarters) before plunging more steeply downhill over an increasingly rocky, rooty, loose surface out to the road.  We couldn't imagine why anyone would prefer the road to this little gem of a route.

The next 2 miles of road to Invercauld Bridge (aka the old Brig of Deeeee) were quiet.  The coach parties would have still been tucking into their full Scottish breakfasts but we set all thoughts of bacon, sausages, mushrooms, fried tomatoes, fried bread (oh, just stop it) to one side and carried on pedalling.

The Brig of Dee

I could sound knowledgeable and write about the history of the bridge but I'd only be plagiarising Historic Scotland's info panel.  So here it is.  It's fascinating stuff.

We passed through the deer gate into Ballochbuie Forest.  The last time I came this way, I was hungover from a 'wild night' at Mar Lodge. 

Deer gate into Ballochbuie Forest

No hangover today and we cruised along easy forest trails

Ballochbuie Forest

 past the bridge with no name

The bridge with no name

offering fine views up and down the Dee.

River Dee from the bridge with no name

We rode past Connachat Cottage and after more forest trails the track turned to a road leading up to the gates into the grounds of Balmoral Castle.  Hilary was adamant that we were booked in for morning tea with you know who (I would have just settled for a tea shop.)  As it was, the gates were locked and we had an unexpected Norbert to cycle over to Easter Balmoral (passing between various points on the map indicating cairns named after Queen Victoria's children.)  No sign of the Easter Bunny so we continued along the B976, which was dull and after a few miles of dullness, we turned into some woods, circumnavigating a small hill called The Knock (355m - told you it was small.)  I wasn't sure about bothering with this - it seemed like 2km of off-road just for the sake of it but it was actually quite a pleasant little track, which followed the river and then back out to the road. 

We rode over the bridge into Ballater, thorough throngs of people, who I assumed had heard about our trip and had come out to cheer us on our way.  (I say, can you cheer a bit louder?  Anyone?)

We cruised the main drag eyeing up possible tea shops and then the other main drag and found one opposite the green with two empty tables outside and purveying pies from inside.  The tables were a bit wobbly and close to the road, so we decamped to the green and ate under a tree.  Sloth took hold and, after clearing aside the dog-ends dozed in the sun for a while.

It was early afternoon and Ballater was full of tourists and we didn't take to it, so we agreed to head for Glen Tanar.  The Halfway Hut was another 12 miles but there were no steep gradients.  We called in at the Cycle Highlands bike shop.  It always good to have a mooch around and see what's on offer but we also wanted to find out if we should phone any estate offices to check up on possible deer stalking or grouse shooting that might be happening over the next two days.  The young lad behind the counter thought any stalking would be in one of the neighbouring valleys but suggested we call in at the tourist office at Millfield, where we would be able to get more accurate advice.  We mentioned we were going over the Mounth Road tomorrow, across the shoulder of Mt Keen and he said we would be looking at a two hour push.  I thought he was just saying that because we looked old and left the shop feeling slightly insulted!

We stopped for a final brew in another tea shop near the old station.  I went in to order a pot for two while Hilary sat at a table outside, guarding the bikes.  I came out to find some old bloke chatting to her about bikes!

We took the Deeside Way out of Ballater, which is the track bed of the old Deeside Railway,  opened in 1853, the investment for it coming largely as a result of Price Albert bought Balmoral Castle a few years earlier.  When the royal train went through, the level crossing gates were locked and the stations closed.

On The Deeside Way

The Deeside Way makes for pleasant, fast but otherwise unexciting riding, much like the High Peak or Monsal Trails in Derbyshire (but without the tunnels.)  There are some good views of heather moorland, solitary or small stands of Silver Birch and distant hills.  It was already starting to feel like the highlands were fading to a distant memory.

We left the Deeside Way at Dinnet and followed minor roads and farm tracks to the tourist information centre at Millfield, where we called in to ask about the likelihood of meeting men with guns.  The place seemed empty but a student volunteer appeared from upstairs.  The ranger was out and she wasn't able to give us a definitive or even convincing prediction as to our safety.  She did show some concern when we said that we would be wild camping in the glen and checked that we wouldn't be lighting any fires.  We assured here we wouldn't (if you ignore the gas stoves) and went on our way.

Further down the valley, we passed St Lesmo's Chapel

St Lesmo's Chapel

 

 Built by Sir William Cunliffe Brooks, "an eccentric banker and MP from Manchester", the pointing in the walls is quite unusual.

Pointing in walls of St Lesmo's Chapel

We turned south west into Glen Tanar and passed a group of teenage backpackers.  And then some more.  And then still more, all the way up to the Halfway Hut.

The Halfway Hut turned out to be a garden shed, so any ideas of another cosy night in a bothy were put to one side.

The Halfway Hut

 

 

 We rode on up the glen for another few hundred yards and shortly before the forest gave way to open moor, we found a comfortable looking spot for a wild camp, in the trees, more of less out of sight of the track and just by the river.

Wild camp in Glen Tanar

It had been a great day's riding.  We'd covered 33miles and were 12 miles into tomorrow's ride.  As the midges started to close in, we disappeared into our tents and I settled into another evening with Babylon Circus and thoughts of just how much pushing we might have to look forward to in the morning.

Time to stretch your vocal chords again...

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