Wild Camping

I don't usually repost but these are a couple of useful and well thought out articles from Dan Bailey in UKHillwalking that I thought were worth sharing (especially the second one on where you can do it)

Top Ten Tips for Wild Camping

Wild Nights Out - Responsible Camping and the Law


More mountain biking adventures in Scotland to follow soon...

Wild camp by R Nethy, on track to Fords of Avon, Cairngorms

Mountain biking adventures in Scotland - Ardverikie

When I'd set off for the start of the Challenge, I'd been warned not to return injured because we had a trip around the Cairngorms with the bikes planned for mid-June.  Fortunately, cycling is kind to knees (ha ha) so on arriving back in Sheffield from Aviemore and after a quick trip to the minor injuries unit to get the knee checked over, I was soon back out into the Peak District on the bike.

We left Sheffield on the Friday afternoon before summer solstice week with the campervan, two bikes and trailers and drove to Berwick for a curry before parking up for the night by the side of the A1 on the English/Scottish border.  We made good time the following day and reached Blair Atholl by early afternoon, so we decided to call in at the Laggan Wolftrax MTB trail centre, just west of Laggan.  I'm not a huge fan of MTB trail centres.  They're for folk who like levels of danger and excitement that generally go beyond what I consider to be enjoyable.  They're artificial and they're nearly always in forests, so there is little to see apart from trees.  They're the equivalent of climbing walls - good places to hone your skills but somehow falling short of the real thing. 

On the Sunday, we drove to Kinloch Laggan to ride a route in the Vertebrate Scotland Mountain Biking guide around the Ardverikie Estate.  Ardverikie featured in the TV series, Monarch of The Glen.

From the road, the route crosses the R Pattack by the bridge at the gatehouse and follows the estate road, which runs by an inviting sandy beach at the eastern end of Loch Laggan before taking an LRT south to rejoin and follow the line of the River Pattack after about 4km. 

A steep uphill section leads to easy riding on land rover track to the R Pattack

The track passes through a narrow tree lined valley, with a small waterfall

River Pattack and waterfall

but soon opens out into broad, grassy flood plain with the hills of the Ben Alder Forest in the distance.

The midge net - 'a la mode' gear for Scottish mountain biking

Looking south down R Pattack towards Ben Alder

This felt like big country and it would be interesting to work it into a TGO Challenge route, from Corrour Station perhaps, over the Bealach Dubh and with an overnight wild camp on one of the large grassy areas by the river.  I feel a next year's plan taking shape already.

Bridge over the R Pattack

The LRT takes in two sides of Loch Pattack followed by one of those adorable Scottish wobbly bridges that prove so entertaining to cross, especially with a bike. 

Loch Pattack - we were heading through those hills

The wobbly bridge over the Allt a Chaoil-reidhe

From here, the LRT continued another 2km to the start of the big climb.  The guide book describes this as 3.25km of serious climbing involving some hike-a-bike.  But before that we had to ford the Allt Cam.  I was having so much fun that I nearly missed the crossing point, which was marked by a very small cairn and with a faint path showing through the heather on the far bank. More entertainment was had crossing the stream, followed by a wringing out of footwear and a light lunch.

Crossing the Allt Cam.

The stepping stones mentioned in the guidebook were noticeably absent

The hike-a-bike turned out to be quite extensive, about 3km in fact.  Where the track was flat enough to ride, it was generally too boggy.  Where it wasn't boggy, it was too steep or too brief before the next boggy section, to get enough momentum.  I think the longest stretch I managed to cycle was about 75m near the top.  A younger, fitter person would doubtless have made a better fist of it.  We climbed to 800m and from this lofty standpoint we could look down through the mist and light rain onto Loch a Bhealaich Leamhain

Topping out at 800m

Loch a Bhealaich Leamhain

I wasn't sure about the downhill section which was to follow.  The map showed the contours to be steeper than the ones we'd crossed on the way up but as we set off over the edge, I knew instantly that the next 15 or so minutes were going to be a huge amount of fun.  I could see the track disappear off into the distance, with almost 450m of descent in 3.5km in store, down to Lochan na h-Earba.  It was singletrack and steep but not too steep, technical without being too gnarly and with varying terrain, starting through heather, then some rocky stuff and finishing over grass.  We had to stop 2 or 3 times on the way down just to ease the burn in our thighs but any previous doubts about the quality of this route I'd been having on the push up, were all swept into a corner by this absolutely magnificent, fast and furious descent.

At the bottom, and after a few minutes to compose ourselves and let the adrenalin rush subside, we picked up the LRT along the side of Lochan na h-Earba and followed this for a fast 6 km to the locked deer gate back into the main estate grounds.
 

Lochan na h-Earba

Here we had a faff in the rain and midges to lift the bikes over an 8' stile before dropping down through the forest to Ardverikie House, which could almost have been modelled on Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Castle*.  As we cycled past the house, I thought I could hear Flay's cracking knee joints as he skulked along the dark corridors, then I realised that it was my knees that were making the noise.  We retraced out route back over the gatehouse bridge to the road and stowed the bikes onto the back of the campervan with a feeling of smugness and satisfaction.  What a fabulous ride!
 
Distance: 34km  (21miles)
Ascent: 870m (2850')


* Ok so Arverikie predates Gormenghast but allow me some poetic licence here.

TGO Challenge 2012: Day 6 - The plan unravels

The day didn't start well. A car drove past the tents at around 5 in the morning and the driver decided to give us a wake up call with the horn.  (Tit!).  And then another (or maybe the same one coming back) did it again an hour later (oh how we larfed at these japes).

But the weather wasn't bad : a bit cool, a bit of a breeze, a bit of moisture in the air and the tent not too wet.  Having been blown off course by Jean's invitation to join her on The Trail of the 7 Lochs (I am so easily led at times), the obvious line to a crossing point on the R Findhorn, and thence to Aviemore was to continue a few more miles with her by a new track above Loch Ceo Glais and then by road round the southern end of Loch Duntelchaig and along the north side of Loch Ruthven.  After that, Jean was heading north to Culloden and I had 13 miles of road walking to reach the Findhorn at Dalmigavie Lodge.

Trail of the 7 Lochs near Loch Ceo Glais

This section of the T7L which runs above Loch Ceo Glais is, what shall we say... 'undeveloped'.  It starts off as heather bashing and continues over what appears to be some heather bashed cynically into a poor excuse for a path. 

Cynically bashed heather on the T7L

 Having said that, it does have some nice views.

Loch Ceo Glais and Loch Duntelchaig from TL7

After a couple of km of this, the T7L crossed the stream linking the two lochs.  There was no bridge.  We pondered what the Sunday afternoon strollers would make of this.

The stream - no bridge

and once across, our efforts were rewarded by this sign...

So we'd thrashed through heather and got wet feet to be told we couldn't go any further.  Grrr. We still had two thirds of Scotland to walk across and someone had put up a bloody sign telling us we couldn't go any further!!!  We made a beeline up the hill to the road, climbed over a barbed wire fence and got back to the main event, having taken about 1.5 hrs to traverse 2km. Jean had a very nicely produced A4 leaflet about the trail but sadly the product (or at least our expectations of it, as informed by the brochure) did not live up to the marketing*.

Looking back on the T7L

Putting that debacle behind us (or at least to our right hand side), we romped (hah) along the B862 and headed east (about bloody time) along the north edge of Loch Ruthven to where Jean turned towards Culloden to re-enact the sword through the heart of the Jacobite uprising at a quarter to six (ok, 1745). 

Meanwhile, the pain in my left big toe was competing with the pain in my right knee and it started to rain (a lot) and I was feeling miserable.  I carried on manfully (!) for another 5 miles, at which point I started to clutch at straws and wasted half an hour trying to cut off a corner to save half a mile.  It was futile.

Loch Ruthven

Then I unpacked the first aid kit and gave my big toe nail some further attention but it was a lost cause really.  Another couple of increasingly slow miles and I sat on a rock by the roadside, ate some chocolate, looked at the map and considered my options.  I was 25 miles from Aviemore, it was already 2pm and I was limping along at about 1mph.  I didn't know what damage I might be doing to my knee.  If I carried on this route I was pretty much committed to getting to Aviemore.  If I got that far I would be at least half a day behind schedule and would  have lost my planned rest day.  If things carried on getting worse, I could be stuck in the back of beyond, away from any roads or in a forest. Sometimes you just have to recognise when a plan is beyond salvaging.

I turned towards Inverness and walked back along the road.  After about 10 minutes, I heard a car and stuck my thumb out.  The driver stopped.  He was an ornitholoigist surveying birds nesting sites up on one of the wind farms.  He gave me a lift to Inverness where we stopped in Tescos and while he did some shopping, I had a mug of tea and a plate of chips.  Then he drove me to the centre of Aviemore and I checked into the Cairngorm Hotel because it was closest.  I looked a mess but the girl on reception found me a room and in no time at all, I was lying on a comfy bed in a warm room and feeling very pissed off.  I called John Manning to give him the news.  It was little comfort to learn that there had already been a higher than usual number of folk dropping out.
The next morning I got the first train home.  I didn't feel like hanging around to meet other Challengers coming off the Burma road.  There was snow on cars and the hills were white.  It would have been a cold night up where I'd planned to camp and I would have given anything to have spent it there rather than in the hotel.

I'd walked 66 miles from Strathcarron.  Before I set off, unsure how the shin pains would go, I'd said that if I made it to Drum I would be happy.  So on one level it was a success.  And I'd met and walked with some great people on the way.  But it's just wasn't enough - I didn't get to Johnshaven.  Oh well, next year.


 * I've been onto the website since and there are some caveats about  long heather and sections closed for lambing/calving.  This is sort of fair enough but it would be more useful if this information was in the trail brochure.  Also I get the impression that it's a trail that's been set up by horse riders primarilly for riding along on a horse.