Across Scotland by Mountain Bike - The Full Story: Day 4

Day 4: Glen Feshie, Geldie Burn, Linn of Dee, Braemar (19 miles)

The day didn't start especially well.  The rain had diminished to a drizzle but the midges hadn't tired of being irritating.  Encased head to foot in thick clothing, gloves and head nets and doused in Smidge, we ventured out of the tents and packed up camp.

We'd barely got going when I fluffed a gear change or thought I had, and then again and then came to a stop.  Looking down, the chain appeared to be bent double and caught in something.  It looked broken. I got off to check the damage and was relieved to find that it was just a broken spoke that had poked itself through one of the links causing the chain to twist up.  With the spoke and chain untangled, things looked much less serious. I've broken spokes on other bikes and it has always been possible to bend the wire a few times, to weaken it and then break it off at the rim.  Not this one.  The metal refused to fatigue.  I got the tool kit out of the big yellow bag and tried to cut through the spoke with a lightweight, TrekMates multi-tool.  The jaws of the multi-tool's cutters locked themselves round the spoke wire and wouldn't release.  The moral of this is don't waste your money on cheap tools.  The situation wasn't helped by the fuzzy vision I had through the midge net and trying to work in gloves.  I tried bending the spoke some more.  It still didn't break but the multi-tool let go.  Abandoning the idea of breaking it off, I just wrapped it round another spoke a couple of times. Job sorted.  I don't know why I didn't just do that in the first place.

Higher up Glen Feshie

 

Start of day 4, take 2.  We were back on our way.  After a night of rain, the ground was soft but we made steady progress to the Allt Eindart, our first river crossing of the day.  This was too rocky to ride so we separated the bikes and trailers and carried everything across on foot.

Crossing the Allt Eindart, Glen Feshie

I'd expected to make a bit of a loop up to the Eidart Bridge (aka Bridge of Death by some) but the Eidart's water levels were low despite the previous nights rain and we were able to push the bikes and trailers across the river at the ford.

Fording the R. Eidart

 

From here the route follows the River Feshie as an increasingly pleasant grassy track, which after about a km arrives at another ford.  At least it does if you want to go somewhere other than Braemar.  Switching on the GPS, something I should have done 10 minutes earlier, I confirmed our position and checked the map.  The shortest distance to where we wanted to be, was 500m along a bearing onto the summit of Cnapan Mor (893m, for those who like to know that sort of thing.)  It took about half an hour to push through a mixture of tussocky heather and long grass, skirting round the worst of the boggy stuff.

Off piste bikepacking

Any time we had saved in not going up to the Eidart Bridge had been taken back by this little navigational anomaly.  Once back on track, there followed 2.5 miles of quite difficult terrain: boggy, rocky singletrack with several small streams to cross.  If you've walked this way, you'll know what I mean.   We finally stopped going up, crossed the watershed and leaving Glen Feshie behind us, dropped down towards the Geldie Burn.

Across the watershed and the end of the single track

It was good to reach the Land Rover track.  It had taken us 4 hours to cover 5.25 miles.  We could probably have walked it faster!  The next 14 miles to Braemar were considerably easier and we rode those in 2 hours, including a lunch stop near the ford across to Bynack Lodge and another rest by the road near Inverie, to watch butterflies in a meadow.

Land Rover track alongside the Geldie Burn

There is now a sign outside here which says

"National Trust for Scotland - a place for everyone.  Do not enter"

 

We crossed White Bridge without stopping, passed a couple of backpackers trying to set fire to the forest and paused at the Linn of Dee to look at the water.

 

Linn  of Dee

 

River Dee after Inverey, looking west

 

Linn  of Quoich

 

Entering Braemar, we headed straight for Taste.., it being the first place offering light refreshments when approaching from the west.

 

Taste..

displaying three magic words: coffee, cake, open

 

It's always an awkward moment when you come off the hill and you haven't washed for two days and you walk into a café where all the other customers are... how best to describe this?  Well, just not sweaty and mud splattered.

 

Hilary went off  in search of soap and water and I ordered the menu.  Let's just say we have different priorities.  By the time she got back to the table I was alternately slurping tea and juice and gnawing the edge of the table, waiting for the food to arrive.  I must have been quite an unsettling sight.

 

An hour later and lightly refreshed, we left Taste.. to rebuild their business and went to check into the campsite.  Tents erected, we showered, rinsed out our muddy and phew, oh so smelly gear, which we left in the drying room, and then strolled into the village to continue foraging in the cafes and pubs of Braemar.  We began at the Hungry Highlander, notable for its "curry's pizzas", where we had some disappointing samosas and excellent onion bhajis, before heading to the Fife Arms for beer and a somewhat disappointing steak pie and chips, finally finishing off with an OK ice cream from the china shop (or whatever it is - that place just down from the gear shop.)

 

Replete, if not a little bloated, we headed back to the tents with the prospect of an easy day to Ballater (and tea with the Queen) tomorrow.

 

 

Back to day 3   /  Forward to day 5

 

 

Across Scotland by Mountain Bike - The Full Story: Day 3

The next two days of our coast to coast more or less followed my TGOC 2009 route, I'd walked with Steve Gough.  Even on wheels, it still took two days to get from Newtonmore to Braemar.

On arrival at Craigellachie House, we showered and washed clothes and then strolled across the road to the pub for dinner.  I'd forgotten quite how conveniently close this was to the hostel. It was Sunday and they had a popup carvery, which was offering a choice of  beef, pork and turkey, so naturally I chose all three. After all, it uses up a lot of energy towing a Transit van, err trailer, around Scotland.  We each forced down an ice cream sundae with some difficulty and then on returning to the hostel, were offered a crepe by the French family staying there.  Well, it would have been rude to refuse.  One of them commented that since Chris Frome had won the Tour, all the Brits were riding bikes.  In the interests of entente cordiale, I stop myself from saying, "Yes, we're showing you guys how to do it".  And then we crawled off to bed.

Day3: Glen Feshie (17 miles)

The day started grey and overcast,  We packed up, had a chat with Neil (one of the hostel owners and a keen cyclist) and cycled back up the road to the transport café for an especially fine fry up.  Hilary went for the standard fry up and I opted for the double.  After all, the next proper food would be Taste.. in Braemar (since tea shops in Kingussie don't open until halfway through the morning).  We called in at the Co-op to stock up on Jelly Babies and chocolate and left Netwonmore on the continuation of Sustrans 7 towards Kingussie.  Travelling by bike eats up boring road miles and in no time at all the cycle path terminated abruptly at a metal barrier (which was an arse to get the trailers round) and propelled us straight back onto the road, halfway round a blind bend.  Who thought that was a good idea, I wonder?

Ruthven Barracks

At Ruthven Barracks, we stopped to take a few photos and get a fix of performance enhancing JBs. This is of course Chris Frome's secret of success but we didn't tell the Frenchies that.  They certainly kept us going.  By Ballater, we were practically 'mainlining' on the things. We chatted to an American who came across to look at the trailers , then headed off for Tromie bridge where somewhat disappointingly, the view of the falls was obscured by a lot of scaffolding holding up the bridge.

Falls at Tromie Bridge

 We turned off into the forest and arrived at Drumguish to find a sign saying that a bridge had collapsed.  It obviously didn't have enough scaffolding on it.  From the grid ref, it looked like it was one that we were intending to cross.

The stretch of terrain across to Glen Feshie is pleasingly varied with open moor giving way to forest tracks, then meadows and finally more forest, leading out to the road which runs along the lower part of valley to Glenfeshie Lodge

Entering Inshriach Forest after Drumguish

Trail in Inshriach Forest

The 'not collapsed' bridge

Cycling through meadows near Baileguish

Bridges were at the forefront of my thoughts on this day.  With the collapse of the bridge at Carnachuin, only months after I had crossed it in 2009 (it was nothing to do with me) , the nearest crossing point over the R. Feshie was a couple of miles downstream or so I thought.  The 1:50,000 showed a bridge and some late night (though any time of the day would have yielded the same result) Googling came up with images of a stone, pack horse bridge.  I mentioned this to someone a few weeks prior to setting off and when they questioned if it still existed, I confidently said, "Yes, I'd seen pictures of it".  Of course what I hadn't checked on, was the age of the pictures.

I could drag this story out for a while and keep you, dear reader, in suspense but then this isn't a suspension bridge story.  There is, in fact, a bridge at the place marked on the map but it's not of the stone, pack horse variety but a new wooden thing, rather like the one in the picture below

New bridge across R Feshie (seen through rain splattered lens)

 

Various routes lead off from the far side and we headed a bit to the left of south and shortly reached a new looking track that had the appearance of a purpose built MTB trail.  Comparing the map with the route recorded by the GPS, they look to be the same except for a 1km section spanning the Allt Garbhlach, which now runs closer to the R. Feshie.

Upgraded singletrack along Glen Feshie

It turned out to be a bit of a curate's egg.  Much of its length was excellent for 'trailering' but the good bits were punctuated by annoying drainage channels and some very steep sections, protected against erosion by rock steps.  The latter gave rise to some immoderate language as we negotiated the trailers down these and back up the other side.  There are some "precious moments of a man's life" (Jerome K Jerome) which are best consigned to the dark recesses of the memory and left there.

Crossing the Allt Garbhlach

 

Whilst not the biggest stream crossing, one of the most troublesome with a trailer

By the time we reached Ruigh Aiteachain bothy we felt drained and also quite wet, after being caught in the first of a number of heavy rain showers that dropped on us that afternoon. 

Ruigh Aiteachain bothy

We brewed up some soup and accompanied this with a reight good protein splurge of  tuna, cheese and chorizo.  We idled away an hour in the bothy while it rained some more rain, during which time we psyched ourselves up for the landslips, which I was anticipating would require some faffing to get the trailers over. 

Negotiating one of the landslips

In fact they turned out to be pretty straightforward and although a bit too steep and rocky in places to cycle up, were easy enough to ride down - that is to say, I only once nearly lost the trailer (me and the bike) over the edge.

Singletrack down from one of the landslips

I'd forgotten just how long Glen Feshie is.  As is often the case, the map hides the 'true' distance.  It was only 4 miles from the bothy to the planned wild camp spot but getting there seemed to swallow up the entire afternoon.

As we rode through the ancient Caledonian Pine forests featured in a recent, well-known film about the Cairngorms, images of Chris Townsend staring wistfully up at the skies morphed into similar head shots of Professor Brian Cox telling us how the rocks were billions of years old and that there were billions of pine trees in the universe.  Hilary brought me back to reality with a  couple of Jelly Babies.

"Billions of pine trees once covered these ancient rocks..."

We met a walker coming from the direction of the river, having the appearance of someone who'd been in rather a lot of rain.  He said he'd been up on one of the hills, which accounted for his appearance, and was just returning to his tent, nestled cosily amongst the trees. 

Then after some pleasant (notwithstanding the precipitation) cycling through the trees, we reached a ford across the R. Feshie.  On foot, this can be bypassed by traversing across an exposed section of scree on the left hand side.  A quick recce convinced us that, of the two options, crossing the river and then back again was going to be easier and safer that portaging the trailers over the screes.

Fording the R Feshie

The exit from the ford was about 30m-40m upstream, so I went across on foot first, to check the depth.  If you get the line right and don't lose momentum part way across, it could be ridden without dabbing but neither of us quite managed it.

Reaching the far bank

The crossing back over to the right bank was shorter but the water was deeper and the riverbed more uneven and slippery.  My attempt to ride it ended abruptly in midstream and in view of that, Hilary took the sensible option and walked it.

Crossing back over the R Feshie

We met a party of mountain bikers coming in the opposite direction - four adults and two teenagers.  They were doing the Cairngorms tour and had set off from Tomintoul that morning heading for Kincraig or Inverdruie (I forget which).  They had virtually no gear with them, so I assume they were being supported, and they seemed a bit unsure how far they had left to go that day.

I, on the other hand, knew exactly how far we had to go.  It was not far and just around the next bend.  At least that's what I told Hilary for the next hour as we rose higher above the river and the views became more expansive. 

As the path rises up the valley side, we looked down onto the river

Finally, the track descended steeply round a bend to a stream coming down a large gulley, near the point on the map marked as Ruighe nan Leum.  We had 'reached our destination' for the day.  There was some urgency in setting up the tents.  The rain was getting heavier and the midgies were coming out to play. 

On a sunny day, out of midge season, this would be a fabulous place to camp

I thought midges and rain were incompatible.  Maybe that's just wishful thinking or perhaps they've evolved to have goretex shells.  Either way, it rained heavily all night and whenever I looked out through the ventilation hole above the Akto door, all I could see was an evil looking cloud of the little blighters, whilst images of Brian Cox droning on about billions of midges making up the dark matter of the universe haunted me.

The evil midge cloud

Eventually I managed to suppress them by playing Babylon Circus on the iPod and singing along very loudly.  Obviously that wasn't in any way annoying to anyone!

Turn up the volume very loud and sing along

The words for the chorus are easy to pick up, even in French

Back to days 1 and 2  /  Forward to Day 4

Across Scotland by Mountain Bike - The Full Story: Days 1 and 2

The Plan
Hilary and I first talked about doing a Scottish coast to coast on mountain bike a year ago.  After only making the reserve list for the TGOC this year, the idea resurfaced and plans were made which had us arriving in Montrose around the end of the Challenge.  Then, with the extended winter we moved he start to mid-June to give us longer days and less chance of hitting any snow, in particular on the Corryairack Pass.  Then we altered the route to go through Glen Roy instead of over the Corryairack as this looked a more interesting way to go, with less climbing and avoiding the difficulties of traversing the washed out sections on the eastern side.  I've since learnt that these have been repaired as part of the on-going work to build a new power line through the Pass.

June arrived and the day before we were due to leave for Scotland, I had a bit of a health wobbly, which was aggravated by sitting in a car for long periods and made us think that just getting to the start might be difficult.  As it turned out, mountain biking seemed to be the thing with fixed the problem.

We rescheduled the ride to August, the peak time for midgies and the start of the shooting/stalking season but it was either that or leave it for another year.  We'd done too much planning and preparation to postpone it again.  We'd also told a lot of people that we were doing this, so we didn't have much choice.

Getting the pieces in place
Before we could start the ride, we had to sort out some logistics.  We needed to be in Fort William with the bikes and trailers whilst the car had to be in Montrose for our arrival.  We chose Corpach as the start of the crossing because it conveniently had a campsite and car hire place close together.  We drove there on the Thursday and hired a car the next day, driving both cars to Montrose, where we left my car and returned to Corpach in the hire car.  After more than 600 miles driving in two days we were anxious to get on the bikes and get pedalling.

Day 1: Corpach to Luib-Chonnal Bothy, Glen Roy (31 miles)

So the stage was set.   Everything was in place.  No more excuses, it was time to do this thing.

The Start - Corpach

We took the road out of Corpach towards Fort William and at Banavie picked up the towpath along the Caledonian Canal, riding up the wrong side of Neptune's Staircase, a flight of eight locks built by Thomas Telford.

Neptune's Staircase - just look at those clouds!

We found out we'd ridden up the wrong side when we came across a sign which said more or less just that.  So our first 'river crossing' challenge of the trip was to get across the top lock.

Caledonian Canal

At nine in the morning, we had the towpath virtually to ourselves - just a handful of people, a few boats and a couple of kayakers.  We stopped off to look at the Loy Sluices, where excess water is drained off into  the River Lochy.

Loy Sluices

 

There's a big cavernous, vaulted chamber underneath where Hilary is standing, which is a place not to be when they open the taps (but it does have that seductive, dripping sound you get in a cave that tempts you to have a look inside.)

Gairlochy

At Gairlochy, we had our first Jelly Baby stop before leaving the towpath and the Great Glen Way and following the road to Spean Bridge and the first real climb of the trip.  Shortly after being overtaken by some whippets on road bikes, who didn't seem to notice the hill, the Commando Memorial came into view and we pulled into the car park.  Immediately Hilary was mobbed by the aforementioned whippets, keen to talk about her bike, which, it soon became clear, was something of a bike nerd magnet.  (It's a custom build based on a Cotic B-Fe frame if you really want to know!)  The roadies did however offer us some coffee from a  flask and a sausage roll.  They were on their ninth day of a LEJOG and riding a hundred miles a day with a support team following in a van.  One of them suggested that we would do better with a van.  I said I was finding it hard enough just to pull the trailer and I couldn't imagine how we would manage to tow a Transit to Montrose.

Commando Memorial - Spean Bridge

Ben Nevis Range

 

 There was rain over on Aonach Mor and heading our way but it missed us as we sped down the hill to Spean Bridge village and the junction for Glen Spean and Roybridge.  The A82 is not a road to be cycling on for long.

Roybridge tea shop

We had called in at the Roybridge village store and tea shop the previous day for an excellent bacon roll and coffee and determined it to be deserving a second visit.  In any case, this was the end of 'civilisation' until we reached Laggan Wolftrax or maybe Netwonmore.  We'd covered about 15 fairly easy miles.  The real work was about to start.  Fortified by tea and fine pastries, we headed out into the unknown.

Glen Roy

The route up Glen Roy starts out as a road and continues like that for a few miles, rising quite steeply in places (quite a lot of places actually).

At the car park and visitor information point, which describes the origins of the 'parallel roads' along the hillsides (actually ancient shorelines), we met a couple of young lads on mountain bikes, one with panniers and the other carrying a large rucksack on his back.  They were doing a C2C from Aberdeen to Fort William in 4 days.  I'd assumed they were university students but when I was looking through the bothy visitors book that evening I found their entry, which said it was a charity ride and they were 17 and 16.  Good effort!  I 'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have had the confidence to do something like that as a teenager.

We were both pleased that we had decided to take this route rather than going over the Corryairack.  Glen Roy is a splendid valley.  It just gets better the further you go along it.

Upper Glen Roy

Annat in upper Glen Roy. 

Note the 'parallel roads' carved into the hillside

 

Falls of Roy

Looking back down Glen Roy

The plan had been to camp around or beyond Falls of Roy but we both felt like pushing on to the bothy.  In any case, the tents were wet from Corpach, which made them an unattractive option compared with a dry bothy.   I was saving the GPS batteries and the map was in my rucksack - there was only one track, so we were hardly likely to get lost - so I was a unsure to within a mile or two  how far we were from the bothy.  I kept saying it wasn't far but I sensed increasing doubt in the ranks.  When at last it came into view, our elation was dampened somewhat to see that it was being defended by a herd of cows, not all of which had udders and of those that didn't, a couple looked decidedly excitable.  Anyway we faced them out - well, Hilary faced them out - and we reached the bothy door without incident.

Luib-Chonnal Bothy, Glen Roy

 

No sooner had we moved our gear inside, away from the increasingly inquisitive bovine menace, than a group of mountain bikers arrived from the Melgarve direction.  They had come over the Corryairack from Ft Augustus and were heading to Spean Bridge where they had left a car.  They thought that the section between the Luib-Chonnal and Shesgnan bothies would be hard going with the trailers and we had watched them take about 10 minutes to cross the 100yds of ground from the deer fence to the bothy.

 

Upstairs in Luib-Chonnal Bothy



 

They didn't stay long and after some hot food, Hilary lit the stove and we sat round the table enjoying a stream chilled Chardonnay, some very sweaty cheddar and a chocolate biscuit (we know how to live).  I flicked through the pages of the bothy's visitors book and found a number of familiar names had passed through on this year's Challenge (you know who you are.)  By now it was raining outside, so pressing on to this point, rather than camp back at Falls of Roy, had been a good decision.

 

Downstairs in Luib-Chonnal Bothy

 

Menacing cow outside window



White Falls - opposite Luib-Chonnal bothy, Glen Roy

 

Day 2: Glen Roy to Newtonmore (27 miles)

By the next morning, the rain had stopped but the sky was overcast.  The farmer arrived on a quad bike as we were packing up to leave and asked if we'd seen any cows.   I mentioned they'd been outside the bothy when we arrived and that the bull had been especially frisky.  It made him smile.  He said that the section beyond the fence was horrible and that he really ought to get the JCB on it and dig out some drainage channels.  I asked if he could maybe do it now and, with a wry smile, he said he would add it to his list of jobs.  Then he drove off to find his cows.  What a pleasant chap.

Tne bothy is sited on the west sode of the Allt Chonnal and the day started with a paddle across this wee burn.  From pictures I'd seen on a few challenge blogs from May, I had some fears that crossing the Allt Chonnal might be a problem.  As it turned out, the waters levels were quite low.  To make things easier, we wheeled the bikes and trailers across without the bags.

Crossing the Allt Chonnal

 

and then went back and carried the bags across on our backs.

  





Crossing the Allt Chonnal

We'd given quite a bit of thought to stream crossings and portage over boggy sections.  Fords can often be ridden but it depends on the size of the boulders and how slimy they are as well as the depth of water and the strength of the current.  More than a foot of water and the bag sets up a bow wave as well as causing the trailer to be pushed sideways by the current.  The BoB bag has two large handles and these allow you to carry it on your back.  This wouldn't be comfortable for long distances but is fine for short periods.  Without the bag, the bike and trailer are much easier to navigate over rough terrain.  For those occasions when we might need to portage them separately, we'd experimented with different arrangements of webbing straps, to allow the trailers to be carried on our backs, and we'd fitted some pipe wrap round the frame for added comfort.  In fact I didn't use this method at all and Hilary only  once transported her BoB this way.  We'd also taken walking poles with us and these proved useful.  Most of the time, we just dragged or pushed the rigs through rivers, up rock steps and over rough ground without dismantling them.

Once across the Allt Chonnal, another 20 minutes of faffing followed to get everything over the 100yds of boggy, uneven ground to the deer fence and then across the stile, which inconveniently has a fence wire strung across it just to make things a bit more difficult.

Rainbow, deer fence and stile beyond Allt Chonnal

 

In all it took us 30-40 minutes to get from the bothy to the far side of the deer fence.  There followed another couple of hundred yards of bogginess before we picked up a decent section of single track, which ran up to and over the bealach.  It rained on and off but the riding was good.  It was great to be mountain biking in the mountains. I felt we were 'living the dream'. 

 

We crossed the col and Loch Spey (which is just a wee lochan) came into view.  After fording the River Shesgnan, there was another short section of bogginess which led into a pasture with a vague but firm track.  From here, it's not exactly a direct route to Shesgnan bothy - more like following two sides of a square instead of the diagonal.  If you were on foot, you might just make a bee-line for the bothy but we kept to the track (well, more of a flattening of the grass really) as it looked easier going on a bike.  The bothy seemed to stay far away to our left forever and I was thinking we'd miss the Land Rover track if we didn't turn soon.  My nerve was just about to break when the track turned through what felt like a right angle (although the line recorded by the GPS shows something else) to point directly at the building - and another herd of cows.  We rode through a few small streams and aimed off the cows (a well recognised navigational technique)  to pick up the LRT to Melgarve.  This has all been much easier than we had expected.

Shesgnan and cows from the LRT

Melgarve from the bothy

We stopped at Melgarve bothy, brewed up some soup and had a brief snooze on what someone had described in the visitor's book as a 'shabby chic' settee.  I think it was here that I lost my sit mat (aka rapid deployment little bit of luxury aka RDLBL or just LBL.)

It had taken most of the morning to cover just 5 miles but now we had mostly road, interspersed with a few sections or good track.  We picked up the pace and were at Garva Bridge in no time, catching sight of a couple of very large birds (but probably not big enough to be eagles) and some much larger pylons being erected over the Corryairack Pass.  You've got to get all that wind generated electricity across the country somehow.  I'd camped here on the 2009 Challenge with Steve Gough, before walking over the tops to Newtonmore.  This time we'd be taking the road.  Obviously, to drag the bikes and trailers across the Mon..., Monad.., Monadhl... - you know the ones I mean - would be mad.

After Garva Bridge, we rode passed Garvamore and Sherramore and Sherrabeg and in between found an interesting looking LRT that went across to Kinloch Laggan.  And then we came to a screeching halt at the bridge over the Spey, when I realised we were meant to turn off the road at the TOP of the hill, not the bottom.  It was only a little extra climb after all and I was forgiven when we reached the MTB trail centre at Laggan Wolftrax because there was a man there with a mobile tea shack who served us hot coffee and a delicious venison burger and a spicy sweet potato thing.  Now the really weird thing about this is that his mobile café had popped itself up precisely where a very permanent looking wooden structure housing the old café had been sited the previous year.  Enquiries about this elicited that there had been a 'falling out' (I paraphrase) and the owners of the previous establishment had left, taking the building with them.  Apparently by this time next year, a new purpose built centre will replace the remaining 'temporary' buildings which have serviced the place for the last 9 years.  When we had called in last year, we came away with the impression that Wolftrax was a bit underdeveloped.  It's within reasonably easy reach of both Fort William and Aviemore but on this Sunday afternoon, there were a dozen people there, at most.  Hopefully the new centre will help to pull in some more mountain bikers.

We took the easy, green trail in an easterly fashion, which kept us off a couple of miles of road and then along the A889 for a couple of miles to Catlodge.  Here a 'yellow road' goes up and up and up a bit more, to a memorial at the Mains of Glentruim.

Glentruim memorial.

Touch not the cat but a glove is the motto of the Macpherson clan and means don't touch the cat when it is without a glove.  The soft underside of the paw is known as the glove and when the paw is displayed it is spread, or ungloved, to  reveal the claws.  The motto is meant as a warning to others not to mess with the Macphersons.  The monument is made up of stones from all parts of the globe where Macphersons have settled.

A short  plunge down to the R Truim was followed by just one more little up before meeting route 7 of the National Cycle Network, at this point, the old A9, which we followed through intermittently heavy showers into Netwonmore and the hostel at Craigellachie House.

Forward to Day 3