A Long way from Norfolk - 26 May 1999

Aviemore -Scotland

Far Far away from Norfolk I know but it’s were I spent my 1999 family holiday, and as there were hills to play on I thought that I would hire a bike for a couple of days.

Although I was staying in Tomintoul and this area me and my sisters husband decided to hire our bike from Aviemore, after searching several of the bike hire places we came across a excellent bike shop called Bothy bikes and we hires two Kona Fire Mountains out for 3 days.

Day 1

Having hired the bikes out from Bothy Bikes in Aviemore we head of back to Tomintoul, a good 26 mile trek, not in a hurry as we take it and not knowing how long we would take we set off at a good pace and find the going fairly easy, we leave Aviemore and head to wards Granton-on-Spey and spend most of the journey chasing down a Tractor which we finally pass on the downhill section just before Granton. This trip was my first experience off my newly purchased CamelPack and I thing that it might have given me the confidence to enter a race as it will make controlling my diabetes a lot easier on long rides, I’ll just have to remember to stick ice cubes into it next time. Just after Granton we stop for a piss and Drink and the Tractor comes past us. After having just done 10 miles we found the A939 to Tomintoul a bit harder as this section has a lot more uphill and is very open and windy, mind you when you get a tail wind you sure can fly along. Anyway after a bit of gut wrenching we get to the bridge of Brown … I have never been as fast on a bike in my life, this bit off road is seriously step and dangerously twisty for the speed you are going, great me thinks. After a cup of coffee at the bridge I ask f I can have a glass of orange juice to put in my camel Pack they offer to fill it up for me, the lady take it away and brings it back full to the brim, great me thinks again. Just after the bridge of brown we come to the first of the section in the leaflet that says that we can go off road on, after a very boring climb to we had a great laugh coming down the other side. After cutting the corner out we set of back to Tomintoul.

As we approach Tomintoul we decide to take to Take Route 1 on the Crown Estate Leaflet (see my description in routes) and see if we can cut out a large section of the way home out. At the start I was disappointed, it just seemed to be land rover trails to walk along, but things soon changed with it becoming very step single track (with bits missing) and then a long climb (which we walked up) and things went back to round. Going a little further on we find that the route takes a narrow path between two fences to keep cattle on, later on this track I ride over some cobbles and look back to see mark doing a perfect track stand as his front wheel has become jammed between two rocks. Most of the next few miles is a dry gentle climbs and quick descents. The it happened … we came to Cairn Ellick, now you must remember that we have down about 30 miles at this point at break neck speed and a 529 meter climbs was not what we wanted, but we got there in the end. One thing that I must point out to people is that the routes are marked out in the Crown Estate Cycling Trails leaflet, but when you are doing the trails the routes tend to be marked by Walkers routes, so me and mark weren’t exactly sure were we were and it was getting late at this point. It was a good thing that we meet the walkers at the top off the hill as they had the walkers map and know exactly were they were. The top of Cairn Ellick was covered in trees so the next little bit was a bit soggy and several trees had fallen to block out passage, but we had a great laugh sliding about and crashing when out wheels got caught in wheel ruts.

Once we came out of the of the forest it was fast and dry, a nice mixture of farm track and straight across fields

Day 2

Totally Fucked, last thing that I can think of is getting on a bike

Days 3

Mark has a cold today so I’m on my own, we take his bike back and I decide to ride in the Aviemore area, having asked at the bike shop were the descent single track is I set off, boy oh boy is this lame or what, after about half an hour I am feeling really disappointed and feel like chucking it all in for the day when I notice two Cannondale’s going into a bit of forest so I decide that these aren’t tourists and decide to follow. This is when the fun started. Lots of long climbs, rocky and bumpy descents.

I don’t know where I went, but it was there and back