Shand Stooshie Endurance Road Bike

Fuck it, here's a little ride I went on last week: a spin from Dunblane to Fort William followed by a loop to Glenuig on the West Coast and back to Fort William.

Day 1

I got the train nice and early from Edinburgh to Dunblane because, quite frankly, the riding across the Forth and through Fife is a bit of a ball ache and I wanted to get to the good stuff asap.

It's pretty much your standard rolling country lanes until you cross into the Trossachs near Callender, follow the A84 past Loch Lubnaig and get near to Loch Earn. The kind of roads you can kinda zone out on and not worry too much about missing much.

While my carefully curated photos may appear to be traffic free, in reality the roads around here are pretty busy both with tourists (who always seem to pass close in left hand drive vehicles) and large lorries carrying stuff up north (who always seem to give you almost too much space).
With that in mind, I opted to follow Sustrans Route 7 which follows the path of an old railway alongside the main road with some 20% gravel switchback sections thrown in for a laugh.

I stopped for a second breakfast in Crianlarich and then headed on to Tyndrum where things start to feel a bit more "alpine."

(That train track on the right is the way I eventually get home.)

Thankfully I'd brought long sleeves and overstocks as it was far from warm and it was getting colder as I was gaining altitude. Passing Bridge of Orchy I started getting into the real good stuff and I found myself humming the Morrowind theme tune in my head.

There's a little white house along the roadside up here that is boarded up. It used to belong to Jimmy Savile and it got vandalised when his scandals became public.

The following house is NOT that house but it is a building that everyone and their dog seems post on the Gram when they're up this was so I thought it would be rude not to.

Now well into Glen Coe I passed some of it's recognisable peaks including the Three Sisters and the big gorgeous boy above, Buachaille Etive Beag. Getting colder still, it started to rain so I decided to plough on against an increasing headwind. Much suffering. So Rapha.

There's a car park just before reaching Kinlochleven. Some American tourists asked me to take a photo of them (which I did as well as taking a couple of selfies of myself), a piper looked as though he was starting to feel the early symptoms of hypothermia and some English lads were complaining that "it's cold in Scotland" and how much they would rather be in the south of England where the weather is better.

I looped around Kinlochleven to make up the miles to 100, got to Fort William, found my Airbnb, showered and fell asleep for 8Pm - top day.

Day 2 to follow...