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giofox
@ad441
Did Badger Divide over 4ish days last weekend - It's a great route - would highly recommend it.
Got a train to Glasgow on the Thursday afternoon, stayed at a friend's place, then started Friday. I changed my (seated) sleeper train back from Inverness to the Tuesday night so had an early finish on Monday, then added in a detour to Glen Affric on the Tuesday - did part of this on the Affric-Kintail way, which looks like it would be a great route. But my back brake pads wore out at this stage and having already used my spare pair on the front I decided road was probably safer with only one working brake.
Almost completely midge free but that might be on account of the rain, which was pretty intense. Going over the Corrieyairack Pass in heavy rain (but with a strong tailwind) was an experience. Definitely better going North over Corrieyairack - imagine the descent would have been no fun the other way.
I took a gravel bike, my friend did it on an mtb. If I did it again I'd probably go mtb just because while I was able to go quite a bit faster on the gravelly/road bits, it would have been a lot more fun to have been able to bomb down some of the rougher offroad descents. Plus wasn't really in a hurry.
Camped the first couple of nights, stayed in the bothy just North of Corrieyairack on the third night, got a hostel in Drumnadrochit for the last night just because I wanted a shower and to try and dry stuff out.
At a relaxed pace it all felt pretty easy - hardest part of the trip was probably after doing a supermarket sweep in Killin and both massively overeating, which made the next hour of so of cycling quite uncomfortable. Would definitely take at least two sets of spare brake pads next time. Plus afterwards I discovered I'd done the whole thing with a snapped rear axle, but fortunately the thru-axle had held it altogether and because I'd not removed the back wheel I hadn't noticed. Which is just as well as imagine I'd have got quite stressed about it.
Highlights were definitely Corrieyairack and the stretch after Corrour station. But basically it was all pretty great almost from the edge of Glasgow onwards. I thought the offroad stretch round the back of Loch Rannoch was a bit pointless - did get a nice camping spot out of it, but other than that was mostly deep rutted tracks that meant constant pedal strike + a lot of very heavily logged forests. Would have been nicer just to camp down by Loch Rannoch I think.
A few photos -
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