Scotland holiday

Friday 19th November i got up at 3.45am and drove all the way up to tydrum in scotland. I had a log cabin booked for a week near fort william with a few mates but had come up a day early to get an extra bike ride in. I arrived at the green welly shop at 9.30 and parked up. I dug out my cycling gear and was riding for just after 10. I had bought a mtb guide book for scotland and was doing a route out off it. I joined the west highland way and rode for 7 miles up it to the Bridge of orchy.

                                         West higland way just after Tydrum

Leaving the west highland way i skirted round a hill side on a small country lane along side loch Tulla where deer were grazing. Once over the victoria bridge i took a left at the forest lodge and the remote off road riding started. Following a river i rode on a fire road for a couple of miles where it shrunk down to a path when hitting my first river crossing of the day a nice foot deep 15 foot wide river, it was fun to ride through

                                                   1st river crossing

Another river crossing 100 meters on proved a little more difficult 30 foot wide and 3 feet deep led to a submerged bike, luckly there were some stepping stones across but i still ended up with wet feet. I would think twice about this ride if there had been heavy rainfall.

                                                   2nd river crossing

Following the path now up past loch dochard i began to recognize some mountains that i had walked up a year or so ago. A nice tricky decent with rock slabs and nice singletrack led down to a bridge over a river, This bridge looked pretty dodgy and was trying to work out whether it was safe or not to cross.

                                                   The dodgy bridge

I decided to head down stream a bit to find a place i could walk across the river when i came across a new bridge about 500 meters further down.

                                                      New bridge

I descented down rocky singletrack and wet grippy slabs for 5km to glenkinglass lodge where the singletrack turned back into a fire road. A fast fire road descent for 10km i had in front of me down to sea level, i got the miles in quick, plenty of wild life was seen, a deer ran out in front of me and ran with me 5 meters in front for a 100 meters before darting right into the forest.
I arrived at loch etive and took a left on a fire road running along side it. This proved to be the hardest part of the ride with short sharp steep climbs and descents for 7 km, my legs were tired by the end as i was attacking the climbs hard cause they werent to long.

                                                    Loch etive

The fire road led to the a85 in taynult where the guide said the 35 mile off road ride finished and i should now get the train back to tydrum. The train was £6.00 (a price of a meal back in tydrum) and also a hour wait so deceided to ride the main road back to get a few more miles in which took me just under 2 hours and i beat the train. It felt along road ride back which was pretty much all a climb or flat but the views made up for it. I was eating cake and hot chocolate as soon as i got changed and packed my stuff back up while i tried to warm my feet back up.
Then drove the short 15 miles onto rannoch moor to my hotel for the night. The kings house hotel.
The ride was 55 miles with 3300 feet of climbing, althought the climbing felt alot more.

                                      Gps map of the route