Fat (video) Tuesday – Tour of the Cairngorms – By Illya Rudkin

We’re back in the Cairngorms for a weekend of mountain biking visiting familiar trails in the awe inspiring Scottish landscape and to seek out any news trails that took our fancy. The route we planned took us to the area north east of Aviemore out past Glenmore starting from the other end to the far south of the Cairngorms. It is the south west of the Cairngorms which is often bypassed by many including ourselves to go to the more popular Aviemore area. It is for this reason we decided to revisit the south west section. We were looking forward to discovering some more twisty secret singletrack that the mountain bike magazines show off with glee and mountain bikers dream off. Many of the trails in the area are either old paths walked by the locals past or deer tracks. We were not disappointed as we did find some all ending with the mental note to oneself “must remember that for next time” realising where is ‘that?’. It has been a long time since I have recorded my routes. Anyway we’ll leave them to be rediscovered again in the future. On this particular weekend it was forecast to be overcast sunny with a hint of rain. As you see we got rained on. The weather in the Cairngorms area follows its own rules. Cairngorm weather forecasting is a mere guideline. Still we were fortunate that the rain held off until we entered our tent.  The next morning though we wake up to full on drizzle and mist. We were a little miffed “this is not forecast”. Still what could we do. We packed up the tent said goodbye to the community of midges which were all getting a little to close and personal and made our way to Slugan Pass for the return section of the route. All starting with some fine singletrack again snaking its way through the Scots pine forest. Up and over the pass to retrace our route back to the start where the sun made an appearance. Still a good ride. Enjoy and thanks for watching.

All the best
Illya

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Just an old cat that rides bikes, herds pixels, ropes gnomes and sometimes writes stories. I love a good story.

1 Comment

  1. Great video. Living in Morayshire this is all on my doorstep but I’ve barely touched the surface of it usually riding around my local stuff, sometimes Aviemore or occasionally the trail centres at Glenlivet or Laggan.

    Again great video. Shows how lucky we are up here.

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