The Cycle Path
Cycle Log
Day 15 - Saturday 3rd July 2004
Aviemore to Inverness
Decided not to go on the Strathspey steam railway as the first run was far too late in the morning yet Aviemore held one more surprise...a bungalow-girt prehistoric stone circle. A cultural gem trapped by picket fences and wet washing lines patiently waiting for its transient new neighbours to rot away. The stones will endure longer. Longer too than the ghastly rubbish bin that roadsides have become; littered even in the most beautiful of rural places with the plastic and glass bottles, cans, styrofoam containers and junk of passing fast food motorists. Away up the wilder banks, moss-trapped chanterelles flaunted themselves at passing travellers in their showy egg yolk yellow kit. But few had the eyes to see or the slowness to stop and share in nature's great bounty...so I collected for the unseeing and the speedy too. Carrbridge for breakfast by the high arching packhorse bridge over a frothing brown river. At the PO I posted home 5lb of excess weight. A mile on a red squirrel watched me pass as if glued to a pine tree...a few yards on his mate was glued to the tarmac. How could anyone run over a red squirrel? How could anyone slaughter the thousands of dead animals I'd seen since Culver Point; baby rabbits being the most prolific and dead deer upended in the ditches the most prominent. Another cyclists' olfactory distraction: the smell of animal decay wafting in from roadside woods and ditches. Sloch'd Summit was reached via the nice smooth A9 and a judicious hop over the crash barrier onto the Sustrans route once it bacame tarmac again on the old road. Passed over possibly the ugliest bridge in Scotland over the Findhorn near Tomatin and suffered an explosive rear tyre failure that sent shards of twisted wire into the inner tube. Took shelter in the village red telephone box to do a radio interview for the local station but not in the best of moods...then it started to rain, heavily. Stayed in the phone box eyeing up my two spare tyres and any form of local shelter when a 4WD Post bus drew up. I followed the driver into the PO and asked if he was going to Inverness. He was, but first we had to slow down and drink tea for half an hour with the fussing ladies of the PO offering us baps and biscuits by the bucketful. Set off for Inverness in the rain with the bike folded in the back as black, black clouds filled the whole northern sky in malevolent fury . Inverness was awash and the grey town merged with the grey rain and the grey river as I searched for Inverness Cycles. An hour or two later and saved by the Riddles (thanks guys!) I walked over the suspension bridge and rode steadily to the hostel but only got a few yards before it started up another monsoon. I aimed for the station concourse and shelter. Met E2E Liz, last seen at Kirby Lonsdale likewise wringing out. She'd even had the same conversation about wind turbines that I'd had at the 'Lonely Hotel' in the Sma' Glen...we both heartily agreed about the dreadful quality of the Drumochter Pass route. We cycled off in opposite directions in the rain...me to cook chanterelles on toast (after stocking up with food for the long, 2 day, run to Carbisdale and Durness) and Liz to find a campsite that wasn't under water. A man at the station had reliably informed us that this was the wettest summer weather for 100 years in Scotland. It felt like it.
