I went to Scotland again a couple of weeks ago. Long story short I had the opportunity to deliver a rather posh bicycle to Aberdeen and have my fuel covered by work whilst doing so. I didn’t have much else on that weekend so jumped at the chance, and figured I might as well drive up a couple of hours further and pay Andrew a visit in Inverness whilst I was at it. Friday counted as a work day, so it would only be the 9-hour drive home that would come out of my weekend. I manage long drives very well, and my journey home is already going down in history as some of the best car karaoke to have ever graced the M6.

Friday wasn’t much to write home about, I got in the car, got out 9 hours later, got in the car again, and got out another two hours after that. Fortunately, on arriving at Andrews’s place, I felt surprisingly fresh. He’d made a fantastic dinner and suggested we pop out to the pub.

I don’t drink much and increasingly find myself picking an orange juice and clear head over a pint of beer, but in the right circumstances, I can be lured into a bit of a heavy night. Andrew is similar in this respect, and we both felt the need to let our hair down. ‘Letting our hair down’ was to involve visiting several bars, bruising ourselves arm wrestling, and getting home at 4 am. These activities weren’t entirely factored in when we’d planned a 50-mile mountain bike epic for Saturday, and neither was all the gin.

Morning rolled around all too soon. I felt exactly the right level of shit. I’m not trying to glorify binge drinking, but there is a satisfying sense of getting away with it when the balance is struck, somewhere between ‘I drank a lot and was a bit silly last night’ and ‘I reckon I can just about ride my bike today’. This time we walked this line successfully, just.

Saturday got off to a slow start and we made the decision to skip the big loop, instead heading for some woods where I was promised what might be the best XC bike trail in the world ever. This turned out to be an exceptional call. On arriving at the carpark and getting our little XC hardtails out we met a few locals on enduro bikes heading out to find the gnarly stuff. They didn’t mind us tagging along up the climb and pointing us in the right direction but found it quite amusing when on giving us directions, we’d get them wrong and bump into them again. This happened several times, and I think they could tell we were suffering the effects of the night before. I pride myself on being a good navigator. I wasn’t.

One of the highlights of the day for me was Andrew asking some teenage mountain bikers if the monument at the top of the hill was worth seeing. As if perhaps he were talking to a middle-aged couple out for a stroll. The sort of people who might pay an interest in monuments. The kids weren’t interested, obviously, and seemed a bit bemused as to why someone out mountain biking would want to go and look at a monument. Old age sneaks up on you. Well, It’s snuck up on Andrew.

The riding did end up being mind-blowingly good. I find mountain biking very hard to describe. It’s the best. Nothing comes close to riding a great trail flat out with a good friend, and it has the side effect of getting you excited about different sorts of dirt and ground conditions. This was a fresh loamy track dug into the gorse, the kind where the ground is sort of springy and forgiving, you can make a load of mistakes and slide about all over the place, but it feels predictable. Trails like this flatter you, and make you feel like you could be some sort of YouTube sensation. I think this connection with the ground conditions gives a whole extra level of appreciation for the natural world. You can see a forest, you can smell it, hear it, but appreciating the way it feels under your tyres gets you closer to something. This might sound like nonsense but I’m not sure how else to express it.

We lapped the dreamy trail a couple of times, the excitement overcoming the hangover. taking it in turns to lead and chase each other down the hill. I find Andrew hard to keep up with, which is frustrating when considering that his bike is held together by hopes and dreams, and he’s only been riding off-road for a couple of years.

Ride done, we head down to the town for an ice cream. We’d only done 10 miles or so, and three or four runs, but sometimes quality trumps quantity. I couldn’t imagine spending the time in a better way. The fact that I’d driven 11 hours the day before and had 9 to do to get home was so far to the back of my mind. it just goes to show that sometimes it’s worth going a long way for a short time if it’s a good time.

My Sunday was to get started at 6 am, hitting the road and heading back south. I love driving the A9 over the Cairngorms especially early in the morning, and the time passed easily. A little call for help on Instagram left me with the suggestion of using Tebay services as a spot to break the journey up with an XC ride in the lakes, this was to be the icing on the cake of the weekend, a perfect 2.5-hour loop, with some steep climbs, fast flowy descents, and very little in the way of traffic, people, or other bike riders. you can find the route here. Be warned, it’s a bit hilly and you’ll need to be back within 3 hours to avoid a parking fine.

At this point, I was sad to be heading south again, but with only a few hours left to go and another glorious ride on my mind, it passed quickly enough. I may have resorted to singing Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac as loudly as possible for about 10 times in a row and drinking a can of the sort of fizzy energy shit that I normally steer well clear of.

It’s felt nice to type up a little adventure again, I’ve been finding it tricky to make time to write and reflect lately, and a few memorable events have passed by without me finding the words to describe them. Still, I’m writing for fun and if it feels like a chore, it won’t happen. riding a lot also means taking less photos, as I dont tend to carry my camera on the bike, and I like to accompany a post with a few half decent images. As you can see from the pictures in this post that policy has gone to the dogs.

A significant factor having less time to write is that I’m spending more time on the bike than I have in a long time. Time trialling every Wednesday, spending as much time in the woods as possible, and I’ve even entered a cross-country mountain bike race in the Forest of Dean in a couple of weeks. My summer trip to Switzerland is fast approaching too. Yeehawww! 🤠