Two castles - and Ben Alder

Loch Laggan

THE weather looked too good to last and there's no point in living in one of the most beautiful parts of the Scottish highlands if you can't just drop everything and make the most of it.

So that's what I did, a shortish bike ride, on and off-road, with an overnight camp thrown in. Oh yes, and a couple of castles en route.

I always enjoy the bike ride from Newtonmore to Laggan and beyond. It's perhaps the old 'pull of the west' thing but everytime I turn my wheels in that direction I feel a little tingle of excitement, a notion that goes back years to a bus ride I once took between Fort William and Aviemore.

I was living in Aberdeen at the time and with my old chum Peter Lumley and a lad from Ayrshire called Matt McKinley we walked from Cairngorm to Ben Nevis. I think it was about March and we walked every day in pretty snowy conditions.

I had left my car at Aviemore Youth Hostel and after seeing Peter and Matt off on the train I returned to Aviemore by bus. It was to be a life-changing bus journey.

The Grey Corries and the Loch Trieg hills looked magnificent under the bright winter sun and I was truly blown away by the beauty of Loch Laggan and its backdrop of mountains. Ardverikie castle looked like something out of a Disney film.

Soon the white outline of the Cairngorms came into sight and I made a decision. As soon as I could I was going to move my family to this area, to live here and work here. Within a year I became warden of the Youth Hostel in Aviemore. We've lived in Badenoch prettyt much ever since.

That was away back in the mid-seventies and I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather live but Badenoch. I love it with a passion and one of the reasons for that is this ability to head off in any one of a number of directions and enjoy magnificent landscapes.

With the sun shining from a blue sky and a slight headwind I trundled along the quiet road below the steep frowning crags of Creag Dubh. Beyond the strath opened up and I could all the way to the snow covered tops of Creag Meagaidh.

I stopped at Laggan village and adjusted my saddle a bit. After taking well over a thousand miles to break in my Brook B17 saddle I find myself having to get the height and tilt of it spot on for maximum comfort, and for some curious reason it tends to tilt backwards every so often and so requires a bit of adjustment. If anyone has suffered the same problem and found out how to fix it I'd love to hear from them.

It was a good opportunity to stop and enjoy the sunshine for a few minutes and notice some work going on in the old Laggan community shop. It sadly had to close a while back, allegedly because Asda and Tesco deliveries were killing the local trade but it looks as though someone has bought it over and I hope they can make a good go of it. We certainly like to support our local shops and I personally hate the notion of shopping being delivered from as far away as Perth or Inverness. If we don't use our local shops, as in the case of Laggan, we'll lose them. Simple.

These thoughts mulled around as I set off again, over the hill, past the superb Wolftrax mountain bike set-up and on down through increasingly hilly countryside to the end of Loch Laggan.

This is where I was leaving the road behind - through the Ardverikie Estate with the sun glinting off the waters of the loch. On the other side the hills rose to snow capped splendour.

Ardverikie House

I stopped for a few minutes to appreciate the Disneyesque splendour of Ardverikie House, made famous by the telelvision series Monarch of the Glen. Queen Victoria apparently considered the building for her Scottish residence but eventually chose Balmoral instead. It seems the midges were too fierce here in Badenoch.

A series of zigzags left the main track and climbed over the ridge of Druim na Beiste. It was hard work on the fully loaded bike but it was a bigger problem when I reached a gate across the track. It was locked and a kissing gate at the side would allow pedestrians through but not a bike.

However, by holding the bike vertically - not easy when fully laden, I managed to squeeze it through the kissing gate - but damaged the rear mudguard in the process. Damned gates...

Once through the gate the cycling improved hugely. I was now up high with some great views and the track was a tad smoother, and therefore faster. On through the pinewoods of Coille Doir-ath, over a flat and broad bit of moorland and then down to the lively waters of the River Pattack.

Good tracks between Loch Laggan and Loch Ericht

This really felt like wild land. The track snaked along between the wild river and pinewoods and the snow clad hills in the distance looked alpine in the early evening sun. I passed any number of potential camp sites but I had my night's campsite in my mind's eye - a flat and grassy patch beside some woods, the site of the old Pattack Bothy which burned to the ground back in the 80s. It's never been replaced.

When I arrived it was just as I remembered it, a quiet and peaceful spot close to the river with distant hills shining. I lingered a while before unpacking, removing my sweat soaked shirt and replacing it with an Alpkit down sweater, a wonderful bit of kit that comes into its own in situations like this. It burst out of its tiny stiffsack with unabandoned enthusiasm, and kept me warm for the rest of the evening.

Great camping on the site of the old Pattack bothy

And a cold evening it was, as was the night that followed. I had optimistically exchanged my winter bag for a very lightweight RAB summer bag and although I wasn't uncomfortably cold during the night I was closer to that edge than I wanted. A good meal of pasta and chorizo and a couple of drams of whisky warmed me up nicely though and my Kindle entertained me well until lights out about 10pm.

There was a frost on the tent in the morning so I didn't linger. Everything packed away into the various bike bags I had brought with me. This time I was using a rear bag from Wildcat, a company based in North Wales. It's similar to the Viscacha I used last week but this is more of a harness than a bag. You use it in conjunction with a waterproof stuff sack which gives you the option of using a big bag or a smaller one. It worked well and it carried my tent and pot.

I was keen to get moving, simply to stay warm, for the day had the makings of a cracker. The Ben Alder hills were just appeared through hazing mists and the sky was clear of cloud. It was marvellous just being there with the calls and cries of curews, oystercatchers and lapwings the only sounds I could hear over the orchestrations of the River Pattack.

Unfortunately things weren't so great underfoot. The track was deeply rutted into two narrow singletracks - too narrow and deep to cycle in - the pedals would have clipped the edges, and the central part of the track was overgrown with long grass which made for really heavy going. When it all became boggy and wet I ended up pushing the bike for about a kilometre.

Early morning views across Loch Pattack to Ben Alder

By Loch Pattack conditions improved. Ben Alder now shone from the haze and God was in his heaven. I was running slightly downhill now, and met a couple of lad cycling the other way, from Ben Alder Lodge and Loch Ericht. They looked as though they had been cycling uphill for a while, stipped off to shorts and t-shirt while I was still festooned in warmwear!

I stipped off a bit when I hit the Loch Ericht track and caught a few glimpses of the super-duper Lodge. It belong to a Swiss finance conglomerate and it apparently cost several million pounds to build. It looked for all the world like a copy of Ardverikie.

Along the lochside are a couple of other gatehouses, each looking like mini-castles in themselves. I was once told by some builders that they new owners referered to these as the "Wendy Houses." A bit of wealth porn...

Ben Alder Lodge

The track alongside Loch Ericht was fantastic. I've walked the length of this track too many times and each time I swore it would be the last but on a bike it was a completely different experience and I saw the track in a completely different light, swooping down the descents and actually enjoying the relatively few climbs.

I was soon in Dalwhinnie and back on the tarmac - on past the distillery and the quiet road to Crubenmore before the Sustrans bike path took me parallel to the A9. I was home in Newtonmore by lunchtime, thrilled to have been able to grab what Al Humphreys would refer to as a 'microadventure' in this short but magnificent window of spring weather.

One of my favourite hills - Ben Alder