Team Dave

Feeling really worse for wear this morning after the 100 miles yesterday. To add insult it’s really cold this morning in Aviemore with a lingering fog. Breakfast at 8 to get ahead of a group of 50 French students, then for the first time, back to bed again, headache, cold and tiredness aren’t a welcome combination! We’re supposed to be out the youth hostel by 10am. We end up more like half past and they’re not too pleased, but we’ve a good excuse surely?!
Post a few postcards and we’re on our way.
Heading south on the old A9 that’s now a B road, we passed through some lovely villages that had a gorgeous smell of log fires lingering. The area is surrounded by lovely forests with stunning views of the Cairngorm mountains rising skyward. This is a blissful area, utterly fantastic! In Newtonmore we both stopped between three cafe’s and gave eachother a knowing look that neither of us were warm and fancied a hot drink and of course, cake!
A long dinner stop (it was too cosy in the cafe) and we’re back outdoors. The route shows som good climbing coming up and it didn’t disappoint! Following the sustran route 7, we climbed up through the cairngorms some more along fantastic dedicated pathways without the worry of traffic. Swooping trail with a variation in surface almost had the fun factor of being back on a mountain bike again! With the mighty climb came a monster descent using an old main road that’s a dead end to cars, but not bikes! A whole main road to ourselves! For miles of descent! I’d strongly recommend this route for any bicyclist, despite the grotty start to the day I felt as right as rain after riding this. Not a bad day!

Time 4:14:14
Dst 56.77