clairedavieswriter

What a difference a day makes. If someone had told me this morning that I’d be singing to myself as I pedalled happily up the Pass of Drumochter this afternoon, I wouldn’t have believed them.

Full disclosure: this morning I felt terrible – exhausted, crashing headache, fighting a cold. I didn’t know how I was going to manage today’s ride, let alone the 30k climb to the Pass. Even after a good cyclist’s breakfast (porridge with cream; fried egg, mushrooms, tomatoes; two rounds of toast), I was struggling to get up the smallest hills. The last couple of days of big climbs and poor nutrition seemed to have caught up with me. Cyclists call it bonking, and it’s much less fun than it sounds.

To make matters worse, my weather luck seemed to have turned: I had been woken early by rain hammering on the window. It had eased off by the time I started but yesterday’s sun was nowhere to be seen as I crawled along beside the Tay:

And the obligatory gate pictures failed to impress:

But unbeknown to me as I crossed the Suspension Bridge over the River Tummel into Pitlochry, a solution was at hand, in the form of the Café Calluna, which served good coffee (at last!) and a well-stuffed sandwich.

Back on the road, properly fuelled and caffeinated, my head magically cleared, my legs regained the power to pedal, and the weather did its best to rise to the occasion.

But looming hills suggested there was work still to be done.

And this left nothing to the imagination:

It wasn’t exaggerating: the path was as exposed and empty as advertised (though I did wonder: surely that’s a choice? Would it be so hard to build a simple shelter or two along the way?). On the plus side, the surface was generally excellent, the gradient very manageable, and the views bleakly majestic under leaden skies.

It was a little damp, and not just underfoot.

But this was an encouraging sign:

As for this one, it was rain unfortunately. But Aviemore is tomorrow’s problem.

This was the best sign of all. It had taken me just under two hours to do the 30k climb.

Back to the singing. A lone cyclist does sometimes have to resort to tricks to help the pedals go round. And so it was, with the rain pelting down, that I found myself with deliberate irony belting out Mr Blue Sky to the empty moors. That was followed by a long and repetitious rendition of the few lines that I could remember of Chiquitita (“…tell me what’s wrong”). But the tune that carried me cheerfully to the summit was the culturally inappropriate but rousing Calon Lan.

And then all that needed to be done was swoop downhill, scarcely turning the pedals for 6 glorious miles until I reached Lee’s lovely School House Hostel, where I was greeted by a roaring log fire. On the way I crossed another boundary, and the sun came out:

Tomorrow: Tomatin.