Torridon camping trip

It grew! I couldn't resist putting in a picture. Titchy though it may be, we don't even have a real garden and I'm pretty chuffed anything grew at all!!


June was a lovely month with lots of great weather and great cycling. I've been out again on the (dry!) trails at Mugdock and also did the Trossachs tonne, where the Glasgow Tri club peleton could have won the prize for the longest stoppage time in relation to ride time (the free cakes and tablet were just too good).

Me and Elspeth had been planning a bit of an epic 4 day ride in the Lakes for early July. When I say planning however, that's probably overegging it a bit and it ended up that we were struggling to get any last minute accommodation. Not fancying lugging tent and sleeping bags with us for four days in the rain, we opted to lug bikes around Torridon for four days in the rain instead :)


At least noone could complain it was crowded.

And we pretty much had our pick of the campsite, except where it had flooded. No queues for th showers either!

The weather was pretty wild but I still think it's the most amazing place. When we first arrived, we went for a dip in Loch Torridon, reasoning that at least then you're supposed to be getting wet. We'd opted for a long loop from Torridon down to Achnashellach and back up again for the Saturday. This went through some pretty wild country with only a couple of bothies for shelter (which we were grateful for). By the end of the ride, we were both wearing winter clothes and gloves. With nearly 3hr of bike pushing / carrying (in an 8hr ride of rubbish weather), I'm almost surprised to be saying that I still thought it was a great ride - the descents were just too good to miss out on.

We did wonder how many days we could cope with camping and horrific weather (and how many items of dry clothing did we have left) and luckily the sun came out at the end of the Friday to cheer us up and dry things off a week bit. The Torridon campsite also has great showers.

The sun stuck around for Saturday which gave us an amazing day for a run up Slioch.

Definitely a stunning part of the world.
With a lot of great cafes too...

Unfortunately, the walk back from pub to campsite on saturday night was soggier than anticipated, putting paid to the last dry jeans and giving us a cringeing night of 'will the tent hold up to this battering and wind'. It didn't need much discussion for us just to up sticks the next morning and drive east, in search of sunnier weather, or at least man made trails.

I've been wanting to ride the Wildcat Golspie trails and the Carbisdale castle trails for a while and now I finally have. Maybe if you're an absolutely amazing biker (trials rider??), Golspie is a bit more fun but I don't really appreciate pushing my bike uphill on man made trails for 20min. The red downhill was great and the black was ok, I could imagine that would be good for anyone with a bit more skill but it so wasn't worth the pushing up. We kept thinking we were accidentally strayed onto something which looked like a very exciting downhill...

We spent the last night in Carbisdale castle itself, which is a pretty cool youth hostel and they do you a great three course meal as well. Then a quick stop at the Mountain cafe on the way home, gave us time to debate whether or not to have a swim in Loch Tay. Turns out the thunder and lightning helped our decision along a wee bit with that one.

So, apart from the rather brutal bike ride on Friday it was a really relaxing kind of holiday.