Monday 13 July 2020

Biking round the Trossachs

The Trossachs is an area of the Southern Highlands that are quite hard to define. They roughly cover an area east of Ben Lomond (but the most southerly munro isn't counted as being in the Trossachs), north and west of the A81 and A84 and South of Loch Voil. Its fairly mountainous with numerous rocky corberts but no Munros, lots of greenery, lots of bogs and a fair few evergreens in the large expanse of forestry. It falls within the boundary of the the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park but this covers a much larger area extending west into Argyll and North and East to Tyndrum and Crianlarich. Its tourism central and has the full tartan / scotty dog / haggis / twee stuff as well as a few more restrained attractions such as various lochs and visitor centres. 

My first visit to the area was in 1989 on about the third run with the Heriot Watt Uni cycling club (Aka the Watt Wheelers!) The Trossachs was one of their regular destinations. We'd get the train from Embra to Dunblane and then do one of various circuits around the area, generally always including a lap of Loch Katrine on its quiet private road. This reservoir was famously extended and connected to Glasgow by an aqueduct as a way of bringing fresh water into this hideously polluted city that had previously used the Clyde for both its toilet and water supply with Cholera rife as a result. Watt Wheeler runs were a far cry from what was the norm for cycling clubs in those days. Generally clubs were either full on roadie clubs (long before this pastime was anything like as mainstream as today) or CTC District Associations. The former involved much speed, pain and suffering, the latter much low speed and cafes. The CTC Hard Riders and RSF were the exceptions but these branches were largely unknown outside of their own worlds. We invented our own form of cycling - long rides, mainly on road but at a moderate (aka lazy) pace making use of the better tracks where possible, in all weathers and at all times of year. Many was the time it ended up dark (with minimal lights), far from home, in foul weather with poor gear. Cafes were frequented but so were pubs as long as they welcomed a bunch of scruffy students looking for maximum food (and a few pints) for minimum dosh. The bikes were an absolute mish mash of anything and everything available to us impoverished students so every ride was punctuated by at lease one mechanical breakdown. Mine was relatively flash being a fancy custom framed mountainbike; a mate had a Saracen Tuftrax, another a fine Mercian. The rest were a mix of touring machines of various vintages, old style 'racers' with better gear ranges and wider tyres and a few other mountainbikes. Bike runs were often supplemented by train journeys with a constant battle with train guards to avoid bike number restrictions and charges. 

Post Uni, I stopped going for many years until 2014. I was training for that years Highland Trail and looking to do an easy century with some off road thrown in as a season opener. A bit of map appraisal suggested that I could reach Loch Katrine from the house and the sections of gravel trail and road would make the Fargo an ideal machine to do it on. So that was the first time I did my now ubiquitous Trossachs bash. I did it the other day and its a great circuit, albeit with a few bits of back tracking. Distance ranges from 115 to 120 miles depending on what bits of Queen Elizabeth forest you do. I'll not say much about my outward route (as per my March and June 2018 BAMS!) but its a nice mix of back roads and cycleways with only one bit of busy road for a few miles before Bridge of Alan. Just after Bridge of Allan you turn off the A9 onto a great wee road which sees pretty much zero traffic. You can track this to just outside Doune then you link through to the B8032. This is also quiet as most traffic uses the parallel A84. A few miles of steady climbing takes you to just south of Callander and a short section of the A81. There was a fair bit of traffic on it as this is the main route from Glasgow to Callander and points north. You turn off before the town centre on a back road which takes you along the south shore of Loch Venechar. Numerous people were parked up along here setting up camp, lighting fires and already starting on the days drinking. Music blared from cheap speakers at one group's camp so I made swift progress away. This is part of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park managed camping zone and you need a permit to camp here subject to all sorts of rules and regulations (which under the current restrictions your supposedly not allowed to do at all....). Clearly this, as predicted when it was introduced, is having little impact on peoples behaviour and is just an embuggerance if you want to bivvy within the zone. My advice? Find a quiet spot, bivvy without bothering to get a permit, leave no trace. Just like normal then.

Sneaky bivvy in the LLTNP managed camping zone. Don't tell anybody.... The public road ends at a car park but the tarmac continues along the loch shore for another couple of miles. On the north side of the loch there is another trail - 'The Great Trossachs Trail' which is a good gravel path that climbs high above the loch level and pops out at Brig O'Turk (good cafe and excellent pub). I did this on the straggler last year on a visit to my parents holiday cottage and its a good one. Being on single speed and out for a long day, today I decided to give it a miss.


On the Great Trossachs Trail in 2019. The woods of Invertrossachs in the distance.

The south shore path (i.e. NCN 7) is a cracker. I first rode this in 1989 on the first of those Watt Wheeler trips, shortly after it was built. Lots of twists and turns and ups and downs - a great laugh on any bike with 40mm or wider tyres. It was one of the early Sustrans volunteer projects and has stood the test of time, albeit with a few improvements over the years. My involvement came in about 1997 when the two rock causeways were starting to collapse, the remote location leading to the usual challenges of getting plant and materials in. Its part of a short walking loop and there were actually quite a few peds on it today. Usually I start this ride early morning and its quiet. My late start today meant I hit rush hour..... 

Pedalling along the forest road beyond the end of the path indicated that the forest drive was shut. This loops out from the Dukes Pass road and normally its a nuisance. Despite being fairly smooth people tend to drive along it at a terminally slow pace. As is typical with a lot of car drivers they are oblivious to all around them so overtakes have to be planned carefully. Worse, you are allowed to camp at various points along it for a fee so many good bivvy spots are spoiled as most 'campers' will have music, generators and fires to help them survive their night in the wilds. I don't get why Forestry Commission still persist with this in this day and age. It appears it will be shut for all of this year so maybe this will persuade them to close it to vehicles for good.

Hey ho, for now it was quiet. I passed the scene of my self destructing back tyre back in May without incident then linked across to the bottom of the Dukes Pass road via a short gravel path. This road was also shut due to roadworks but cars were abandoned everywhere by the Ben Venue car park, something of a common theme of late as hoards of people escape the confines of their houses now that you can do it officially. The Loch Katrine car park was open but fairly quiet. Beyond here the road is private, only used by a handful of properties and Scottish Water vehicles. Various signs give dire warnings telling cyclists to be aware of traffic but in reality its just a very quiet back road along which you can pedal with little concern for vehicle traffic. As it happened I met a car and a tractor along here - my only vehicle encounters in around a dozen trips.

Of greater concern were a couple of notices a few miles in indicating a road closure due to landslips. A cyclist heading the other way also shouted that the road was closed. These signs had been up last August on my lap of this road due to a major flooding incident a couple of days previous. In the event I got through albeit with a few challenges crossing some big washed out sections. The last was the worst - around 100m of road was covered to about head height in boulders washed down the hillside. There were a couple of holiday properties and a big farm house adjacent. One of the properties was half buried and two cars had also fallen victim to the flood. It's a not uncommon weather phenomena when you get summer storms - a monster cloud staggers over a range of hills then empties itself on what is over the other side. In this case a few square miles of ground that was iron hard after a long dry spell. So the deluge ran straight into the many burns destroying all in its path. It seemed odd that this hadn't been sorted sooner but I figured that having got through a couple of days after it happened last year, I'd be fine today.


Flood damage on my ride of 2019, just after the event. Fortunately only property was damaged not people

At one point you can leave the road onto a short section of fast gravel path which misses a bit of climbing. I always stop for food here as the views are fab:-

Ben Lomond and Ben A'Choin from my lunch spot (taken in the Spring of 2018, I was camera free today)

And looking back down to my lunch spot from the summit of Ben A'Choin on a blazing day last September. Note multiple scoured out burn lines.

I passed a few more cyclists but none gave any indication of what was ahead. So I got a bit of a shock to suddenly come across a substantial barrier across the road and lots of 'Construction Site Keep Out' signs. There was even a matrix sign blazing a message to say that the route was closed to all users, as if the barrier wasn't enough. I felt justified in grumbling at this. There had not been even a hint of this closure back at the start of the route and the signs previously suggested that the road was closed due to land slips, not due to it being a construction site. Its typical of such locations where a contractor used to working in urban environments try to use the same approach to site security in the countryside. Of course there was nothing to stop you walking round them other than a bit of dense vegetation and a deer fence (no obstacle to a seasoned mountainbiker) plus you could easily walk into the 'site' off the surrounding hills. I hummed and hawed for a bit. Back tracking would pretty much scupper the ride (again!) and I was seriously miffed that they had gone to such lengths to close the road without any pre-warning where it would have made sense. Imagine driving down the M74 only to come up with a road closure with no warning, and no diversion!

You know whats coming so I did what apparently, given the trampled grass, numerous other people had done and climbed over the adjacent deer fence and went on my way. I pedaled along cautiously as I wasn't going to ride through a construction site where they were actually working. I passed a couple of the damaged sections. All the works looked to be complete apart from the final surface on the road. Further along a few machines were parked up but no-one was present. The two really bad sections had also been largely finished, again only lacking the final road surface. So all that trouble with barriers when it was clear that the site wasn't operating on a weekend, there was no issue passing through and so they could have quite easily opened it outside working hours. 

This kind of thing annoys me. Over the years I've managed numerous construction sites in similar locations where we knew that excluding people would be impossible or just plain not right. So we just worked around it on the basis that during working hours, passers by would be minimal. Measures to ensure that no-one gets squashed by a machine are easy and allowing routes to be used outside of working hours minimised the chances of people trying to break through barriers as well as keeping them on-side. The big farm house seemed empty which made me wonder where the residents were. This gave me hope that there wouldn't be a similar barrier further along so that the owners could get through but no, a couple of miles after another deserted site compound was a similar fortress. This required crossing the same deer fence twice but again, I wasn't the first.

I felt the need to write a snotty letter to someone about this but I can't be bothered really. The daft thing is; had I managed to get squashed by a machine I've no doubt that the HSE wouldn't have been impressed by the lack of thought over the closure and how practical it is to close off several square miles of hillside instead of putting in a few measures to manage people safely through the site. Likewise there were no signs at Stronachlachur indicating the closure ahead and there was no one around so I carried on my way. 

The munros above Loch Lomond (Ben Vane, Ime and Narnain)

A couple of miles down the Aberfoyle road you turn off into the forest. Loch Ard forest is a big one and has a network of tracks through it. Oddly no singletrack that I've found possibly as its a bit remote from populations so of little interest to the usual trail building types. The Forestry Commission did consider a trail centre here but it didn't get anywhere before they stopped building them. It roughly follows the Duchray water but extends over several corries on the lower slopes of a ridge of hills ending in Ben Lomond. Of interest are the two aqueducts which lead from Loch Katrine, eventually to Glasgow. A mix of steel box aqueducts and tunnels; it was quite an undertaking, particularly as its all gravity fed - in otherwords it follows a steady downhill gradient all the way to the treatment works at Mugdock Country Park. So there are a few ways through the woods to Aberfoyle, depending on how much climbing you fancy. Today I chose a middling route which would avoid the car parks in the forest and the attendant crowds of people. 

Ben Lomond from Loch Ard Forest (also taken in Spring 2018)

Aberfoyle was mobbed so I burned straight up the hill and back into the forest once more. The first section of the NCN after the road was more of my handiwork, partially with a group of volunteers and partially using our own specialist team. There were a fair few folk looking at the water-fall but the 'Go-Ape' oversized assault course was shut so the climb away from the visitor centre was quiet. And steep. I'd had this pegged as one to walk on my 36/18 gear, but in the event I got up it with only a modicum of straining. Over the top is a great descent and the shut forest drive made it even better without any vehicles. Oddly I passed a few groups of people, one lot with an inflated dingy in tow, who must have walked into the picnic areas by Loch Drunkie. So there you go - if people have to walk to get to a known picnic spot, they will. Ergo no need for vehicles to be able to get in here. There were a lot of bikes to, mainly people also having been for a picnic but a few other gravel bashers making use of the vast network of trails. In fact this is probably the biggest area of forest this side of Kielder so an obvious draw for this burgeoning biking trend.

On the descent I left all behind and had the Venechar cycleway to myself. Then it was out onto the road and back the way I came as far as Doune. I noticed a young lad in a LLTNP truck patrolling along the road eyeing up all the camps. This pretty much highlighted the problem as how this guy was going to drive off the large number of numpties was anyone's guess. I would very much doubt if the Police would want to get involved so what do you do. The answer is education but no-one seems willing to tackle such a monster of a task. Instead all we are seeing is an increasing number of no-camping byelaws across Scotland which have little effect on people who have no respect for the law or else will just drive them elsewhere. Anyway enough of the soapboxing, on with the ride.

Beyond Doune I picked up NCN765 along a bit of disused railway line, some old estate roads and then the usual convoluted route the NCN tends to follow through a sizeable community, Dunblane in this case. The route then continues above Bridge of Allan on an old road closed due to repeated landslips into the gorge of Kippenrait Glen below. The first time I did this ride, a recent deluge / flood / landslip had left two large bites out of the public road just past the closed section. As I approached several engineers and residents were peering into the resulting abyss wondering how to sort it. Fortunately I was able to bypass this. Today I followed various streets with many monster houses. Not sure where the money for these comes from but there are a hundred or so in this corner of Bridge of Allan suggesting an unknown but well paying industry. On a whim I used a section path behind Stirling Uni which is a swamp in normal weather but dry today. This misses out the A91 I'd hoofed along that morning and lead me into another signed path to Blair Logie. As per usual at the end of a long day, after a promising start it degenerated to a narrow, overgrown, rough and ready path but thanks to the dry spring was fine on my narrow tyres. Another (better) path connect to one of Clacks Councils excellent cycle routes to just above Tillycoutry. Finally a few more climbs got me back to the house just before 8, some eight and three quarters of an hour after I started, 118 miles done. Not bad on the single speed especially as my earlier plans to pace it nice and easy went straight out the window as I bombed through traffic, round people and along twisty trails.


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