May 11, 2025
2 Sunday
Another day. Blue sky, a lake with mountains rearing up from the shore: the lower slopes clad in fragrant pine forest wherein there is the crunch of gravel as I ride forth. The only other people I see are other cyclists and walkers.
Further on the route joins a canal towpath leading to Fort Augustus and a looked forward to cafe stop. A good place run by a friendly Middle Eastern family. I met another bikepacking cyclist there who said he had cycled through the night. He has a powerful bright headlight on the handlebars; saying he startled a group camping when around midnight his huge light came out of the forest. Later around 03.00 he reached a bothy and shared a whisky with a man already there.
I was going to have an ice-cream before going further and had found a shop with a board outside advertising homemade gelato, but then noticed a Spar supermarket inside the petrol station opposite, so decide spending money on food for the road is more important. Therein was all I needed, and not too overpriced with the exception of the satchel of quick-cook rice, which is four times the price I'd paid in Lidl the day before.
I continue on upon a gravel walking trail shadowing a B road and climbing steeply. Shortly I pass a thirty-something woman walking at a brisk pace who a short way on caught up on me when I stopped to take a photo. She halts as not to get in my shot and quips that I must be fit from biking. We continued together for a bit. She had a continental accent which I narrow to Austrian and I remark, don't you have any backpack or food. She sprang along lightly upon her feet, more than a match for the climb gear on the Kona. She told me a week earlier she had completed a long distance hike in the South of France and I ask what is her motivation. To keep fit, she responds, wooing me to halt with a smile and resting a hand on a hip. We continued until a fork in the trail where her way was different to mine and not far on I reach a summit with a panoramic view ahead where I sit and eat a sandwich and boil water for tea.
I descend, levelling out along Loch Ness. Inverness isn't far, where I hope to catch a train to Glasgow, but it would wait to tomorrow and having turned onto a gravel forestry road, I find a wide layby and set up camp.
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