The Great Scottish Road Trip

The Great Scottish Road Trip

With our European road trip plans scuppered by Covid-19, we headed north of the border on a grand tour of Scotland.



The trip started off with a day’s riding in Dunkeld, before heading to Braemar area for a couple of days. There we rode Carn an t-Sagairt Mor and magnificent Heartbreak Ridge and Mastermind. Glenlivet was the next stop for a bit of flow.


After that we started on North Coast 500, for those that do not know it’s a 516-mile scenic route around the north coast of Scotland. We started this from Inverness and decided to do it anticlockwise so that we finished on the beautiful west coast.


Golspie was the first stop to ride the Wildcat Trails, this is home to the longest trail centre black descent in the country and it didn’t disappoint. Unlike some trail centre blacks, this was actually a black and had a few challenging features. Highly recommended.



We then continued along the north coast and our next piece of riding which was to Sandwood Bay reputedly the most beautiful beach in Britain. The beach has nearly 1.5 miles of wide pink sand which is flanked by cliffs, heaven! Apart from it being 10 degrees and windy!



As we moved further south, we stopped off at the Quaing for a hike, but we in the end we decided to take the bikes. Not knowing what was lying ahead, we didn’t know if we would be carrying up and down. The track was vague in places but luckily it was full of rock slabs to play around on, it was pretty darn cool!



We were now moving closer and closer back toward civilization and on the way down the west coast, we thought we’d revisit Torridon so Kate could ride Achnashellach after a puncture stopped her riding it last time we were in the area. Achnashellach is arguably one of the best singletrack descents in the UK and definitely one of my all-time favourites.


It was time to the rest the legs, well sort of. Now in Fort William we decided to ride the World Cup Downhill Track… on a 135mm trail bike what could go wrong? Nothing as the RC 295 was absolutely superb - handling everything that the track threw at it.
Laggan was the next on the hit list! First we tackled the slabs and rock rolls of black trail centre before heading over the road to sample some of Laggan’s finest loam!

It was now to time “Walk the Talk” and head to Pitlochry to ride Ben Cathro’s test track. This trail had had some serious graft put into it over lockdown and oh boy it did not disappoint! The track itself is fast, like really fast and there’s some big doubles if you wish to take them on!


I’ve had Ben Ledi in my sights for a while and with the weather looking favourable over there I decided this was the time to do it. I opted for a out and back ride to save time and energy, heading straight to the summit up the hiking path. It was a fairly easy ascent only taking just over an hour to reach the memorial at the top. Going down was pretty spicy! With some fast flat out sections that would throw you into spiral stair cases a lot quicker than you’d like to!


For the last part of the trip we went to the Tweed valley to ride the famous golfie trails. These are an absolute must on any Scotland trip and if you haven’t been here before, what have you been doing?
So after 2 weeks of being on the road we decided to call it day, what a trip. Did we miss going to the Alps? Not in the slightest, Scotland delivered the goods and even more. Its amazing to have this so close to home.