To Aberfoyle and Back - 200Km DIY - 23 December 2019

I'd been mulling over route options that stayed low and didn't climb much.
I'd been mulling over whether 3xRRTY was worth heading out again.
I'd not bothered to sort out the Mavic rear wheel until the Hunt snapped a spoke.
I didn't have a wheel for the Focus.

So it started, I wasn't massively up for the ride, my trusty Dawes Sardar hauled out from the back of the garage to stand in once again for a broken bike. I did briefly mull using the Synapse but that would have meant reduced carrying capacity and so more shop spending.

I hadn't used the Sardar since the Rannoch 210Km from Forfar last summer (2017) so gave it a shakedown on Saturday on my usual short route, being reminded in the process just how slow and heavy it was, I scratched around for the flattest possible route and having decided that any new route would involve risking navigational issues hauled out the significantly over distance "Aberfoyle and Back" route.

The route is a basic out and back, from Home to Auchterarder,  on through Dunblane to Doune then Thornhill and Aberfoyle, a nice simple 210km round trip; unfortunately that doesn't allow for avoiding the A9 which takes me out of Auchterarder on the Braco road, along to Kinbuck and then down into Dunblane, adding another 8km to the total.

First photo of the day, Braco

To assist with enthusiasm the weather forecast was promising, 5C overnight and into the day, decent cloud cover to trap some heat in.  I woke as usual to the Kraftwerk alarms bounced out of bed, breakfasted, got dressed and looked out the door...

After a sharp intake of breath forced by the frigid air that hit me I stepped out and obtained the Sardar from the garage I had it loaded up so only needed to set the computers and wheel it out the drive way onto the glistening road.  Early progress was slow and I passed the submitted start point at 0640.

My first major problem presented itself immediately after leaving the influence of the village's street lighting, I'd used a bad benchmark when setting the light angle and instead of a nice beam on the road I had a nice view of the top of my bar bag and a dim light on the road, thankfully enough to make out the edges. What was worse was that I couldn't get a grip on the tightener in order to adjust it so was stuck with it.

I started to feel wheel slip in places on the Gauldry climb, unseen ice waiting to catch me out. By the summit of the climb at Muir Dens I was below the required average of 14.3kmh, being slow up here is nothing normal, and usually I can claim a fair bit back on the descent of the tay coast road but with poor lighting and ice around I had to ca canny.

Despite taking care at the bottom of a dip my comfort braking was overtaken by the slippy conditions and I crunched along through the ice thankfully without enough squirm to land me on the deck.

Sheriffmuir from the Braco road

Much relief was felt on arriving at Newburgh and the A912 was both quiet and thankfully clean of hazzard. With light appearing in the sky I daftly chose the Dron route to Kintillo and returned myself to a skating rink but again got away with it with the improving visibility helping.

The Dunning road was thankfully pretty clear and I was passing the Maggie Wall monument when I felt the bike sliding down the ridges in the tar, I'm not sure if this was ice or if it was just the low speed and fat tyres make more obvious than normal but none the less it was disconcerting.

Auchterarder was busy and I was glad when I made it up onto the Braco road and stopped at the summit for a roll. With some heat in the sun now and the roads not bad I was able to make decent time and my average was now climbing nicely with over 17Kmh on the clock. I decided to give the shorter route I'd spotted to the Doune road a miss in these conditions and cracked on through Kinbuck and Dunblane with it's annoying one way system.

Braeval shrouded in cloud, but my target is in sight!

The A820 was as usual pretty quiet to Doune where I turned onto the Thornhill road, eventually the Laich of Mentieth appeared to my left and in the clouds ahead was Braeval and the Auchterarder junction, the second 55km of this rider are definitley much faster than the first!

In Aberfoyle I struggled to find the public toilets which I was convinced were in a prefab concrete block rather than outside the tourist info centre, after finding them I contemplated cake in a café but instead popped into the co-op for some water and millionaires shortbread to go with my 2nd pre-prepared sandwich.  Despite this I still spent over half an hour at the turn.

Setting off again the imperceptible wind must have been on my back as despite being a gentle climb to Doune I seemed to be powering along and my moving average was once again rising.  The Kinbuck climb does drag though and at one point I got confused and thought I'd gone through Braco and had missed the turn resulting in me heading to Creiff, a slightly concerning occurrence but I did quite quickly remind myself of where I actually was.

Rolling along slowly... Somewhere!

Braco Tower

Rolling into Braco for real I realized there's no way I could forget passing the tower in the old church yard and brought myself to the junction with the road to Auchterarder.  Finally I could see the top of the climb at the back of the hotel and stopped for the last sandwich from my bag to ready myself for the descent to Aberargie and into darkness.

Darkness finally dropped around the point it had lifted, I stopped in the underpass on the Dron road and decided to try my headtorch as an extra light, wrapping it round the bar bag, the weak beam flickering with the rattles and picking out not very much meant it was of limited use and I soon removed it.

Some interesting Christmas light displays were to be seen, with the cabins near Aberargie looking a lot like a manger scene at a distance, and Newburgh having rather colourful lights including surprisingly happy looking turkeys!  This of course signified the last climb, I had contemplated taking myself up to the A92 for a gentle blast along the main road but was up for the climb which on this side is thankfully much easier than the other.

Thankfully darkness means the 3 lumps of the coast road climb were less noticeable and other than a stop for a photo of the moon at Black Earnside I hardly noticed the efforts to get to Hazleton.

The descent however was another matter, normally I can really hammer it along here but with next to no visibility I had to take care not only of missing a turn but also of hitting pot holes and ice.  A couple of times I was able to make use of a tailing car's headlights to see where I was going and amazingly this happened in rather handy places including the Coultra drop and on the Gutchers! Relieved to finally be in the village I rolled along to the spar where I had the finish point set to buy some celebratory Creme Eggs.

Moulin Rouge - DIY 200 9th December 2018

With Kingdom come in my legs, a sniffle in my nose and a chill in the north westerly breeze I set out to blat out what had become my favourite 200km DIY route of my own creation so far.

Admittedly it only really competes with an out and back to Aberfoyle for that title BUT... it is rather nice.



The route starts off in Newport-On-Tay and then heads along the Tay Coast via the Gauldry hills; I had a worryingly low average up here with a threat of being full value on the cards already. The rude awakening always produces worrying numbers but usually you can pick it up again on the descent to Newburgh, but with that North Westerly blowing it was still looking like a long day.

My bike was making a number of "Interesting" noises with clunks from the back, sometimes clearly from the drive train, other times not so obvious. At Aberargie despite the quiet roads I still took the Dron road to Kintillo, frost glistened on the surface but I still felt enough traction that I didn't worry.

At this point I discovered that one of my bottles contained sports drink that could best be described as "off"; I had thought I could get away with keeping it from the previous week but the fizz and terrible taste said otherwise, I decided against stopping at Kintillo shop, my best chance of picking up some speed being on the relatively flat blat through Strathearn to Auchterarder, there are a few ramps along here and some days you hardly notice them while on others they grind you to a near halt and set your lungs screaming of penance . Today was the later.

A quick stop at Dunning shop for some alternative sports drink (Lucozade sport) which I watered down and some chocolate and I was off again.

Along to Auchterarder where I don't stop and onto Hunter Street; the Crieff road junction, this oddly ever since having housing estates tagged either side takes two unsigned turns, one a T-Junction and the other a roundabout, and back out into the country side.  This road lumps its way towards Crieff via Kinkell Bridge, the first part of this route to feed the name, being referred to as "Kinky Bridge" by some.

The Highlands looming ahead,
the gap at the foot of the
rainbow is the Sma' Glen

From the bridge we start to climb seriously after turning off the Crieff road at Millearne, although we're still in the Midland Valley this is where some of the toughest climbs of the day are, lumping over to New Fowlis on the A85, sometimes it's busy, but often not, you could spin along to Monzie (that's a Yough not a Zed, there's plenty more of them on this route) to climb into the Sma' Glen on a more gentle gradient if you really wanted to, but that would be too easy, climbing the Braes of Fowlis takes you through Fowlis Wester with it's replica pictish stone at the road side, and now we're going up severely, sever enough for the OS to give it a single chevron on the map. 100m up from New Fowlis in little more than 4km; at the summit the Highlands rise in front of you, the edge of the Midland Valley and start of the Highlands.

Descend to Buchanty on the River Almond, this is Lowland Glen Almond, the river near following the Highland Boundary Fault, before long a sharp ramp leads to a triangle junction with the A882, as you join this road the Highlands surround you as you cross the Fault and enter the Sma' Glen.

Through the Sma' Glen the road actually descents to Newton bridge, where you leave Highland Glen Almond behind and start the ascent to Amulree, quite a steady climb.
At Amulree you could divert by the leg burning and lung busting climb of Glen Quaich for a technical descent into Kenmore. However it's a direct route to Aberfeldy today, relief from the climb is short lived as the Glen Cochil junction is reached.  The summit at 393m next to the "loch" is the highest point of the ride, and from here it's a gentle descent followed by a sharp plunge into Aberfeldy.

Looking towards the divergence,
Glen Almond (of which the Sma' Glen is part) to the left,
the climb to Amulree on the right

You arrive in Aberfeldy at the cross roads at the west of the town and if you need proof of passage or just victuals you need to turn right into the town centre.
There are two ways to proceed from here, if it's busy crossing "Wade's Bridge" to Weem and heading East along the North road makes sense, however in the off season it's often quiet enough to blast along the south road. It was not long after passing the Dewars visitor centre that a loud crack was emitted by my rear wheel, the wobble that went with it told me enough, the whacking sound from the spoke hitting the frame confirmed it. I carried on until a suitable road end was found.

The spoke "fix" after I got home

A single spoke had snapped at the nipple, and the tyre was wobbling towards the disc side chain stay. Bollocks!
I considered adjusting other spokes but decided against it as the wheel was still rideable and fiddling with them may just make matters worse, especially since I'd be fiddling with the spokes beside the broke one.
Zip tying the flailing spoke to a neighbour seemed like a good approach, and I dug a zip tie out my bag, then i realized I now had a zip tie flailing around instead, thankfully I had a new first aid kit in the bag, and I went to get the scissors out of that, but I hadn't broken the seal on that yet so I couldn't open it, a surprisingly strong plastic tie between me and the scissors.  Digging further I found my tyre levers which I used the hook on to get the purchase required to snap the tie, obtain the scissors, cut the Zip tie and stow everything back in the bag. I carried on with wheel wobbling and considering my options.

I could ride to Pitlochry, get a train and DNF the ride; or.... The wheel has 32 spokes, I'm avoiding adjusting tensions for now but can do so if I need to, my other wheel has 24 spokes, that's a whole 8 less, why don't I have a fibre fix spoke? (it wouldn't be any use, the nipple dissappeared and is probably like last time a clean break at the edge), 8 less so I should be able to get away with this provided another spoke doesn't go... which means don't strain them too hard, erm... just a bit of climbing to go... ok.

Carry on along the tay past Grantully and you eventually get to a bridge over the tay, the roads approach on either side; an interesting detour here would be to carry on to Balnamuir and cross the Logierait bridge to get to the village.

On previous editions of this ride I've taken the Dunfallandy road as used by the Etapé Caledonia to get to Pitlochry and the climbed up via Moulin Village to get to the muir; however today I crossed the A9 on the bridge into Ballinluig, past the Motorgrill and... all the way along to the end of the road, I'd missed the turn.  Doubling back I accepted that the only option was to take the Dalcapon road, I know this road from officiating on the Saltire rally, and knew well enough it was a steep climb before a long gradual descent through Dalcapon itself before a plunge into the East Haugh.

The Dalcapon road eventually flattens out

The aim of going this way was to try out the shortest route from Aberfeldy to Kirkmichael in Stratardle, the distance difference is marginal and if you aren't hungry at Aberfeldy being in Pitlochry gives you another chance to feed before the long climb over the muir.  I also know this road from the Saltire and know it's steep... A rather bizzarley placed mini-roundabout lets you choose between Edradour and Croftinloan, not that there's any signs, and the climb takes you in stages to "Scotland's Smallest Distillery" before spitting you onto the main road over the muir.

Sunset on the Moulin Muir

The climb onto the Muir is more of the same, though possibly steeper to begin with but it's worth it, a rest at the summit shows you the descent to straloch and back over the Muir to Faragon hill, pitlochry deep down in the valley out of sight.
At last some speed though with the descent into darkness, winter roads and a sick wheel I wasn't for the summer heroics down here (even though less traffic makes it easier to maintain speed); with only a few bumps needing effort to climb you can maintain a decent pace all the way down the glen.




Normally at Kirkmichael I take the climb over to Dalrulzion (another Yough) but today I was wanting to try the Netherton Road out of Bridge of Calley; this mean more mostly downhill where as normally I'd be climbing again, and then climbing steeply out of Bleaton Hallet to High Rannagulzion before descending off the muir into Alyth. However today I took the road by Netherton and Drimmie, missing the Alyth junction in the process.  The road is set up to take you to Blairgowrie and I think if heading to Bridge of Calley I'd want to go to Coupar Angus and then across to Meigle.

At Alyth I stopped at the Co-Op in the Square, this is one of many small Scottish towns where there are two co-ops, one a co-op group, the other a Scottish Midlands co-op, we are now once again in the Midland Valley, the Highlands left behind on the descent into Alyth.

Only the Sidlaw hills now stand between us and home, fast rolling roads and gentle undulating descents take us out of Alyth and through Meigle with Belmont castle hiding in the trees.  A house lit up over a bridge looks a bit like a low bridge, but the road turns right and we continue on to Newtyle at speed.  From here however we must climb to Auchterhouse, the hill is deceptive and looks steep but never really asks for serious effort.

From the summit the muir descends at a reasonable rate before forcing you to climb from Dronley up to Muirhead. The taste of success starts to enter your mind but it's not over yet. The climb into the village is hardly severe but we're now entering the urban sprawl of Dundee.  The road from Blairgowrie joins at a fork and you can judge how busy it's going to be on the climb.

The most enjoyable route (to my mind) is the one I will describe now, but should the road be busy through the village, turning Right just past the pub takes you down gourdie brae and across the Myrekirk where you can descend to the riverside cyclepath through the technology park.

But it's a quiet enough day, I'm pumping out a decent pace to the march at the summit between Templeton and Camperdown woods. The descent takes over and now all you need to do is watch out for the Circle at the main entrance to Camberdown park.

No one is exiting the retail park or park so I blast through the circle... oh in Dundee a roundabout is called a circle, Dundee has had Circle since long before the Roundabout was invented, just think like the Arc D' Triomph, this possibly explains why Circle etiquette in Dundee is to straight line it if it's a painted one.

Crossing the Kingsway at Dryburgh there is a slight easing of the grade as we pass the former Park Hotel, the dual carriageway normally has cars parked in lane one but it's a good place to let tailing cars past. Another Circle at the top of Lochee and you're onto the Lochee By-Pass, a big dip down to another circle and then a sharp climb out of Lochee past where the railway bridge used to be. The bus lane is inconsistently signed, at the bottom of the hill it says Local buses only, but at the top it says Taxis and Cycles are allowed in so I tend to climb the whole way in the lane, giving way at the bus gate a the summit.

Back into Dundee proper, and the junction with Loons road, get green lights from here and you've got an epic plunge where you can reach 30mph without trying. The City council are looking at how to improve this section for cyclists as at the bottom of the hill is the Dudhope roundabout, a clear run through and you're on the Inner Ring Road, keep left and as you reach the Ladywell Circle the Hilltown underpass is in front of you, the darkness (it is winter right?) punctuated by the tunnel lights, the King Street traffic lights are likely to be green as only Buses, Taxis and Cycles are allowed to cross, and you're onto the Seagate Circle, hold the right side of the left lane and (probably) come to a halt at the East Dock Street junction aiming for the dock gates.

The old docks here is now a buisness area and a few restaurants are here too, take care through the car park, past the Apex hotel and then onto the riverside walkway.

You can either carry the bike up the steps or go round to the lift, but watch out, the big pebble seats mark the start of a set of steps that run to the bridge wall, so go the far side of them to use the ramp. This is particularly bad design as you cant' see they're steps until it's too late.

Onto the bridge and pootle over to the bridge access car park, from where Newport is hardly far at all.

To Kingdom Come - 400Km - 1st December 2018

Earlier this year I was inspired by a data collection project for mapping the Audax UK permanent rides to actually ride some.
Of primary interest was a number of Scottish permanents offered by one "MacNasty" with a limited amount of information on the AUK website, living not far from him I visited one day to find out about the permanent rides he offers.

He offers rides ranging from the 400km "Kingdom Come" to the 2600Km "Scottish Star", the two that were tempting me were the Eightsome Reel, a 1600Km figure of Eight loop of Scotland, and the Twilight 600 from Edinburgh to Acharacle and back.

Having pored over the route descriptions provided for each of the rides I started discussing them with Robbie, eventually the idea to do the Kingdom Come 400 in December popped up and an irresistible force had been knocked into action.

It'll be cold, it could be stormy and wet... Ach we could always change the date if we need to.
Perms can normally be ridden starting from any control on the route, so after some deliberation, we decided to start at Stonehaven to get sections with the highest weather risk over in daylight.

I filled in the forms for both of us and took them round to "MacNasty" and in return I was regaled with a tale of a January assault on the route that involved dodging the police guarding the closed snow gates at Braemar and conditions befitting ice axe and crampons along with the required Brevet cards. I hoped we wouldn't face such conditions, I don't have any knobblies for my faster bikes.

I woke early and set off for Dundee Station to get the first train of the day north, a gentle but chill wind was blowing down the firth as I crossed the bridge, ahead of me Dundee glimmered resplendently in the crisp darkness. Riding through the V&A then into the station for my train north.

Dawn began to break over the North Sea as we hurtled along the coast of the Mearns, it was the back of 7, the Mounth was still cloaked in darkness.

A rude awakening on the Slug

Robbie met me off the train and we headed for the nearest shop just across from the station.  We decided to start promptly and obtained a second breakfast from the Co-Op bakery to kick start our receipt collection for the day.  Croissants consumed we mounted our steeds and started on the long drag of the Slug road to Banchory; as we climbed the sun finally broke through with some conviction and our lights were no longer required for seeing by. 
I had been off the bike for the best part of two weeks due to illness and the winter fug as a result it took a while to clear some of the remnants from my system, the climb being a rude awakening to the realities of my winter form.

In Banchory some Christmas tree pedallers thought we may like their wares, Robbie pointed out the problem of portage and we carried on our way unencumbered by Scots pine.
The roads were relatively quiet and we made our way at a reasonable pace up the long but gentle climb towards the Cairnwell pass, which is nearly 900m of climb over 80Km to the summit from Banchory. 

We bypassed our first control option at Ballater choosing instead to take up the option of Braemar for our 1st control on the road, a 3rd breakfast consisting of a fry up roll perhaps wasn't the best option to take with the final dig to the Cairnwell ahead but it had been well earnt.

Climbing the Cairnwell pass

By now it was the dying minutes of the forenoon and slow service in the busy café with lunchtime service approaching combined with a leisurely approach to the stop cut our rolling average significantly but we had only just broken past the 20kmh mark on arrival and were still comfortably above our minimum of 14.3Kmh. 
Eventually we set our course for the Cairnwell pass and left the village by the Golf Course road. Snow lay high on the hillsides but not by the road, and the ski centre remained out of action, thankfully this meant the road was still quiet as few take remote leisure trips in the winter.

Nearing the Cairnwell Ski Centre

At the pass we stopped to layer up for the descent, I spotted a friend's camper van in the car park and deduced they'd be up in the hills somewhere.  Suitably layered up we took the final dig to the summit and the county march to start the descent into Perthshire,  my poor cornering on descents coupled with the damp roads in near freezing temperatures meant Robbie shrunk in the distance as I dragged the brakes on and off on the steep ramps of the south face of the climb. Thankfully the fearful devils elbow bends are long gone, but the 12% long right handers are a nemesis of mine and I really must take a visit to the new track at Lochore to practice.

After reaching the bottom of Gleann Beag from the Cairnwell, the road leads out to the Spittal of Glenshee in a rather lumpy manner and from there the larger glen took us down to Bridge of Cally where the Shee and Ardle converge to become the Ericht which we then followed to Blairgowrie where we stopped for a supply top up in the Sainsbury's.

The A93 got busier from here as we rolled into Perth past the Racecourse,  were now working on my "local" knowledge for navigation and we picked an expensive Hursts petrol station shop for control number two though finally some non-breakfast food for a meal in the form of sandwiches.
The sky was darkening now in the mid-afternoon and we topped the Craigend climb out of Perth in the dying light.  we stuck with the main road out of Bridge of Earn as it was quiet enough to be comfortable but a badly worded direction call from me sent Robbie up the Aberargie road instead of Glenfarg, mistake corrected we ascended the gorge in darkness, ignoring temptation to stop for a pub tea at the Beinn Inn we crested the climb at Duncrievie to take the road into Milnathort rather than face the Arlary junction.

The Kingdom, but not the Kingdom. Kinross' christmas lights

We were now in the ancient Kingdom of Fife if not the "Scottish Unitary Local Authority Area" (catchy name eh!) the Christmas lights of Milnathort and Kinross lit up our darkness, but it soon returned, Benarty and West Lomond normally so prominent on this edge of the Kingdom shrouded by darkness.
I missed the first turn for Kelty forgetting it's signed Maryburgh, but we were cracking on, I had to watch as another junction miss could have us on Cowdenbeath High Street, a roller coaster of a ride that legend says was once a flat road the undulations created by subsidence in the coal field below.


To the Kingdom we have come, Cantsdam, Hill of Beath, Jim Baxter glowing in the darkness outside Hawthorn's ground and then to Crossgates. Control number shree and historically the start of the ride; we stopped at the corner shop, Robbie went in first while I guarded the bikes; this isn't exactly the most salubrious part of Fife after all.  The girl behind the counter was rather enthused by our adventure and asked me about our ride, what we were doing it for etc...
Rather than explore the menu options at the local hostelry, even though I'm sure an American and a North Fifer would be more than welcome the thought of likely having to make the tough decision from the typical menu of such pubs was enough to consider other options and headed for the McDonalds in the retail park; which was a rather uncomfortable dash across the big roundabouts over the A92 and M90.

After a long McDonalds stop was completed we chose the rather slow route through Dunfermline's traffic lights and took the Knockhill road out of town rather than retreat to Kelty and the Cleish road to the Yetts o' Muckhart.

Faffing with gloves in the dark

As we climbed Knockhill we also climbed into the mists, thankfully visibility was tolerable enough that our lights didn't shine back in our eyes but the sense of isolation that darkness brings was heightened by our further reduced bubbles of light and exclusion of distant house lights. At  Powmill the world was still shrouded by whiteness, and the Rumbling Bridge was silent in the night.

At Yetts o' Muckhart the climb of Glen Devon begins, a gentle climb that seems to take it's time in daylight, in darkness it passed quickly.  There are no false summits here, when the descent of Glen Eagles begins you know of it, and we were soon limiting our speed to the visibility, the descent dropped us, still shrouded in mist at the station junction, closing time at the Auchterarder Co-Op was looming but we made it with 15 minutes to spare for a top up and spare bottle of water in case it was needed along with a couple of sweets just in case a sugar hit was wanted.


We had options now, the next control was listed as "Stanley or Coupar Angus", research had shown that Stanley has nothing past 10pm, and Coupar Angus has a solitary ATM available at that time of night.  The most sensible route to Coupar Angus to us was the Dunning road followed by the Aberdalgie road. Dunning felt faster than normal, but Aberdalgie was unknown to me and it proved to be a drag. Eventually Perth was reached and we took the loop of the City Centre passing the pubs and clubs at kicking out time, in Scone kick out time presented a brief problem as we attracted the attention of some drunks, who eventually decided trying to keep up with us on foot was a good idea; despite the climb it didn't take any extra effort to get away from them.

The ATM with no location

Back into darkness, a deserted A94 took us through Perth's small northern satellite towns on the way to Coupar Angus, a town which has never wholly been in Angus having being a border town split between Perth and Forfar until 1891 when it became wholly Perthshire.
Here our fears were realized, the cash machine's receipts did not state we were in Coupar Angus; we stowed our receipts in our brevet cards and set off to find an alternative.
While considering the suitability of the town sign at Duthie Park an even better option arose and Coupar Angus Bike Hub became the backdrop of our evidential photography.


We slipped out of town and the long flat of Strathmore took us through Meigle and Glaims to Forfar where we planned an early morning feast and snooze; however another disaster struck, kicking out time in Dundee had manifested itself as a bus load of drunk teenagers loitering in the McDonalds.
We locked the bikes up and sat inside but in sight of them just in case. This was a long break, but no sleep was forthcoming in the environment, we waited long enough for the noise to dissipate but by now we needed to get cracking.

Morning has Broken

The long flatness continued to Rosie Island, but we stopped on occasion to deal with the effect tiredness, after crossing the bridge into Montrose we spotted a shop open for the dock workers at this unearthly hour.  Unfortunately receipts were not a possibility here, so we scoffed and left, finding an ATM at a closed petrol station.  In the town centre we detoured looking for the public toilets which were sadly closed for the night.  Now there was just the lumpy coast road to Stonehaven remaining for us to tackle, the sky was starting to show signs of lightness, the dark blue lightning from shades of Dundee to Forfar and then the light from the rising sun reflecting onto the clouds out at see presenting a warm orangey/yellow glow.

A stop at Inverbervie where the toilets were open and another few seconds of shut eye, the lack of proper Audax hotels on this route showing with every bus shelter open sided and slope seated.
Traffic picked up with the light and on the climb out of 'bervie there was periods of heavy traffic.

By Dunnotar Castle the attractive glow in the sky had been replaced with proper daylight, a photo opportunity I had hoped for was lost, but the finish was in sight; a bank of cloud ran up the valley along the face of Fetteresso, the descent into town was clear, Aberdeen fans lingered in the town square waiting their bus to Glasgow.
Gregg's was shut, the local club cyclists were congregating and the town centre Co-Op was devoid of breakfast, we obtained receipts and loitered for a bit gassing with the club riders.

A short climb to the petrol station allowed us to breakfast and then it was time for trains home.


"Through the cold dark mist we just about made it around. 17 hours of darkness." - Robbie Fargo

17 hours of Darkness... I recognize that from somewhere...