A few weeks ago Myself, Martyn, George & and Charlie set off on our short adventure to the Scottish Highlands. Normally only 3 of us go on these trips mainly because that’s the maximum number of bikes the sleeper train allows but now with a change of franchise that has increased to 6.

So Martyn and me set of from mine and met George at the Star in Dorking for a pint, we then headed on to the station and the train to Waterloo where we met Charlie. A quick blast across London to meet up with John and Al for a pint or two in a pub near Euston before heading off to catch the sleeper.

As usual we had a good journey up to Scotland with a decent meal and a few beers before a broken night’s sleep. We soon found ourselves getting ready to leave the train at our chosen destination of Corrour station in the middle of Rannoch Moor (Britain’s remotest train station).

On leaving the train we stepped straight into gale force winds and lashing rain and along with 2 hikers, the only other crazy fools to get off here took shelter in a waiting room on the platform. The station itself which has a cafe / restaurant was closed although there were a few railway maintenance guys just arriving for work on the lines in there 4x4’s giving us pitiful looks.

Having resided ourselves to the weather we braved it and headed on our way – luckily the wind was behind us and the rain quickly became lighter so we made good progress. Charlie had loaded the gpx files onto his satnav so acted as trail blazer and it really did save a lot of time which would normally be spent pouring over maps. As we made our way around Loch Ossain, past the lodges out towards Laggan the weather slowly but surely improved.

Even in these conditions the remote feel and scenery was fantastic and with the strong tail wind we actually made fast progress. We made it down to and then along the side of Loch Laggan past Ardverikie House (Monarch of the Glen house as we like to call it as it was the house they used filming the series) and eventually hitting tarmac just short of Laggen Wolftrax.

Feeling hungry by now we decided  to pop into the café there for lunch which proved a good call as obviously they were very bike friendly. Having eaten we headed on our way, this was a fairly large chunk of tarmac that took us past a stone claiming to be the dead centre of Scotland then onto the cycle track by the A9 which we followed through Newtonmore to Kingussie. By now the weather had improved considrably with the rain long gone and blue skies starting to appear.

At Kingussie we stocked up on supplies for our planned Bothy night at Glen Feshie which included not only food but Charlie and myself carrying half a bag of coal each for the fire. Soon we were back on the bikes and heading out past Ruthven Barracks before turning off the road and heading over towards Glen Feshie. As with pretty much anywhere the in the Scottish Highlands the scenery was fab and soon we felt like being out in the wilderness again. We still made good progress as we passed the 50 mile mark.

Charlie’s satnav continued to keep the route finding easy and before long we were heading up the wonderful glen wondering how much further it would be to the bothy. Eventually we arrived at about 5 I think and after a quick inspection of the interior immediately set about searching nearby surroundings for fire wood.

It was to be our first bothy experience and we quickly settled in getting the fire and a brew going, we were the only people there and were enjoying the atmosphere as it got dark and loving the remoteness of the place – the fire was burning well and the vodka flowing when suddenly some lights approached. It would appear we were about to be joined and soon the door opened and 2 more hardy mountain bikers entered – I think they were more surprised than us to find other people using the bothy that midweek night in October.

As they settled in and we got chatting it quickly became apparent they had more experience at this sort of thing than us but they still enjoyed my Cherry Vodka that had come all the way from Poland. We all got chatting and it turned out one of them was something to do with the ‘Bare Bones’ stuff in Wales and that he and Charlie new of each other by their forum names. It was a great evening and when we did all eventually turn in for the night we had a good sleep