Cycling the wilds
Thu, Jul 3, 2025
A week off and the weather took a break from torrential rain, rushing through a day of warm sunshine before the next attempt by autumn to steal the show early. Already, at the end of June, the bracken is on the turn but on this quiet Tuesday morning as I drove up the road to Attadale, the Longitude in the back, the clouds were preparing to settle down in a calm blue sky and take a welcome rest from the endless storms that seem to be a feature of the weather now.
I had an idea to cycle in to Ben Dronaig lodge bothy and then take it from there. No stress, no plans, no real aim for the day, just a two-wheeled wander in wild and remote country. I’d last been up at the bothy probably twenty years ago, climbing Lurg Mhor and Bidean a’Choire Sheasgaich, two of the remotest Munros and I was keen to get back up there and explore. The track in from Attadale starts off in beautiful woodland, flat and easy on tarmac that gives way to gravel beyond the locked gate at Strathan. It then winds through delightful bends through the old trees, the sunlight playing light and shade on the burns and the rough road. This is the original track I walked all those years ago but now the whole character has changed. I turned the corner, left the trees and climbed up loose, very steep gravel onto the modern track which is obviously built for vehicles and not the horses and ponies of old.
No graded ascents on this one, it’s straight up. It’s quite a pull up the first rise and it became just too steep and loose to cycle at the top so it was off for some pushing into the land of the clear-felled conifers. This part has quite an industrial feel, with high fencing, dead, dying and cleared conifer lands with the surgical scar of the track cutting through relentlessly. Quite depressing in a way. There is however, a beautiful old track heading off to the right at Loch na Caillich. A greened and forgotten old track, designed for horses and ponies as it winds in a short loop round a spur and back by the loch. It felt good to follow this detour, back into an old world and very probably the track I walked all those years ago. The loch was dark and silent, the claret-coloured peaty water flowing slowly out towards the gorge and as I stood and listened to the silence and watched the wind ruffle the dark surface, I wondered who the cailleach was. Would she appear and give me some of her wisdom, for how to cope in an increasingly mad world?
Back on the main track I noticed it had just barged straight over the spur. I turned right and strained my neck up the alpine switchbacks of the final rise to the summit of the pass. I managed to ride it apart from the very steep and very loose final section. This track was definitely built for vehicles.
At the top I took a well earned rest on a rock and just sat and looked east to the wilds of the Attadale forest. Barely a tree in sight, this is a deer forest. A killing ground for the rich. Two worlds in one. That of the killer who cares for nothing and that of the wanderer who cares for the world and the creatures who live in it. Two irreconcilable worlds. On the horizon Lurg Mhor and Bidean a’Choire Sheasgaich looked up from their early morning drowsiness and said, “oh, it’s you again. What kept you so long?”.
From here it’s a grand descent to the Uisge Dubh, long straights and flowing bends on a much better surface and it’s not as steep on this side. I was soon at the bridge over the black peaty gorge, a turbulent rushing and roaring never ending flow of Guiness far below the elegant metal structure. I don’t remember a dam here last time but here it was, a dark overflow escaping the concrete and making a break for freedom.
This and the other hydro plant at Loch an Laoigh are the reasons the tracks are here. Big vehicle scars that care for nothing but direct movement, A to B and nothing in between and nothing stands in their way. They do not dance with the contours as the old stalkers paths did, which took into account ponies hooves, ponies fitness, ponies wellbeing. These things do not know tiredness, they do not recognise landscape. As long as they have climate polluting fuel in their metal bellies they stop for no natural obstacle. Occasionaly I saw a section of old track waltzing beside the river, turning with the ground, avoiding unnecessary ascent, blended in, green and almost gone. I saw these from the bare scars on spurs, breathing heavily from the unnecessary steep ascent which is followed by the unavoidable steep descent.
Eventually I came to the bothy, sitting in a fenced off little area of wildflowers, lush green grass and a happy little burn, dark and peaty but sparkling in the morning sun. The bothy was exactly as I remembered it. Well maintained, well used with a stuffed visitors’ book of hill wanderers and a pile of personal belongings on the sofa with a hand-written message asking for it to be left alone as the owner needed it to continue. I sat on a chair inside and listened to the absolute silence. No wind. No sound. No world other than here. No time other than now. Outside I sat at the picnic table in the increasingly warm sunshine and realised I hadn’t seen a single sheep all the way. That was the reason the field was alive with wildflowers. I also hadn’t seen any birds beyond the trees at Attadale. The landscape was strangely empty of wildlife. The deer would have been high up in the good weather but it’s high up here and I would have maybe expected some down by the river but the glen was empty. But it was also empty of people. All the way here from the road end in Attadale.
Back on the bike, I was bound for Loch Calavie via the old track over Coire na Sorna. I think this comes from an old word for an eagle, sòrn but the skies were empty. I could imagine the iolair mhòr high up on Creag Dhubh but there was nothing. Only the sound of the burn. I stopped for a wee breather on the rough track, right at a stunningly beautiful quartz pebble that sparkled light and gold all over its almost perfactly rounded surface. It looked so much like gold it was tempting to take it with me but I believe that the things of the world have a life of their own. I don’t take them from the mountains and lock them indoors. I leave them where they live. There is no sparkle in a dark room. Out here, where it lives I can return again and again and again in my mind and remember this wonderful moment of sunshine bouncing from its rough surface and turning it to glitter. A golden sphere in a green and brown and grey landscape. If stones can be happy, this one was ecstatic and I for one, wanted it to be as happy as that forever. So I left it in its happy place.
Ignoring norms of thinking and living your own life, with your own beliefs about the natural world is a fulfilling experience. This is not religion. This is not compliance. This is free thought in a free life. Being brave enough to speak out against those societal strictures that trap the mind in prisons of oppression. To hell with them and the chains they try to wrap the imagination in. To stand alone in a wild landscape, sweat slowly sliding down your forehead from the exertion of self-powered movement up a steep and rough track, breath slowing, bending down to marvel at a small but perfect creation of nature is a true privilege. To pick up that perfect stone, hold it up to the sun and see it sing in sparkles against a blue sky is a moment I will never forget. To put it back where I found it made me just as happy. I wasn’t the first to think like this and I hope others think as I do and as Wordsworth, in book 3 of The Prelude:
To every natural form, rock, fruit or flower,
Even the loose stones that cover the highway,
I gave a moral life.
It’s this connection with the natural world that keeps me going. The avoidance of all religion, all mass media opinions. To plough one’s own furrow, to believe there is good in the world, somewhere. To believe that real life, real happiness, can be found, alone, high up in mountains on an ancient, rough track, sitting next to a sparkling stone that has made me happy. Happy to believe that it too, is happy.
The short descent to Loch Calavie was fun on the rough track. Nothing like the main glen tracks, this one is very old indeed, contouring through rather than blasting straight across the landscape.
The ride along the shore was delightful. Quite wet in many places but not boggy. A rocky wet and progress was good. I was surprised as I was expecting it to be boggy. Now and then it dipped into the peaty waters of the loch and I splashed through, whooping and laughing. I passed a sign recommending the start of the ascent of Lurg Mhor but I kept heading east until I ran out of loch and over a wee crest I wheeled down to the circular structure that’s marked as a shieling on the map. I doubt if it’s a shieling as I read years ago aboout circular deer traps but these involve stone walls that start high up on either side of the two mountains on either side of a glen, descending and narrowing until they are within a few feet of each other, where there is a circular structure where the deer are trapped but I couldn’t see a wall up either Lurg Mhor to the north or Ben Dronaig to the south. It was a beautiful place though and I hunkered down inside, bike propped against the old mossed wall, sat on a stone, looking down the glen towards Pait Lodge, out of sight round the corner. The west wind had risen but I was sheltered behind the wee spur. Not a sound broke the stillness. Big green mountains stretched far back in time. A land of many memories, of stravaiging the tops as a young man, of sleeping out in a bivvy bag, starlit nights of cool breezes and the distant sound of gently flowing water. Nights when you can hear time herself move. A land that provided a life-journey to here, to now. Wordsworth was right and I thanked that younger me as I agreed that:
the child is father of the man
After a long time just sitting I turned back. I sat outside the bothy for about an hour, munching on my last sandwich and drinking the peaty water straight from the burn. Memories came and went. I went for a wander round the field, looked at, touched the old trees, stood at the edge of the fence where the big glen stretched across the green to Meall a’Chapuill, horse hill. Surrounded by high and remote mountains I was happy. As happy as my little sparkly friend somewhere up where eagles once soared, in Core na Sorna.
The climb back up to the pass above Attadale was rather good. A long steady climb. Nowhere near as steep and loose as the Attadale side. I stopped at the bizarre Cape Wrath Trail sign and its exhortation to follow the fence line. For as far as the eye could see, there wasn’t a fence in sight. Just a metal gate with the sign on it. I saw three stones piled on top of one another next to the gate. On top of moss. So I took them down and gave the moss its light and water again. Does no-one notice the life around them?
I went round the old loop again and stopped by the dark lapping shore of Loch na Caillich and wondered if she was there, watching. What knowledge did she have? What wisdom is lost to us? As I moved off along the green track, cat’s claws streaked across the black water. I’m sure she’s still there. I’m sure if you come here and sit still and listen, you’ll hear the cailleach and she’ll teach you how to see the happy stones around you.
