Bart and I had an idyllic few days in Torridon but when the
midges set in, we decided to spend the second part of our holiday further east.
Since Bart first came to Scotland a few months ago there is one thing that’s
he’s really fallen in love with and that’s our herds of wild deer. So when we
headed to the Cairngorms I was hoping to have an extra special surprise in
store for him.
Before I tell you the story of our Cairngorms trip, perhaps I
should tell you the story of Bart for any readers who didn’t follow my previous
blog, the bicycle diaries. During my two-year world cycle trip from 2010 to
2012, I was cycling into New Zealand’s Mount Cook National Park when another
touring cyclist pulled up on the road beside me. A tanned, fit Belgian man with
sexy cycle shorts, a crop of wild, silver hair and a gorgeous smile. We hit it
off instantly, as if we’d been friends for many years. Of course fate would
have it that I was cycling south and Bart was cycling north! Despite that, he
changed his plans and we had a lovely week cycling and camping together before he had to
catch his homeward flight. We kept in touch then met up again in Istanbul for a
great adventure cycling through the winter mountains of Turkey and
Greece. Towards the end of my two year trip, as I pedalled over the Alps, I was
intercepted by Bart in his campervan and we spent two months cycle touring and trekking there. Then, after my world cycle trip ended, I joined Bart in the Canary Islands to
help him work on his rental properties. We’d had a lot of fun together over
this time but it was when Bart first came out to Scotland in March this year that
our relationship blossomed. Perhaps the beauty and romance of the Scottish
landscapes played a hand! Or maybe spending freezing, grim nights in a tent huddling
together for warmth!
Before this starts to sound like a Mills and Boon novel,
let’s get back to the Cairngorms. We spent our first day in Aviemore stocking up Bart’s
campervan with groceries, eating coffee and cake in town and then
working off the extra calories with a bike ride through Abernethy Forest and
Ryvoan Pass. On our second day we climbed Ben Macdui via the Fiacaill Ridge
which I’d never done before. The ridge is a bit of a mountain legend in
Scotland and hairy men in bothies will go misty-eyed as they talk wistfully about
it while stroking their beards. As we approached, the ridge looked quite daunting but
in the end it was a fun and easy scramble. By now we were hankering to be out
in the tent again so we loaded our packs with overnight gear and jumped on the
bikes for a trip to the Cairngorm plateau.
The Cairngorm plateau is a unique
place in Scotland being a high, sub-alpine, semi-tundra moorland. The mountains
here lack the pointed shapeliness of those in the west but the Cairngorms have
a very special atmosphere, a sense of space and wildness and many dramatic
glacier-sculpted corries and steep-sided glens. The plateau itself is an
ancient landscape - being so high, it was largely unchanged by the destructive
ice of the glaciers. Up here there’s
some unusual wildlife such as the snow buntings we saw on Ben Macdui which look
like large, white sparrows. There’s also an animal that harks back to those
ancient times. If we were to find it, I knew Bart would love it.
We cycled out
through the Rothiemurchus pinewoods on fast dirt trails and then bumped along
the rough track up Gleann Einich. The bikes were hidden away in deep heather
and we started to climb the narrow path high above the waters of Loch Einich
into Coire Dhondail, one of the many corries that form the scalloped edges of Braeriach. Light rain fell and a rainbow formed over the loch. The path
zig-zags steeply up the back wall of the corrie and at the top pops out on the
plateau. Bart and I think alike on many things but we had a small disagreement
at this point. The back of the corrie was covered with a near vertical wall of
old snow. It was June so we weren’t carrying ice axe and crampons. I thought
that the snow was soft, sugary and not dangerous. Bart thought it was hard,
slippery and that any mistake would send us accelerating to the bottom to be
dashed to pieces on the rocks below! After
a bit of discussion, we nervously crossed the narrowest section of snow. Our
hearts were pounding and not from the love of each other!
Safely across, we
climbed the final section onto the mist-shrouded plateau and there before us
were the animals I’d hoped to show Bart – the reindeer! Thousands of years ago
reindeer were native to Scotland but as climates warmed after the last ice age
their populations dwindled and died out. This small herd in the Cairngorms of
about fifty animals was reintroduced in 1952. The reintroduction was largely an
experiment but they thrived in this place which is much like their native home
in Scandinavia - the climate is similar,
the vegetation is like that of the Arctic tundra and Ikea's not too far for
those must-have soft furnishings. The herd is semi-wild in that the reindeer
live natural lives out here in the mountains but there are always folk down below keeping
an eye on them.
After our reindeer
encounter, we pitched the tent on a high shelf above Loch Einich on a grey,
grim evening and blethered the hours away until bed. Goodness
knows what we talk about on these long evenings in the tent – probably stories of
adventures passed and dreams of ones yet to come. The next morning we unzipped
the tent to dense banks of clouds billowing up from the loch but by the time
we’d had breakfast and packed up, the weather was clearing. So we trekked around the
rim of the great corrie that holds Loch Einich, gasping with awe from the top
of the sheer, rock cliffs that plunge down to the water. We picked off the
modest peak of Sgor Gaoith before finding a steep route down through the
rocks and scree.
We were soon trekking along the quiet shores of Loch Einich,
marvelling at the mirror surface of the water. After a picnic lunch on the
beach, we retrieved our bikes from the heather and fairly flew back down the
glen. As we arrived back at the van in Glen More, a few heavy
drops of water splattered on the road.
I was delighted to turn to
Bart and say “Looks like rain, dear”.
Fact file
Start/finish: Glen More
Map: OS Landranger 36
Route:
From Glen More take the Old Logging Way bike route opposite the shop/café and
follow it towards Aviemore as far as the north end of Loch Morlich. Pick up the
dirt road to Rothiemurchus Lodge turning off to the right at the signpost for
the Lairig Ghru. Continue to Cairngorm Club Footbridge, cross it and keep cycling west to Gleann Einich.
Cycle up Gleann Einich (one easy river crossing) and before you reach the loch,
hide your bike in the heather and take the uphill path marked by a stone cairn
which tops out on the plateau. There’s no trail at the top but follow the high
rim of the huge corrie that holds Loch Einich round to the Munro, Sgor Gaoith.
Retrace your steps a little way to find an indistinct route down the back wall
of the corrie above the end of the loch. Be sure to find the right route down
as there are steep crags here. It becomes a more firm path and is marked on the
map further down. Return to your bike via the shores of Loch Einich and retrace
your outward cycle route.
Tip: If you fancy a morning coffee before you start,
head to the café inside Glen More Shop – it’s got a great view of the bird
feeders at the back where you can get really close to red squirrels and the
local birdlife.
