Recycling

Well sports fans. You’ve come this far, so why not come a little further. This is it, the last week; the toenails are clipped, the bikes are oiled, the Vaseline has been purchased and we are ready to go.

We had decided on nothing too strenuous for the final weekend so met in Dalwhinnie, which has become the spiritual home of our training lately, and set out to repeat the journey to Culra bothy but this time on bike rather than foot.

Murray’s opening gambit was that he hadn’t been on a bike since the Bike & Hike three years ago, his logic being that he only has two 30 mile cycles in him and he doesn’t want to use them up in training. This said he rocketed off into the distance and left Colum and I to follow the trail of his dust. It wasn’t until we approached the final three miles before Culra, where the Landrover track becomes a rough path, that we finally caught up with him.

Then he was off blazing the trail again and kindly pointing out to Colum and I where the ground was particularly rough by flying over his handlebars and conducting a ditch depth test with his head. ‘Are you alright?’ called I, when he had remounted his bike. ‘What?’ he shouted, turning to hear me more clearly and immediately bouncing the bike off a rock and kissing the ground for the second time. ‘Nothing.’ I called, helpfully.

Colum, meanwhile was able to safely negotiate the whole route. Partly due to the fact that the disc brakes on Neil’s bike, which had kindly been donated for the day, enjoy braking so much that they pay only passing attention to whether or not you are trying to apply them. Still, makes for good training.







On reaching Culra Murray initiated a systematic inspection of the seats of the many bikes that were leant up against the bothy. Enquiry elicited the response that his bike seat bore many of the characteristics of a razor blade. Although closer inspection revealed that it had somehow worked loose and was at almost 45o to the traditional angle favoured by cyclists the world over. Thus, rather than presenting the flat surface that provides at least a passably comfortable accommodation for the buttocks he was perched upon something that resembled the profile presented by an intercontinental ballistic missile poised for take-off. Fortunately it was nothing Neil’s handy Allen keys couldn’t sort and so an embarrassing trip to casualty was averted.

Our pause for a photo provided me with the chance to show off the little used stationary power slide; very cool. General consensus of opinion however was that purple was a bad choice of helmet colour.







Massive thanks to all who have donated and provided encouragement, it means a massive amount to us and more importantly to Maggie’s Centres. Check in next week to see how we get on.

When the moon hits your eye like... well the sun actually

As the final stages of training approach we decided that a night walk would be just the ticket and so I headed South and Colum and Murray headed North to rendezvous in Drumochter on Friday evening. Having suffered five days of unbroken clouds I was pleasantly surprised to find sunshine at Aviemore and therefore determined to complete the walk in short sleeves despite it being "feckin' freezing".

Fortunately we had Murray's bushman skills to help us out, although his suggestion of fashioning a rudimentary space blanket from empty monster munch packets was not well received. In the end I had to get my coat out of my rucksack, defeat! Murray went on to further demonstrate the heightened skills of the outdoorsman by getting the sun confused with the moon and his foot confused with an animal lunging out of the darkness to attack him. Topping this off by falling down two holes. I, of course, turned around for a good laugh and slipped on the cowpat of karma and went face first into the mud. Colum managed to stay vertical for the whole trip, which was a great success.

The now obligatory failure of Murray's GPS phone and Colum's watch meant that we completed the 12 or 70 mile route in somewhere between 10 minutes and 4.5 days. So a good improvement.

Just because a horse is brown it doesn't mean it's wearing a coat

Press announcement: There's one born every minute! We have a new member of the Leaping Badgers team in the form of Murray Whyte. He joined us for a short stroll out towards Ben Alder this weekend.

After five days of blazing sunshine with the clouds as scarce as the president of a multinational bank at a G20 protest and the rocks about to split from the heat we set out for a twenty five mile walk into Ben Alder. Needless to say it started lashing down with rain as soon as we left the house with the kind of intensity that would have put a smile on Noah's face.

Being kitted out with the latest in waterproof clothing we stayed dry for nearly seven minutes. After that it was similar to being in the shower, except cold, and we were fully dressed and there was no shampoo. Colum and I calculated that twenty five miles is the equivalent to walking up and down an average length bath 13,000 times.

Murray was able to track our position with his GPS mobile phone, until the batteries gave up. Colum's watch wasn't faring much better and was reluctant to move past 9:15. We twigged that something was wrong when the combined calculation from GPS and watch put our average walking speed at 25 miles per hour - which is virtually unachievable driving down the A9 let alone walking along forest track.

By the time we stumbled back towards Dalwhinnie it was noted that every single person that passed us was on a bike, wussies!

The bothy at Culra is a great place to stop for lunch if you're passing. With several rooms and a couple of wood burning stoves, as well as a huge shovel to bury your leavings, you couldn't ask for more. The service wasn't brilliant though - still you can't have everything. It was a roof over our heads and respite from the inclement conditions. Train in the wet and hope for the dry, is my motto and I propounded it several times on the long walk out until threats of physical violence shut me up.

Horsepower to Pedal Power

An unfortunate ruling in the Maggie's handbook means that Colum's 650cc engine isn't permitted for the cycling stage and so more traditional methods have needed to be employed:

His top speed of 17 -18 mph (ed: yeah right!) is a little disappointing and refuelling is required every twenty-five minutes. Saving grace is that the tax and insurance is pretty low at the moment (thanks Gordon). Citizens of Glasgow be warned that the orange and blue menace is at large - keep off the footpaths, cycle paths, roads, parks and ground floors of the public buildings.