It was a little before midnight that I realised something was wrong. I’d felt good when it got dark after the long, warm midsummer dusk, descending Culardoch at break-nothing speed and cruising through a Braemar where the regimented tourism of daytime had already given way to syncopated drunken straggles, turning Mar Road into a crazy golf course. Smooth, undulating tarmac led in the half light to Linn of Dee for the second time that day, as I flicked my helmet light on, an hour ahead of schedule.
But now, although the legs felt fine, my breathing was laboured and, for the first time since 4:20am, I didn’t feel like eating. Worse, my balance seemed to have nudged the needle to the wrong side of upright and, in the flat light given out by my single light, the trail that had flowed under my wheels and through my body all day began to be intermittently and more frequently unintelligible, just at the exposed point I needed most to be in tune with it; like straining to hear someone shouting in your ear in a noise-rammed nightclub: some of the words cohering a few seconds too late and some not at all.
That’s when the inner voice spoke. The voice that gets you home safe; that knows what you can do; and, equally importantly, what you can’t. You need to walk this. You can’t fall off here. Yes, you’re shipping time and you love riding this part. But you can’t now. Look! Another mis-read, another sideways dunt. Stay upright. That’s what matters. This is a no fall zone. Just push. Push hard. Yes, you can ride this wee bit. OK, now you need to get off. Push again.
I must be the only person who has ever longed for that fording of the Tilt: the River Styx to biking purgatory. But I did. It was exhilaration to finally see the steep trod down the bank to the white water, but not to note that I’d lost 17 minutes in an hour, nor to see the smirry cone of drizzle begin flowing through my headlight. I could feel what had felt so firm in my grasp all day slipping between my fingers. But I knew unequivocally that I was committed, whatever the outcome. That made me glad. I stepped down, into the dark, cold, wet flow, and across.
How had I come to be here, about to willingly embark on an awful hike a bike in the bahookie o’ naewhaur at something past midnight, already 164 miles into the all but longest day of the year?
I was riding the Cairngorms Loop. Loop is something of a misnomer in that it consists of two concentric loops that alternately divide and encircle the rounded red hills of the Cairngorm massif. Its 185 principally offroad miles are commensurately varied, commensurately hilly – with 14,500 feet of height gained and lost – and commensurately beautiful, from bucolic lowland to rugged pass, ancient forest to barren precipice, chattering burn to tumbling river to serene loch. And I was attempting to ride it in 24 midsummer hours, dawn till dawn.
Like most journeys, this one began a long way behind the departure, considerably further back than a little over three years ago when I discovered biking. But I’ll start there.
When I had moved to the Highlands nine months previously, it was hillrunning that called to me outwith the hallowed winter months. But then, having initially been very fortunate in avoiding injury, the running broke first one fibula, then the other: stress fractures. The injury was diagnosed on the second occasion, so I was in a moon boot, on crutches. I couldn’t walk, run, climb or ski tour, including in the Romanian mountains, where I actually had a wonderful time reading, working out whistle tunes in the hotel room and nattering with whoever was around. But, it occurred to me, I could ride that old mountain bike in the shed. There was a path mapped on the OS from Abriachan, where I live, through to Drumnadrochit. An ancient byway, as it turns out. So ancient that, in places, not a trace remains even from the air, the A82 having long since supplanted it. But I didn’t know such things then. It, and some steep parts of the Great Glen Way return from Drum, were my first boggy experiences of hike a bike, bike in lieu of crutch. I loved it.
A fortunate coincidence was that my then girlfriend, Lindsay, was a good mountain biker and game for my romantic notion of bothy to bothy touring. Game too for teaching me how to ride. I bought a Halfords hardtail on the Cycle to Work scheme and went at it. Our first trip was the nonpareil Tour of the Cairngorms over three blissful days, the route on which the Cairngorms Loop, with which the story began, is based. Pretty soon I was out riding every remote Highland itinerary I could get news of, and some that were pieced together from knowledge of the hills, the OS map and the trusty Bing satellite imaging. (It’s better than Google.) I was learning.
The second turning point was lockdown. Until the day before it fell, my pals and I had been revelling in the best sustained period of Scottish ski touring in recent memory, day after halcyon weekend day. Just before the curtain fell, David and I skied off the summit of Sgurr Mor on a peerless day of at least six descents in the Fannaichs. But suddenly the mountains were out of bounds, out of respect for the volunteers of the mountain rescue teams, as was technical downhill riding. Or, indeed, getting in a car for anything but work – which, as a doctor, I was fortunate still to have. We could take exercise from and to our front doors, and the idea was to stay as far away from other people as possible. Which, when you think about it, is at least one aspect of an exploratory mountain bike ride. I ranged further and further afield on my precious days off, and the weather continued to hold for the remainder of March and all through April as I traversed path and non-path after path, bog after bog, deer fence after deer fence, river and burn, threading the long glens into a tapestry of cool mornings and long, pedal-slow evenings.
At just the point that I was riding longer and longer routes over non-technical terrain I began to see the word “gravel” on Strava. Another fortunate coincidence. With the gravel bike, I got some road tyres and found that, once on such a bike, road riding was smooth, quick, almost effortless. And I was quite fast, so long as the road stayed flat-ish. It turned out that I was a mountain biker trapped in a rouleur’s body.
The next decisive coincidence was breaking my neck in June of that year. Not doing anything remotely rad, I will add. I’ve never broken anything doing anything rad: concentrating too hard to fall badly, and generally too hard to fall at all. But such is the way of it. I was unable to ride outdoors for four months, and no mountain biking for a further seven. No skiing either.
Having never even remotely had any interest in indoor riding, it became a lifeline thanks to friend and colleague Jonny and the indoor trainer he lent me. That’s when I began to learn about watts, zones, heart rate; when I began to understand the anatomy of a long, varied hill day on the bike: why some rides worked and why some didn’t.
Once I was allowed back on the mountain bike, I began wondering. If I enjoyed riding a bike all day, could I enjoy riding it for 24 hours? Why 24 hours? Well, it’s what comes after a day. It’s also the length of local winter race, The Strathpuffer, whose repetitive nature really didn’t and doesn’t appeal, though I could probably be talked into filling a slot in a friendly well-equipped quad – unless the skiing was good that weekend. It’s also the allotted time of the legendary (though with support allowed) British hillrunning challenges: the Bob Graham, Ramsay and Buckley Rounds. But what route to go for? The Cairngorms Loop was the obvious choice, 24 hours being something of a benchmark for its completion, but I’ve an aversion to the obvious and I’d ridden almost all of it before: most of the outer loop with Lindsay that first trip – and therefore much more enjoyably than could be achieved in 24 hour endurance mode – and the inner loop solo in fantastically adverse winter conditions one January, half of it in the dark, which surely couldn’t be bettered for drama. I was also – erroneously as it turns out – under the false impression that loads of people had done it in under 24 hours. The Badger Divide, on the other hand – joining Inverness to Glasgow via 212 principally offroad miles with 18,000 feet of height gain – contained a lot of intriguingly new territory as well as some that was local and very familiar: the superlative Great Glen Way and the slightly less superlative Corrieyairack Pass. And only a handful of folk seemed to have done that in under 24. I tried it three times, finished once and missed the 24 hour target by a country mile. But I was learning: learning to eat and drink while riding, very slowly learning that my body can handle and indeed needs more than the standard 300-350 kcal/hr, learning how to stay at endurance/zone 2 power so as not to burn the legs for later, ever so slowly learning how not to get dehydrated. I learned that foil blankets don’t keep midges out, whereas foil bags do. I also learned, with a degree of disappointment but also dispassionate fascination, that I am not capable of unequivocally enjoying 24 straight hours on a bike, even one with a comfy saddle.
A further experiment in this vein was the September 2021 group start Cairngorms Loop. This was at the point when I was still tilting at the enjoyable 24 hour ride windmill, and the somewhat dingy weather conditions put a decisive nail in that coffin. 13 hours plus a further hour of avoidable mechanicals in, I gratefully bailed out into my warm, dry bivvy and spare clothes in the hospitable Feshiebridge woods, knowing I’d made the right call. But, somehow, in the process something of it had found its way under my skin, and almost immediately I caught myself speculating whether I could do it in 24 hours at midsummer, enjoying at least most of it, or even at midwinter if it coincided with a full moon and dry conditions.
Another factor in this was observing my companions that day. Looking at everyone’s pace in different sections, it quickly became clear that the decisive factor wasn’t speed or power; it was pacing and tactics. Pacing and tactics that had to come from hard-won intimate knowledge of one’s own physical capabilities and incapabilities. The most impressive ride in that vein that day was Gemma’s, putting a fair dent in the women’s record with a supremely paced performance in said mingin conditions. When I looked at her split times and multiplied by the relevant factor, I knew that, given good conditions, I could go sub 24 – if I got the pacing and fuelling right. It was those factors that had defeated many a stronger rider than me both on that and previous occasions, and had beaten me on every one of those Badger rides.
That’s the thing about a long ride. Broken down to its components, it’s not hard. Any reasonable mountain biker could ride any hour-long section of the 185 mile Cairngorms Loop at 24 hour pace, no problem. The hard bit is stringing it all together, minute after minute, hour after hour. To do that, you need to know and feel your own personal numbers: how many calories an hour? What to eat? How many millilitres an hour? How much power to limit yourself to so that you really are staying in zone 2?
It was a growing obsession with the Highland Trail 550 race that played the crucial role in honing my own personal answers to those questions – and in getting my weight down from 90 to 78kg. And, indeed, in getting a power meter for my mountain bike. How it came to be an obsession is a story for another day. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an obsession deferred: in late April I found myself sitting on the verge of a Highland moorland road running my fingers over a decisive step in my right collarbone. The HT550 was immediately down the toilet, along with an imminent ski touring trip to Iceland with good pals and a number of road bike races. In an imprecise way, I felt somewhat more pulverised than a clavicle or my normal pulse and respiratory rate warranted and the reason was immediately and very painfully apparent when I attempted to get to my feet in order to get into my friend’s wife’s car for the trip to hospital: a broken pelvis. I’ve broken more than my share of bones and that one takes the ouch biscuit.
Within a week though, the orthopods’ promise that the pain would begin to ease came to pass and, with huge gratitude, I found myself able, painfully but just about endurably, to crutch my way across the room. Before letting me home, the occupational therapist quite rightly insisted she watch me getting from my bed to the toilet and back. What she didn’t quite rightly do was lift the seat cover of the toilet so as to avoid my exquisitely broken pelvis resting full force on the hard plastic. Imagine then my surprise at finding it… not painful. The first thought that went through my head was the obvious one: if walking hurts but this doesn’t, sitting on the indoor trainer might not hurt either.
And so it was that, perhaps a fortnight after the injury, I went to my cabin and got back on the horse. And the journey back towards the fittest I’d been in my life, aged 45, slowly began.
But what about the Cairngorms Loop? I can’t now recall how or when it came back into my mind; probably in the context of scratching around for consolation prizes to salvage from the summer. When it did though, this time I looked it up – and found that only 12 people had managed it in under 24 hours, and a number of those only in the past year.
The final decisive coincidence, as usual with big bike rides, was opportunity. Midsummer, and I was off work to bring my mum up north for a week. She generously released me to my quest. And the weather was dry; even sunny. Meanwhile, I was 85kg rather than race weight – not ideal for a route with 14,500 feet of climbing, but good enough – and perhaps 90-95% of the way there with the legs. Interestingly though, while that described threshold and upper end power, having got back to endurance work a lot earlier, my upper zone 2 power was right back where it had started, which is what counted for this ride. This time I had a power meter to make sure I didn’t stray outside that. This time I knew I needed to neck 450 kcal per hour, and what combination of bars and sports drink powder I’d be able to stomach (or, perhaps, gut) for 24 hours. And I had a better bike too: a reasonably lightweight short-travel full sus Orbea Oiz named Orrin whom I’d got with the HT550 in mind. Most importantly of all, I had that spreadsheet of Gemma’s splits with the multiplication factor. That meant I’d know if I was on track and therefore be able to relax and enjoy the ride if I were ahead, take photos, even smell the roses in the unlikely event of finding any.
After an unexpected half shift covering an illness gap on PICT, the Highlands’ pre-hospital emergency team, which delayed dinner with Mum at the deliciously homely Struy Inn, I drove down to Blair Atholl, parked up at the Glen Tilt car park around 11:30pm and sidled over into what, during my vocational winter climbing days, had become my favourite bed: my old synthetic sleeping bag on the fully reclined passenger seat of the car, for a fitful four hours.
The day got off to an effective if meteorologically equivocal start at 4:20am as I started the Garmin watch and got out of the saddle for the gentle rise out of the car park. The first wee bit of the route winds its way ingeniously and with considerable under-wheel variety down to the back road from Blair Atholl to Bruar, but it’s thereafter rather uninspiring as it shadows the A9 rather like its ghost: the old A9 that it follows in part. Relief for the mind, if not the legs, comes at the point it diverges north to climb the Gaick: one of the ancient drovers’ passes through the Cairngorms. East of all-too-rideable Drumochter and west of the all-too-unrideable Lairig Ghru, the Gaick is the mountain biker’s Goldilocks pass. It’s wonderfully varied under-wheel too, starting with flowy track that undulates from steep to middling to downright downhill. There is then a “Is this really the best place to cross?” fording of the somewhat ambitiously named Edendon Water before a steep bike-over-ears pull up the boggy bank as prelude to a blessedly short bog trot that nonetheless forebodes later territory. What follows is a most unexpected piece of prime bumpily rideable singletrack along Loch an Duin, with a watery drop to the right that adds spice rather than Scotch bonnet. It was at this point that the sun began to make itself felt in a lifting of hues to the north and I took the first photo of the day.
At the far end of the loch, if the water level is low and you’re feeling optimistic about your choice of footwear and chain lube and/or you want applause from the audience of your own mind, you can opt to ride across the burn that issues from it. From there, it’s almost all zinging, puddled downhill doubletrack into Glen Tromie, which benefits from being less frequented than its more prestigious easterly neighbour, Glen Feshie, over to which the route then works its way through pleasantly varied forest via tracks that offer an amuse bouche of climbing rather than an all-you’d-rather-not-eat buffet.
In Feshie, although I’d ridden this bit before, I still lost a few minutes finding the wonderful wee singletrack that leads to Feshiebridge, which I nonetheless reached at 3 hrs 20, already half an hour up on the 24 hour schedule. To improve the outlook still further, the sun came out – and was to stay out all day.
Meanwhile, drinking my sports drink mixture at the allotted 500ml/hr, I’d been peeing for Scotland. This is an awful waste of time on a bike ride. (As an aside, as a junior doctor I would be so busy on a 12.5 hour shift covering multiple wards that I would deliberately not drink all day as I didn’t have time to piss. My mental faculties were conveniently undiminished.) So I opted to reduce my three-hour refill to a litre; a move that would have consequences later in the day.
But I didn’t know that then, and the beautiful section through Rothiemurchus to Glenmore was as beguiling as ever. And this time, no wrong turns either before or after the far end of Loch Morlich as I eased out of the saddle for the pleasantly angled climb towards Ryvoan.
The section between here and the Lairig an Laoigh is famously and fabulously shit. Nonetheless, on this day, under a warm sun and blue skies carrying a gentle breeze, it was more than bearable, as attested by photographs, including of a lochan I’d not remarked on previous visits. The plod up to the lairig was at least about as dry as it gets, even rideable here and there. The reward is one of the finest descents in the country, initially steppy, rocky full gas send with upper Glen Derry as the stunning stage curtain, followed by flowy joy punctuated by almost entirely rideable burns and other assorted water features as the ancient Scots pines envelop the trail.
It was at this point, around midday at Derry Lodge, that I first encountered other folk enjoying the midsummer sunshine. Indeed, the next section – a luxuriously relaxing doubletrack descent towards Linn of Dee – is invariably improved by observing the slow progress of the walkers one zooms past: a pleasure discovered in mountaineering days. There’s then some excellent singletrack to spit you out at the Linn of Dee car park, where I glanced at my watch: still 20 minutes ahead of schedule.
The next section was one I was both keenly anticipating and keenly dreading: the Geldie-Feshie watershed. I’d ridden it twice before, both times at night and both times sodden – which, to be fair, is its natural state. And one of those was with the multiplication of winter. But today, under sunny, birded skies and with the ground about as dry as it gets, surely it could be a different experience?
But before that a 10 minute stop was required. Just beyond White Bridge I met a woman and two horses coming the other way. She was riding one and the other was the pack animal, carrying what surely was not just her own kitchen sink but her neighbours’ as well. Horsepacking and bikepacking have certain things in common, but “light is right” is not one of them. She, it turned out, was on a grand tour of Scotland and the three of them had enjoyed a lazy morning in the sun which, being prone to lie ins, I heartily approved of.
Fearing the dip in morale occasioned by my previous two traverses, I clicked the headphones on as I began the Geldie-Feshie traverse. And what a revelation the combination of music and moorland proved to be: almost entirely rideable, birds flicking the sky, grasses and wildflowers bowing to the breeze. And then, best of all, seeing that sound: the Falls of Eidart that I’d crossed unseeing and, frankly, somewhat intimidated on a rickety bridge in the wind-pulsed dark rain on those previous occasions. What the darkness had hidden is one of the queens of Scottish waterfalls, the pool below it surely the most prized of dipping spots for those that know. A good 10 minutes of photography was called for and, now more than 30 minutes ahead of schedule, compulsory.
Beyond, previously unseen wooded upper Feshie was stunning, and the old singletrack rideable at intricate speed. The two fordings of the Feshie itself had little in common with those of that fierce winter’s night when I nearly lost my new bike and my footing to the thigh-high meltwater current. I rode almost the entirety of the second crossing.
Thanks to using an older version of the route, interest was added by negotiating the landslide at the foot of the Allt Gharbhlach, where I was grateful for my trusty hillrunning shoes. And then it was on to a pit stop for chain re-lube at the Achlean car park. Finishing the inner loop in sunny style felt very good indeed, as did my legs, still over half an hour ahead of schedule.
It does have to be said that the next section of road interspersed with the odd track is uninspiring, once Rothiemurchus is left behind. And it was rather hot under that sun. It was at this point that I found myself marvelling at those erstwhile September 2021 companions who’d kept riding into that dreich night when autumn arrived early, like a well-meaning but ill-mannered guest. The boredom does though relent at Forest Lodge and prime singletrack reunites the rider with the Tour of the Cairngorms, sadly missing out the superb section from Ryvoan through magical Abernethy.
The route from here to Tomintoul is nothing if not varied, from the sight of wondrous Loch a’ Chnuic – a jewel among jewels of Cairngorm lochs – to the entertainingly wet and puzzlingly pathless Glen Brown, where I stripped off for a tactical reapplication of chamois cream and a few dabs of insect repellent.
Into Tomintoul in early evening sun and almost an hour up on schedule, my craving for a Coke was an urge I satisfied at the pub but an early warning sign I missed. I knew enough to know this meant I was behind either on fluids or fuel, and if I’d given it the appropriate mental space I’d have put the combination of hot sun and relative lack of peeing together. But I didn’t. Not then. I was too busy enjoying the ride down to and along the River Avon in the dawning golden hour, at the height of which I reached the top of the climb to the shoulder of Culardoch, now a good hour up and deserving of a wee lie down. Another warning sign was that, though my legs felt good on the steep climb, my breathing was more laboured than it ought to have been. But I was still gaining on the schedule and there were photos to be taken and speedy doubletrack to be obliged.
And so back to where we started. I was dehydrated, in retrospect quite possibly three or four litres down. Just one thing I’d got wrong all day, and now the 24 hour target was accelerating out of reach. At the time though, I was only dimly aware of this, if at all. Over 20 hours into the ride, my day brain had checked out and the inner voice was kindly keeping it as simple as possible.
I sucked hard on the hydration hose, glad at least to be getting in some calories that were now unpalatable in solid form. Then I shouldered the bike and began the steep, narrow climb out of the gorge.
Another miscalculation, it turned out, was that the route finding here would be easy. I’d been this way before, also by dark but in much harsher conditions one star-strewn winter’s night when an earlier snowy brake-pad-ruining ride down the lower half of Ben Lomond had left me not quite satiated; my dessert stomach would be appeased only by a darktime circumnavigation of the Beinn a’ Ghlo massif en route home. That ride ended in compulsory singlespeed as the deep burn forded near the end froze to every part of my bike that had been radiating what little heat it had to the vast night sky over the prior thirty hard, hard icy miles. (No, I didn’t know about ice tyres then…) Even pissing on the drivetrain failed to remedy the situation.
But, somehow, the steep path petered out. And my Garmin watch was strapped to my handlebars where I couldn’t see it. Of course, in my right mind I’d have put the bike down, taken the watch off the bars, put it on my wrist and re-shouldered the bike, but right mind had checked out somewhere around White Bridge and I was firmly in one foot in front of the other mode. I did at least have the sense not to be too ambitious in which parts of the path to Fealar Lodge I attempted to ride. Barking dogs and heavier rain greeted my arrival there and I was very glad of my fabulously lightweight and breathable roadie’s rain jacket.
I’d lost more time, now just half an hour up on schedule. But this was why I’d saved my legs all day, never going over zone 2. And they did indeed feel, well, almost great. In fact I’d been looking forward to emptying the tank on these final remote climbs to give some shape to the night. When I set to on the first uphill though, there was no mistaking it: that overly laboured breathing again. Painfully slow describes it mentally. Physically it was just slow. That was the point that I knew it was in all likelihood game over, feeling how much even a slight incline drained out of my chest. Running on empty. But I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to see it through with everything I had left. I forced a long overdue bar in and washed it down with the remainder of my fluids. Now. Go. Forget everything else but forward, even if you can’t ride for toffee, shit or anything else.
Daldhu passed in a drizzly confusion of headlight reflected in black windows. I was glad I’d brought a second as the first gave out and the battery pack refused to charge. Dawn, I knew, would come before the second one failed, as would the end of my 24 hour window.
I cannot believe how hard and wet and rocky the climb after climb after climb beyond Daldhu is. Why does the track keep insisting on dropping after each one when I know it’s still got so far to rise, when every metre gained costs more each time, in seconds, in willpower, in heaving breath? Slower and slower, slower and slower, mind still strong but blunt. Blunt. Step. Pedal pedal change gear down down down; it’s in the 51 and I can barely turn it, rocks, dodge, swerve, balance, pull! Argh! Off! Walk, walk, push. Back on. Back on. Pedal. Just keep pedalling, pedalling as everything recedes out of reach, still not rising to that impossible watershed. Slower. Slower. Slower. Time and body sagging back down each rise with only the exhausted mind to pull them forward through the dark.
———-
At last a dim of light. Confusingly it reveals an undulating landscape; an increasingly less rideable one. For the first time since Fealar I get my phone out, trying to make sense of it. What?! I’m here! I’m at the watershed! How has this happened? When did I climb all that height that the track kept losing? I don’t even bother checking the time which stopped mattering about a hundred yards after Daldhu when the terrain and my body ruled the goal impossible. I’ve no idea how the ups and downs have amounted to this climb but they have.
And with that, the imminent relief of down floods mind and body. Down. Down. Down. It’s coming. And the dawn is coming. You’re tired, but you can do this. You’ve got this. You can concentrate. You can be…. Sensible.
More of the frustrating but now habitual on-off, ride-walk-push-heft-ride. And then there it is, unmistakably: the way down. And I can ride it, smearing the rear tyre over heather and pumping body down the forks in a dance of rocky, earthy drops, down to that burn where I’d unwillingly gone singlespeed, wet but not cold enough today. Through it on carelessly sodden feet. And now I can push up a hill with something approaching power in my legs because the top is right there and then I know. I know it’s doubletrack then road all the way, all the way down and down and down to Blair Atholl. Nothing in the way anymore.
Now I dare to look at my watch.
You have time. You have a bucketload of time. No need to take risks on this descent. You’ve got this. You’ve got it. Time to let the wheels sing, the wind whistle, the forward-contorted body unwind against the cool dawn.
At 4:10am, Blair Atholl Station is even more bleary eyed than me. I park my companion up against the sign and take his picture. His picture, not mine. He kept his side of the bargain considerably better than I mine. 23 hours, 50 minutes and some change. How imperfectly perfect this moment, this ride, this longest day is.
I get back in the saddle and, for the first time in 24 hours, turn around. The ride back up the hill to the car park is easy.
Tricadam 
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