Essence

I went out riding on Sunday in temperatures just above freezing, and forgot to put on my sunglasses. I have managed to get a few miles down the road without my helmet on a few rides and gone into a wild panic. We got round the three hour ride and were close to home when it started to snow horrid ice crystal blasts that sting. Lesson learned I think, and just in time to do a review of some sunglasses we were sent.

If your facebook feed is anything like ours it attracts a good many adverts for exotic bits of bicycle kit, which is where I came across Essence Sunglasses. Short story even shorter, we were sent two pairs to test which is always very nice, but I am fussy about kit. 

Now winter riding poses a few challenges to eye protection one of which is particular to being this far north. There are weeks of grey days, dreich to give it the local terminology with the sun skimming the horizon behind thick clouds. You are not going to cast a shadow at all and wearing glasses even a shade too dark will mean trouble ahead.

Interchangeable lenses are the answer and bendy legs that you can shape to fit are also good to have. Esther has such a small head that she can wear childrens glasses and Essence have that covered too if you pick the right style. But the big winter riding question is – do they steam up like bathroom windows after a long hot shower? No, they do not and even on a long, leg busting heart thumping climb you can reach the top and still see out. Brilliant indeed, and unique in my experience so 10 out of 10.

So, would I buy them if I had not been given them? Absolutely yes indeed, and clearly remembering the pain of dropping a pair of Oakleys out of my pocket last year, the price is appealing too. If you have been wondering if you should buy a new pair of cycling glasses like those the pros and cool kids are wearing, then the time is now. Take a look at https://www.essenceoutdoors.com/collections/sunglasses . Type in  GallowayCycling to get 20% discount.

How to have a small adventure.

Down on the coast the bluebells are starting to fade a little in the unseasonal heat and dry of a record breaking run of weather. It amazes me that small streams and even mud enough to make your tyres spin without grip, can still be found. The shady woods of the uplands are still carpeted with fresh young vivid summer sky blues.

The name bluebell is just 200 years old and before that referred to our own bluebell, the Scottish harebell. Keats called it ‘ the Sapphire Queen of the mid-May, and Tennyson ‘ the blue sky, breaking up from through the earth’. Britain from the far north to the south coast has fallen in love with the bluebell.

I want to explore somewhere new up in the fringes of the Galloway Highlands and I want to ride my gravel bike. It is so easy now to access maps and they are always the best place to start an adventure. From your computer you can now travel in time and space if you know where to look. In Scotland – and there are Google versions for most places. Pastmap.org.uk allows you to go back in time with layers of maps that you can dive into.

I always start with Bing.com/maps even though we have an OS subscription. Up there in the top right of Bing is a box labelled road which opens to show a scroll down menu; road, aerial, streetside and Ordnance Survey. This is all the OS maps for free and able to zoom to very fine detail. But it is not all there, even the OS leaves things off, which is where ridewithgps alerted me to an airstrip high in the hills that is not on the OS maps.

I use ridewithgps to create gps or more often the more detailed gpx files to drop on my Garmin 810. In the ridewithgps map menu there are 9 types of maps and I flick between them. If I want to ride on roads then I use OSM cycle and this knows if I am trying to ride the wrong way up a one-way street and keeps me safe and finds the bridges and usable routes. When you want to go off road it can become unhelpful. First I flick to OSM Outdoor which is expecting you to be on foot and is happy to take you where cycle thinks it is unwise. If I want to check if it is very much a bad idea I click up to satellite and zoom in to have a look if the track is there in reality.

If the tools don’t want to take you along a track that clearly exists, you have to draw the route by hand to the point where the system is happy again and allows automation to work again. Up at the airstrip none of the maps agree about the way forward through the forest and is where you just have to give up and hope it is clearer on the ground, which often it is not.

I have no idea how anyone without a bike to ride is coping with the pandemic. Headspace rides or Boris Rides as we now label them are perhaps the most important thing in the whole week. A week that is now divided into days when we have a milk delivery – Tuesday and Saturday and the one when the bin goes out, Friday. Every day can be an adventure when you have a bike, but it is even better when you have a purpose. Today it was to find the airstrip.

Crossmichael and turn right by the church onto our new favourite climb. Today as we get onto the slope there are groups of people out walking, taking their exercise, “ more people today than anytime in the last 100 years “. We are climbing slow enough to chat with people which is all part of the new normal perhaps. We leave the tarmac at an old water mill, it’s rusted wheel unturning for a generation or more. Loch Roan and then at the end turn left on the road down to Barwhillanty estate and then right. Nether Laggan and then left at  Diamonds Laggan and eventually a right into the unknown and begin a slow climb up Glenlaggan Hill.

Tarmac runs out then the gravel becomes rougher. It is hard to believe that up ahead is an airstrip tucked in the forest. You have to keep faith with the faint purple line on the Garmin and hope you plotted in the route correctly. Adventures in forests require absolute faith as tracks turn up that are not on any map, many take you miles to a dead end and an unhappy retreat.

Up ahead is a wind-sock. Bright orange against the forest greens behind and close clipped grass, an airstrip is ahead. A hanger with the outline of a plane behind the plastic cover and stone chip runway cut into the forest with a dramatic view and a stone wall at the takeoff end. We ride to the end for the view of the Ken valley.

None of the paths shown on some of the maps are there on the ground allowing us to link up to the road ahead, so we turn and head down into the valley. I am not sure we achieved anything other than we now know that the airstrip is there. But the point of it all is that we had one of the best rides of the year along roads we do not often ride and never in that direction. To end the adventure we visited the grave of James Clerk Maxwell who was Einstein’s hero. If you ever use a phone or gps, you have his work on the theory of electromagnetic radiation to thank, so it felt just right to close the loop. Get out your maps or dive into the web and get out and do stuff, have an adventure very soon.

Clatteringshaws to Glentrool and back.

The narrow valley that links Clatteringshaws with Glentrool is a classic highland landscape. Flanked by Merrick the highest peak in southern Scotland, with a loch at either end linked by Loch Trool and the River Dee it deserves to be better known. If that was not enough, it has the obligatory long distance walking route, and is certainly as remote as most places in Scotland. It has several tracks that you can link together on a bike, but the classic route is the cafe at Clatteringshaws to the cafe at Glentrool and back. A slight detour to White Laggan Bothy for coffee making is part of today’s plan.

It’s a remote corner of a remote and tucked away bit of Scotland, less populated now than perhaps it has ever been. It is the sort of landscape John Buchan had in mind when his hero of the 39 Steps looks for somewhere to hide, and flees to Galloway ( by train, which sadly is something you can not do anymore ). Richard Hannay jumps from the train just about 3 miles from the start in the book and the two films of the book.

Robert the Bruce in early 1307, fighting what we would now call ‘ a guerilla war ‘ as part of the first war of Scottish Independence, used the narrow glen to his advantage. Down at the Glentrool end where the glen is overlooked by steep ground he set about dislodging as many boulders as his men could loosen. As the English troops approached, they were forced to form single file under what is now named ‘ The Steps of Trool ‘. Down came the granite boulders with arrows to follow.

We had an easier journey despite weather that had clearly not looked at the forecast, not even the usually pessimistic XC Weather app mentioned hail, which is what we got along with temperatures that dropped from a chilly 9’c to 5’c whilst the hail storm chased across the glen..

We set off from the carpark at Clatteringshaws where things were as normal. The parking meter ate your money as usual and after 10 months or so of being firmly closed, the cafe has reopened – hurrah indeed. You ride down to the junction with the Raider’s Road and head right to pick up National Cycle Route 7. After a month or more of rain, this was never going to be clean. But the surface is kept in good condition by the Forestry Commision. I would always say that you need a gravel bike or mountain bike, even though I rode it the very first time with my pal Kenny. He rode a thin tyred road bike and made it on another day of horizontal rain and high wind. I never trust his judgement on route suitability.

Every down becomes and up with an out and back route and it should all even out. This has a horrid hill that is nothing to go down, but a pig to climb. That was for much later with nothing but a couple of grunting short out-of-the-saddle climbs before we will  be at the bothy at just over 9 miles.

We have done this route in everything but falling snow and it does rather need a bit of cloud to give it scale and a bit of drama. Out beyond the forest line into open land and the final isolated house up a drive on the left.

The first views of Loch Dee and we know that the bothy is not far now. It is not a dry walk up to White Laggan in anything other than a prolonged drought and with flapjacks and coffee making things stuffed into bikepacking bags, it was easiest to push and carry the bike up the track.

Now I have an admission to make. I or indeed we have never spent a night in a bothy, unless you count the hut thing at the top of Ben Nevis. I love the idea, but the uncertain company and sub student flat hygiene and cleanliness always stops me following through. For making a perfect coffee, well the bothy is just the job. The extra bit of height above the track gives the place spectacular views and a star filled night here in the UNESCO Dark Sky Park would be magical.

I have been working my way through every possible way of making coffee that works with riding a bike and at the moment my muse are stick stoves. I picked a couple up on ebay just to see what works and on the trip to Germany took the plunge in the top-end stove, The Firebox. It is beautiful engineering that would be fun to own and play with even if you never got around to lighting a fire in it. I was glad that I had done a trial and found the little quirks, such as the way you have to drop the cotton wool pad once lit with the firesteel into the chamber. Then I drop scrunched up Silver Birch bark onto the flames. It is 5 times the price of the other stick stoves I use but has less bad habits such a setting things alight.

Unlike many wood stoves the access for the wood is easy and allows you to manage the fire. Today I was boiling water in a Ti pan and then making the coffee in a insulated metal French press. The touch of class is hot milk in a small thermos.

A barista would be happy to serve the coffee I brewed up. Who ever knew that you could have a career in making coffee. Anyway, along with the finest homemade flapjacks life could not possibly be any better and even the sun was out in time for our walk and push back to the track.

Loch Dee is perhaps the highlight of the route or the view back along the glen at the end of Loch Trool. Either way, you have 4 miles of the finest gravel anywhere in the world ahead of you.

Into the trees again as we begin to descend towards the Glentrool cafe. Beech tree copses and waterfalls  and then something close to tarmac for the final mile or so. So filling had the flapjacks been that we both only managed a tea and Tunnocks Tea Cake – a National treasure but just 106Kcal, which shows how good the flapjacks were.

Returning by the same route means that all those descents where the fat tyres flew as they kicked up small stones are now horrid ups. Around the end of Loch Trool they link together to form about 2 or 3 miles of rather nasty climbing with slippy rocks and the need to pick your line. Nothing of concern for anyone with handling skills, but we have very little, sadly.

At the top of the climb the weather closes in and hard hitting hail take some of the joy out of the day. I often stop taking photos when the weather turns, but it is spectacular enough to stop and shoot off a few photos.

” We could end the day in sunshine ” I say, not believing it for one minute. But that is exactly what happens as we pick up the pace to make the closing time at the cafe. Like all of the best rides, it is not the distance that makes it special it is the sum of the parts. I think the whole ride is world class and adding on a bit of Coffee Outdoors action along the way really makes the whole thing memorable. Bikes and coffee go together so well and a bit of cake raises your game.