Robots are cool

I’m writing this while sitting in my car (the first part only, so some of it may read strangely), killing time before I have to go to bed. I’ve come up to Aviemore for a couple of days biking and to get away from the Central Belt. It’s great to get away, but not nearly as warm as it was when I left Edinburgh (at least I’ve found a bivviers wet dream of a place to sleep – Brendan, this place is five star :)).

There’s something special about mountain biking on your own sometimes. You get to ride at your own pace all the time and have loads of time to chill and daydream. Today I rode a nice loop around Rothiemurchas, around some wee lochs on singletrack and then round to mess about up at the cross country race course, which is excellent. The 7Stanes trailbuilders should be made to go for lessons from these guys. It was good, despite being woefully – stupidly – short of food and my legs feel pretty wobbly just now because of that (and I’m a bit annoyed with myself).

I slept really well thanks to the luxurious bivvi, but my planned Cairngorms route was looking uninviting. The hills were shrouded in rain and I would almost certainly be walking in the wind through snow, alone, a long way from the road and with unsatisfactorily sore legs. I retreated to the backup plan, a shorter ride around Glen Feshie, “The sheltering glen” that felt anything but.

I hadn’t been to Glen Feshie before and I was impressed – it’s a lovely place. I left the car and rode a few kms of perfect riverside singletrack, the type of riding that is so good it can never last long enough. After a while I crossed the river, onto the firetrack that turned right and climbed steeply for quite a long time. At the end of this, the trail turned right and as the hills opened out I felt the full force of the wind and the place took on a completely different feel. I hid in some trees and poured over the map while a nasty storm blew over. The path had turned into an infamous “single-dotty”, the quality of which are always impossible to judge until you’re there, and the headwind was bringing in more stormy weather. I um-ed and ah-ed and generally ponced about for quarter of an hour before deciding just to get on with it. After less than a km, I bailed. It was a scene I had seen too many times before and something didn’t feel right. There was a track, but it was vague and alarmingly wet and the route ahead looked like a prime candidate for a boggy hell. Sure, if it was bad it was only a 5km walk, but if I missed the firetrack that it met up with, things would be much worse than that, so I bottled it and turned around. Some more sleet and a puncture ten minutes later confirmed that I’d made the right choice.

I sometimes think that people, especially kiters, think that I’m some crazed gung-ho fool with no care for self-preservation (OK, so certain photos don’t help). Really though, nothing could be further from the truth. I’m not a bold climber or biker and I like to think that all of the risks are carefully measured. To be honest, I don’t even think I was a particularly crazy kiter, although that point is harder to argue. Kiting is really unique to me because, more than any other sport I’ve done, it’s all about confidence and experience. Basically all I did was go mountain boarding a whole lot and fly kites as much as I could (taking six months out of my life to fly kites full-time definitely helped!) and it’s amazing how consistent and confident you can become at kiting with time. I think this is very different to boldness. I don’t find bailing out of routes all that easy, I really don’t like not getting round something, but I’m pretty proud of my decision yesterday. Something hadn’t felt right and I’m glad I was able to back off.