cycling

I explored Orkney for a couple of days. It's an amazing place; amazing scenery, all the neolithic sites.
Then, I returned to the mainland and followed the Pictish Trail route back south to Edinburgh.
957km of riding in 7 days.

I took part in the "La Conquista" Bikepacking event across Spain.
In the Middle Ages, El Cid crossed these lands on horseback to conquer Valencia. Now, 1000 years later, we follow the route on bikes.

I rode the amazing Italy Divide "Not a race". Crossing Italy from Pompei, via Vesuvious, Naples, Rome, Siena, Florence, Bologna, Verona and the prealps, to Tolbole on Lago Garda. Met some great people, ate amazing food, rode through beautiful scenery.

A 200Km gravel race in Kielder, Northumberland. I did it on a proper bike - my 29er hard tail.

Riding the Second City Divide gravel route: 600km from Manchester to Glasgow. Amazing ride. First proper outing since Covid lockdowns. I forgot to take a camera charger so I only have sparing video of the first half....I'll just have to do it again sometime.

It was Twitter that alerted me to the existence of an off road route from Inverness to Glasgow. It was called the BadgerDivide in a slight Scottish piss-take of the divide routes in other countries. This all started with the TourDivide, a 3500km route down the continental divide of North America, and one of the most well know adventure routes in mountain biking.
The BadgerDivide was slightly shorter at a mere 350km, but that just meant it could potentially be ridden in a few days rather than needing a long break from work and a load of organising.

I read a little about the route on the few web pages I could find. It seemed to be a new route, put together by Stuart Allen. It looked like it was possible to do it in 2 days. A weekend ride looked possible.

Here are some of my photos from the Reiver Raid bikepacking event which I took part in last weekend.
The second day's route in particular was great. As was the social aspect of camping together at the same spot overnight...with a keg of nice beer and comfy chairs in a warm bothy!

Here's a few updates for the routes in my route guidebook for mountain biking in Scotland. There's only one small diversion that I know of; Route 16 in the Pentlands near Edinburgh (see below). The rest of the routes described in the book are all good as far as I'm aware.
I do, however, also have a few interesting alternatives/improvements to a couple of the routes that I've found since it was published:

Route 1 : The Three Brethren
Notes: You can extend this route by riding through Bowhill house and following the track to the top of the hill where you follow the Queens Drive back down to near Yarrowford. It a great track with awesome views along the way.
Click here to view

I'd been keeping an eye on the Deeside Trail website and group since it's inception over a year ago. Since then there have been 2 group rides and various people doing it as an individual time trial (ITT) using GPS data to prove times and routes.

I wanted to join them. Looking at the route on the website I could see it stretched westwards from it's start point in Banchory, into the Cairngorm National Park past the market town of Ballater and then into the mountains around Braemar. It then looped back around northwards taking in more remote mountain passes before some of the steepest and longest climbs in the last third as it headed back to Banchory again. It looked a challenging route. Others who'd done it already didn't disagree.