Loch Rannoch Cycle – 7/9/2007

The weekend after festival end, Brian and I planned a long weekend to be enjoyed locally. With my big field test behind me, the timing was perfect. Options included a multi-day canoe trip, cycle trips, hillwalking and perhaps some combination of those possibilities. We settled on logistical simplicity, car camping and cycling, and headed north on Thursday night for the north shore of Loch Rannoch in Perthshire.

The midges greeted us on arrival and helped us set up camp for the evening. Friday morning, sunshine and a nice breeze set the mood for the day. On the drive in, a couple of fighter jets streaking down the glen got our attention. More followed that morning. Not long after we started our cycle, I got to keep pace with one through the trees for about half a second.

The cycle was mostly flat, with occasional gentle rises that might be considered hills in southern New Jersey. Loch Rannoch has a Clan Trail that follows the loch shore and identifies the clan associated with that area. We stopped at the MacGregors, which had views across to a wee island and tower that once served as a prison. Loch Rannoch is sort of dammed, so perhaps the loch level was lower in the day, but not by a huge amount. It wasn’t much of an island for a prison.

The southwestern end of the loch was Cameron territory and I thought of my friend Jim from TSRA. I’m not sure whose clan territory occupied our lounge break, but the midges had claimed it as theirs now. Rest didn’t last too long. Soon, we arrived at the eastern shore of the loch, the official start of the clan trail with the Stewarts and more fighter jets zoomed very close overhead and startled me to put it politely. I got a photo of their tails in the distance. Perhaps if I hadn’t been too busy choking on my heart, that distance may have been less.

We stopped for lunch at the Loch Rannoch Hotel and Brian phoned in for his conference call. During that call, I had time to finish lunch, explore the path beside the hotel in both directions, lounge in front of a window in another part of the hotel and annoy another patron of the hotel who seemed to think I had swiped “her” view. Brian retrieved me and we finished the last few miles back to the car.

The original plan for Saturday was cycling the perimeter of Loch Tay, but the combination of lack of nice camping, busy A road for half the cycle, fussy back and disagreeable omelet sent us back to Edinburgh for the night.