RSF - The Off Road Cycling Club

The Adventure Starts Here

1976

"If the hills get too hard, just get of and walk - I'm sure the boys will wait for you!" Beryl Burton OBE - British Former Racing Cyclist

 

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While I was swallowing my last piece of orange, I was looking back towards Tunskeen and beyond, to where the sombre pile of the Merrick was lording it over all, and thinking of the forlorn and dejected ruin of Culsharg bothy on the other side, with its black eyes where windows once used to be, as it sits gazing sadly out over the burn towards Buchan Hill. Often enough in the past, the shadows of cyclists have been cast upon its
Just east of the Bridge of Awe a side road goes under the railway and leads to Loch Etive, a beautiful route with a surface of stones or earth through the woods, climbing round the back of Inverawe House. The first time, however, we did not realise this and rode straight past the front door of the big house to the suprise of some tennis players.
Four young cyclists, three from Huddersfield and one—Dick Phillips, a black-bearded travel clerk—from Kent, sailed for Iceland last month in an attempt to ride and manhandle their cycles 168 miles across the country’s longest and highest pass. There they must ford several glacial rivers, in comparison with which the Thames at Westminster Bridge is a babbling brook.
The cold wind had died down somewhat; the track was pleasant, with rising ground and an area of shakeholes to the north. Soon there was a sharp drop and a steep push up, and suddenly appeared the old lime-kiln on Cotter End at 1,650 feet, with Cotterdale Beck 700 feet below. A steep drop indeed—steep enough to make me think twice about riding. But twice nothing is still nothing, so gripping the brakes firmly
For about a mile on from the forestry fence, I did an absolute ballet dance carrying the bike across a maze of newly cut forestry ditches. You may know the kind of thing, trenches about three foot deep, five or six feet apart, with little Christmas trees planted between them. Not my idea of fun, but at least it was slightly downhill and I could see the end of my purgatory about half-a-mile ahead in the form of a faint green track leading to a proper forestry road
We travelled via Langbank, Gourock, and the ferry to Dunoon. George Berwick, who was last seen by me the night before, anguishly bemoaning the fact that he didn’t have a cycle fit to ride on, was simply left behind to follow on later on a hurriedly assembled, newly resprayed, touring machine that is capable of doing 30 miles per hour along the flat, depending on how many Mars bars he consumes before the off!

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