RSF - The Off Road Cycling Club

The Adventure Starts Here

1989

"It's not the falling off that hurts, it's the landing." - Unknown

 

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They say you’re as old as you feel and sometimes I feel antediluvian as I travel the tracks in my worn cord breeks and old mac, enjoying the simple delights of the wayside fire, birdsong and the blue lift of the hills. Even the title “Vagabond” carries the ambience of a vanished age—shades of Robert Louis and the “good to be out on the road, going one knows not where” spirit. “Oh dear,” sigh the modems, “haven’t you got your com- pass/O.S. map/Goretex jacket/Gaz stove? And as for that battered light weight, haven’t you heard about Mountain Bikes?
We continued on into the Richardson Mountains, into some of the worst mosquito country we had yet seen. The first pass marks the Yukon - Northwest territories boundary. On the west side water flows to the Pacific, on the east it flows to the Arctic Ocean. The Richardson Mountains were named for the surgeon who accompanied the ill-fated Sir John Franklin on several of his overland expeditions.We camped in the saddle between the two passes. This was beautiful country, awe inspiring in fact, with its views of folded, green-carpeted mountains.
Snug inside the tent, I dunked my biscuit in a mug of hot coffee (not as nice as McVities, these Spanish biscuits I thought) as Minky and I scanned the map. Our route for the following morning presented itself as an innocuous-looking red-dotted line weaving around over lots of brown contour lines. We were on one of our adventures again, this time in the land of “Manana” and San Miguel beer (only 14p a bottle). Exact location in a tent, in a field, half-way up the road from Espot to Lake St. Maurice in the National Park of Aiguestortes, Catalonia, Spanish Pyrenees
The evening meal is good and plentiful and together with the gener ous breakfast costs NKr 250 (£23). Only a warning to ramblers—ye who enter here, don’t drink too much in the evening as the loo lies far from your bunk! As the only cyclist, I was looked upon as a seven-day wonder! Next morning the sky is again overcast. The valley narrows to almost a gorge, with the path winding up to the top of the pass where coffee and cakes await at the Fjellheim. I slip under the toll gate while motorists have to stop, furnish particulars, place the form in the hollow pillar and pay the toll by postal cheque
There’s a tarmac road over Vikafjell now, so in a sense this is a journey that can never be repeated. It may be no match for many an intrepid tale recounted in this Journal, but one person’s Latrigg is another’s Everest, and, for me, this day remains indelibly imprinted in my memory, although it all happened a very long time ago, away back in 1957. It was my first cycle tour abroad. I had ridden from Bergen to Voss in Myrkdal in two days of June sunshine and had fallen in love at first sight with Norway.
The Linn of Dee also had us off the bike. The raging torrent of water confined into deep gashes in the rocks pouring around and over huge boulders with deep black dangerous- looking pools. The area is a tourist attraction but as yet we were the only visitors present. We had visited the area some years ago, having crossed the Cairngorms on that occasion from Aviemore to Braemar. This time we intended crossing via a slightly different route but in the reverse direction. At the Linn of Dee the signposted way is right towards Derry Lodge but we had seen a path marked on our map from Whitebridge

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