Following a great tradition of Mark and Stuart adventures, we decided that an outing was in need to celebrate my birthday... with only 2 days notice, we pulled another epic together.

Some great discussion was had in the pub after the ride on what defines an “Epic Ride”. I appreciate that explaining the post ride pub discussion at the start of this post is a little back to front, but all will become clear... sort of. Obviously, and epic should be pretty lengthy, pretty adventurous and, IMHO, pretty... Pretty ! We decided that another factor needs to be an element of the unexpected... this is the crucial bit for me.

Despite many an evening looking at maps and trying to make lists of routes we want to ride in the future, neither of us are particularly good at actually making a plan. Regularly, there’ll be phone calls at 10.30 on a Friday evening along these lines...

“so where are we going ?” “should we at least pic a direction to drive in ?” “what’s the weather doing ?” What time shall I pick you up ?”

The only answer that usually comes out of that lot is a start meeting time and the rest of the answers are usually decided in the van in the morning, often with the help of a coin.

This weekend was no exception. The weather looked best in the west, we had a pass from the missus to ride all day Saturday and were limited only by the capability of our unfit legs and to being back home Sunday morning.

Mark managed to pic out a couple of options for routes on the way toward Glen Coe area and we narrowed it down to an out-and-back along Glen Kinglass, starting in Bridge of Orchy. There was also an option to extend slightly by hike-a-biking over a wee track heading south over the mountains just before Loch Etive.

We parked up just outside of Bridge of Orchy and hit the trail. It started as a nice, gentle and very ridable singletrack trek along river side which turned into a very scenic fire road through the glen. The going got a little bumpy at times, but pretty much all enjoyable.

After about 4km, you hit quite wide singletrack. Quite rocky, but all ridable and on a steady flatish gradient. There are some lovely granite slabs you can ride along on the way which keep things interesting. Another 3km on and it starts to descend and is pretty good fun with lovely views to either side. There’s a touch of bog trotting (though you can ride through most of it) before crossing the river after a cracking bit of rock riding as pictured above. Then there’s another 3km of single track, mostly slightly downhill, a little rocky under tyre and very enjoyable... nothing too technical, though it does get pretty bumpy toward the end of this bit.

We then hit fire road again. This was that kind of soft gritty fire road that’s really hard work to pedal on. This was less fun, but the scenery made up for it. By this time, we’d come to the conclusion that we liked what we’d ridden so far, but didn’t really want to ride back up it again, so were holding out for the wee single track hike over the hills and south to the road... this should have been another 4km on. It looked pretty dam obvious on the map, but we’d be dammed if we could find it... a quick check of the map and we were about 2km past were the exit for the track should have been. Decision time... not our strong point.

Suddenly, another option presented itself... we could ride all the way to the end of the glen where it meets Loch Etive, stop for some lunch... then, instead of turning back the way we came, head south toward the mouth of Loch Etive and the town of Taynuilt and onto the A85 for a road ride back to the van. A quick square count revealed a road ride of 40km back to the van ! Now, that’s only 26 miles... which doesn’t sound nearly as bad. sounds like a plan.

We got to Loch Etive, stopped for a spot of lunch, look at the view and had a quick peek at a potential trail we may do in future that runs along the side of the loch from Glen Etive. Then, back on the fire road and headed for the A85.

Suddenly, we weren’t on gently rolling gradient, but quite steeply rolling, gritty fire road... we’d somehow missed two facts when looking at the map: the fire road to the town was quick hilly along loch-side... and lasted for 10km. Grin and bare it.

Eventually, we hit main road and then set a steady pace and truck dodged along around 18km of A85 to Inverlochy where we headed north-west along a lovely bit of singletrack road through Glen Orchy. It’s a really quiet road, with very picturesque views and a very cool waterfall about halfway up where we stopped for photos. Eventually you hit the A82 just by Bridge of Orchy... good spot for a pint and some chips before hitting the van for crumpets and whiskey. All in all, around 75km of riding, and around 7 hours in the saddle.

We had a lovely day with some stunning scenery, some interesting decisions, some laughs, some great company and some great riding. Just what was required. It’s a long day out, but I reckon I’d really rate this route if you fancy a good day in the saddle with all the above in mind. There’s no super techy singletrack, no big climbs or long descents, there is a rather dull 18km of main road, but all in all worth it. However... now I’ve told you the route, would it still count as an epic ?

More pics in my web gallery here.

I found another write up of the route online, though they suggest starting at the mouth of loch Etive and the doing the road part of the ride first. This makes a certain amount of sense. However, I found the road ride to be fairly easy going with lovely scenery through Glen Orchy and I wouldn’t want to finish the ride with that hilly fire road back down the side of Loch Etive.