Sunday in the Trossachs

 We were on the road by 7.50am...nearly 70 miles to go....the route finder said 1 hour 38 minutes, so I allowed two hours !

We followed ordinary roads for the first 25, then a quick five miles along the motorway into Glasgow before turning off to cut a corner and a couple of miles off the route to go under the Clyde tunnel. Then head north towards the A81 and follow that all the way to Aberfoyle.

All done in 1 hour 50 minutes and no rushing!

This was the location of the headquarters of the Tour of the Trossachs, a 28 mile hilly time trial.

It's one of the Scottish classic races and this year was added to by being in memory of our friend Sandy Wallace.

We parked in the main car park and went in search of coffee. The first café didn't open until 10am, and the café worker turned away three customer orders as it wasn't 10am...only three minutes to!! Perhaps she would have had better reception ....and people waiting...had she said I will open in a couple of minutes, just waiting for the machine to get up to steam....

Anyway Pirate found the bike hire and cafe and brought back three coffees, for us and a friend who had just arrived. He decided to ride the reverse way around the course, which is always a good idea. You don't get in the riders' way and you see them all easily.

We drove up the course...up being the operative word, up the beginning of the Dukes Pass, and this climbs up steeply from Aberfoyle high street!

We found a safe parking place a couple of miles up and walked back to where we could see them well and shout encouragement. They would have done about four miles by then but still had a good way until they started going down towards the head of Loch Achray and headed for Callander.

We saw them all through, but didn't go back to the headquarters as we wanted a ride ourselves!

It was heading towards lunchtime then and looked like we had seen the best of the day...so to the top of Loch Achray ourselves and turn left to Loch Katrine.

No boat ride for us, just lunch in the café and ride from there along the lane for walker's cyclists and residents which runs from one end to the other, just fourteen miles.

That is the steamship that they are raising money to maintain, the trips are on the other boat.

A quick stop to readjust my gear cable then off up the lane..not as flat as Pirate remembered, but that was twenty years ago!

We must have got nearly five miles when we saw the rain coming

A beautiful sight with hills grey behind grey, but the clouds soon hid them all as we sheltered beneath a tree....and it looked to have set in wet so we turned tail.

OF course by the time we got back to the car the rain stopped!

We aim to come back again, on a dry day and do the whole length of the loch.

With a couple of hours driving to get home we decided to head for home, and go by a different route, heading across by Balloch at the southern end of Loch Lomond and back over the Erskine Bridge.  A short motorway stretch to Paisley then up over the Glennifer Brae with stunning cloudscapes and sunshine,  skirting Irvine and Kilmarnock to do our weekly shop as the sun set in Prestwick before the last ten miles home.

A long day but worth it!