Cycling Silhouette

A productive weekend had been planned, starting with my first outing on the mountain bike since late October, and my god it didn't half show! The clim up Mither Tap is never as easy one, going from around 180m to 518m, its steep and has plenty of rock drainage ditches, as well as slabs of granite to hop over, this time however both myself and Stuart struggled and ended up walking a good proportion of the climb.

At the top of the hill it was freezing cold and windy, and I decided to attempt riding down a technical rock section, the break off the bike has affected my confidence on this terrain and I failed to make it around one of the tighter corners, after three attempts I gave up and we carried on our loop.

From Mither Tap we continued on to Oxen Craig (the highest of the cairns at 528m), this is the first time i Have been to this cairn and I actually prefer it to the better known Mither Tap, it was quieter and had 360 degree views of the surrounding countryside, we then rode to Little Oxen Craig and Craigshannoch before making our way to the long descent back to the car park.

This descent makes the effort of cycling up the hill worth it, riding down the same initial climb the drainage ditches become little ramps, as do the granite slabs and with the steep gradient it is all done at speed, thankfully there was little in the way of walker traffic so we got a fairly clear run down, although by the time we reached the car park I had massive arm pump, my wrists and hands were aching so much I couldn't even pull my gloves off, another side effect with not training!

Now I just have to get the energy together to clean my old car before I put it up for sale.