Whlist those in club who attempt challenges like Ramsay’s Round and the Bob Graham deserve both the praise they get (from the believers) and the strange looks they get (from the unbelievers) there are many other challenges out there. One would be to take on Tommy Godwin’s 75 year old record for the most miles covered on a bicycle in a year (averaging 205 miles a day) or his record for covering 100,000 miles in 500 days. A bit more manageable is to cycle 205 miles in a day on just the one day – a challenge that raleigh are promoting to celebrate Tommy’s record. I’m keen to give this a whirl and a few other folks have shown initial interest. I have a couple of route options in mind and am happy to do some organising if we can find a date and enough takers to make it worthwhile.
As the forecast for Sunday was pretty good for cycling (overcast, dry, little wind) I thought I’d recce most of the northern route option.
From Edinburgh it crosses the forth bridge, heads out to Bridge of Allan and Dunblane then on to Comrie. Taking a left in Comrie takes you towards Loch Earn and the quiet minor road round the south side of the loch (masses of folk “wild” camping and caravaning along here) which passes the Rampen empire before emerging at Lochearnhead. A quick scoot along the cyclepath leads through glen ogle and down to Killin. Not all of the path is ideal for skinny slick roady tyres but it’s do-able. Next is the undulating road along south Loch Tay and on to Aberfeldy. Here the full 205 route heads north to Loch Rannoch but I took the easy option and headed for home via Dunkeld and Perth.
The weather wasn’t far off forecast though there was an absence of dryness for much of the morning and there were obviously heavy showers around in the afternoon though i managed to miss them all. It’s a grand route and very scenic – Schiehallion popped it’s head out of the cloud as i rode by. That’s the furthest I’ve ever cycled in a day – my rough map measure suggests 178 miles in a bit less than 13 hours – pretty weary by the end but building confidence that the 205 is possible. Still pretty feeble by the standards of other carnethies – at least one of whom has broken the 300 mile barrier. Still, I’ve plenty of time to work up to that.
Paul Ritchie