Cycling UK Forum

Posted: **16 Jun 2024, 5:56pm**

Does anyone have experience of this route, we're cycling from Stirling, we've heard the last 15 miles are pretty serious!

Posted: **16 Jun 2024, 6:12pm**

Never done it but my routing says 100’ of climbing for every mile. Depends if you call that serious? MickF would call it the norm.

Posted: **17 Jun 2024, 4:01pm**

The problem is there a ferry to catch at inversnaid takes us across to the other side at Tarbet. If we miss it we're in trouble! I vaguely remember someone tell me it was 'hellish', with lots of short, steep hills along the way, most of which they had to walk up. 15 miles can take 2hrs in those conditions!

Google earth is useless.

Posted: **17 Jun 2024, 4:02pm**

Only 2 ferries a day...

Posted: **17 Jun 2024, 6:40pm**

Saissac wrote: ↑17 Jun 2024, 4:01pm
Google earth is useless.

It has its uses but not for routing.
Just tried your journey in Cycle Travel and it uses the B road with only 180 metres of climbing with one steep section. 14.8 mls. I’d call that far from serious but does depend on what you are used to.

Posted: **17 Jun 2024, 7:37pm**

Thanks for that Paul! I'm hoping to chat with someone this weekend who's done it. We've got two kids aged 12 and 14, and I'm a little worried they'll look at steep hills and just give up... The first ferry is 8.20am, we won't catch that. If we miss the next one we're snookered.

Posted: **17 Jun 2024, 7:41pm**

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Posted: **17 Jun 2024, 9:12pm**

Thats a lovely bit of verse! I remember feeling kinda like that first time I saw the Rannoch Moor, with its bogs and its pools of peat-oily water and rocks.

Posted: **18 Jun 2024, 1:46pm**

Saissac wrote: ↑17 Jun 2024, 7:37pm Thanks for that Paul! I'm hoping to chat with someone this weekend who's done it. We've got two kids aged 12 and 14, and I'm a little worried they'll look at steep hills and just give up... The first ferry is 8.20am, we won't catch that. If we miss the next one we're snookered.

Inversnaid has a bunkhouse https://inversnaid.com/ which is situated just before the ferry. So you could extend your adventure to include an overnight stay and be guaranteed of catching the ferry the next day.
There are options for easy gravel biking from Aberfoyle towards Inversnaid which might make the journey more interesting for the kids. This page has some options https://www.gravelfoyle.com/explore-fur ... vel-riding

There is a cafe on the pier in Stronachlachar, which could provide some welcome refreshments, but this is at the end of a downhill that must be reveresed. In the past I have cycled up from the cafe to Loch Arklet with my 13 year old daughter, there was lots of complaining but we made it. The road alongside Loch Arklet is undulating but generally downhill towards Inversnaid. I think there is also a gravel path to the north of the road which might add some more interest..

Posted: **18 Jun 2024, 3:02pm**

Mr.Benton wrote: ↑18 Jun 2024, 1:46pm
Saissac wrote: ↑17 Jun 2024, 7:37pm Thanks for that Paul! I'm hoping to chat with someone this weekend who's done it. We've got two kids aged 12 and 14, and I'm a little worried they'll look at steep hills and just give up... The first ferry is 8.20am, we won't catch that. If we miss the next one we're snookered.

There are options for easy gravel biking from Aberfoyle towards Inversnaid which might make the journey more interesting for the kids. This page has some options https://www.gravelfoyle.com/explore-fur ... vel-riding

Just a word of warning, if the children might be put off by hills. That area of Scotland is definitely hilly, with a capital ‘H’!
Husband and I struggled somewhat on the section of Cycle Route 7 north of Aberfoyle, despite being used to hills, though the temperature was much higher than expected and bikes a bit lightweight for the surface.
Surfaces on the forest roads around Aberfoyle are fairly decent (apart from the QE Forest Drive - which was very loose) but terrain is definitely lumpy.
What are your plans for continuing once arriving on the west side of Loch Lomond? I don’t think the cycle path exists as far north as the power station/pier. Anything else except the lochside is similarly more or less hilly.

Posted: **18 Jun 2024, 3:24pm**

L+1 wrote: ↑18 Jun 2024, 3:02pm
Mr.Benton wrote: ↑18 Jun 2024, 1:46pm
Saissac wrote: ↑17 Jun 2024, 7:37pm Thanks for that Paul! I'm hoping to chat with someone this weekend who's done it. We've got two kids aged 12 and 14, and I'm a little worried they'll look at steep hills and just give up... The first ferry is 8.20am, we won't catch that. If we miss the next one we're snookered.

There are options for easy gravel biking from Aberfoyle towards Inversnaid which might make the journey more interesting for the kids. This page has some options https://www.gravelfoyle.com/explore-fur ... vel-riding

Just a word of warning, if the children might be put off by hills. That area of Scotland is definitely hilly, with a capital ‘H’!
Husband and I struggled somewhat on the section of Cycle Route 7 north of Aberfoyle, despite being used to hills, though the temperature was much higher than expected and bikes a bit lightweight for the surface.
Surfaces on the forest roads around Aberfoyle are fairly decent (apart from the QE Forest Drive - which was very loose) but terrain is definitely lumpy.
What are your plans for continuing once arriving on the west side of Loch Lomond? I don’t think the cycle path exists as far north as the power station/pier. Anything else except the lochside is similarly more or less hilly.

And I should have said….. the loch side road, in the absence of the segregated cycle path, isn’t a safe route for children especially. There might be a continuous pedestrian pavement from the pier/power station south to Tarbet but from memory, it’s rather narrow ( and does have pedestrians on it)

Posted: **18 Jun 2024, 5:36pm**

When we get to the other side we're j headed for Arrochar and the train to Rannoch

Posted: **18 Jun 2024, 6:06pm**

Saissac wrote: ↑17 Jun 2024, 9:12pm Thats a lovely bit of verse! I remember feeling kinda like that first time I saw the Rannoch Moor, with its bogs and its pools of peat-oily water and rocks.

I lived on Rannoch Moor for a couple of months. I was a 'pearl diver' (washer up) in the Kingshouse Hotel

Posted: **18 Jun 2024, 6:20pm**

Saissac wrote: ↑18 Jun 2024, 5:36pm When we get to the other side we're j headed for Arrochar and the train to Rannoch

Interesting…Via the Three Lochs Way? What bikes will you be using?

Posted: **18 Jun 2024, 6:22pm**

Mike Sales wrote: ↑18 Jun 2024, 6:06pm
Saissac wrote: ↑17 Jun 2024, 9:12pm Thats a lovely bit of verse! I remember feeling kinda like that first time I saw the Rannoch Moor, with its bogs and its pools of peat-oily water and rocks.
I lived on Rannoch Moor for a couple of months. I was a 'pearl diver' (washer up) in the Kingshouse Hotel

Did you do pearl fishing too in your spare time? Now strictly banned of course….

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