Cycling day 28: Strathyre to Aberfeldy

My journey continued through the superbly picturesque Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park today. First of all I passed through Balquidder, where I discovered an as-yet incomplete link of NCR7 that appears to use the old railway here back southward.

The route follows the railway northward for a short, leaves it, then rejoins it further up after a series of hairpins to climb the steep valley side. There were five Sustrans mileposts along this stretch of cycle route up to Killin and I’ve photographed and logged the positions of them all.

The cycle route arrives at Killin practically opposite the attractive Falls of Dochart. I took a short break in Killin for a snack before continuing my journey.

NCR7 leaves Killin eastward via a quiet road on the south side of Loch Tay. I’d covered a few miles of this and then experienced my first puncture of this journey. Given that I’d cycled over 1450 miles by this point I’m very pleased that my Marathon Plus tyres are doing their job well. I started to repair this in the rain and the midges decided to start their attack, so out came my repellant. During the repair some hikers came along and chatted to me. They’re walking the Rob Roy Way, which, by their description, seems to roughly follow the route that I’m cycling.

Luckily tonight I’ve got WiFi Internet access again after it being unavailable for several days. So I’ve managed to catch up in posting my blog entries for the last few days and will commit my pending offline map edits shortly.