An old favourite

The good weather this week came on Thursday and I headed to the Trossachs with John Fox. We drove from Stirling to Aberfoyle and headed out west past Lochs Ard and Chon before stopping at Stronachlachar, by Loch Katrine, for coffee. The clouds were white and puffy and the sun baked the skin not protected by arm and leg warmers (in Scotland, along with the trusty gilet, limb warmers are used all year round). Keeping a good pace (set by John) we headed the loch on the traffic free road before starting back over the bumpy north shore, passing lot's of day-trippers when a loud snap came from John's bike - the chain and rear derailieur had broken off completely. A quick think and we soon made the 18 gears into 1, removing the deraileur, some links and reattaching the chain to a central cog. It sounded quite easy, and was, were it not for the cloud of midge's which set out to picnic on our skin. They were horrific - mental torture. In any case, we passed the Walter Scott, and John got back over the Dukes pass on a fixed gear. The descent back into Aberfoyle overtaking the cars is good fun and a baked tattie sorted us for fuel as we topped up the tan on the rest of our legs to camouflage the bites.