My
mind wanders during car journeys. On a recent drive to visit family
in the north of Scotland I
imagined what would it be like to hop
back aboard the steel-framed Peugeot that was my teenage years’
pride and joy? Would the current, approaching-forty me cope without
his lightweight, carbon-fibre steed; would my ageing legs cope
without a compact?
 |
| Old faithful |
There
was only one way to find out, so I clambered into the dustiest corner
of my mother’s garage and returned dragging a relic. It needed new
tyres, a pair of pedals would be useful, but otherwise it looked
perfectly serviceable.
I
don’t always appreciate just how advanced my current ride is in
comparison to that early-Nineties, utterly basic bike. It’s also
true to say that the teenage me failed to appreciate how lucky he was
to reside in such great cycling country. I grew up in Fochabers, a
village near the Moray coast and on the edge of Highland Speyside. My
extended backyard was packed with quiet roads, cracking climbs and
the kind of scenery tourists travel thousands of miles to gaze at.
So
it was at Fochabers that this nostalgic experiment would begin and
end. I’d opted for one of the aces from my riding repertoire — a 60-mile loop around Malt Whisky country with almost 4000 feet of
ascent.
