Day 20 - Callander to Aberfeldy

Day 20 - Callander to Aberfeldy (Weem Inn)

We leave our very nice B&B by about 8:45 am 

Our room in Callander
We plan to meet Meryl and Ian who are friends from New Zealand for lunch in Killen. They are spending time in Scottland doing family things. Then they are off for 7 weeks cycle touring in France. They brought their own bikes from NZ. 

View from Callender




Old stone walls

Up above loch


We head up valley on a quiet path through forest and then up onto the wall of the valley riding along the old Calendar to Oban rail line that has  of course been decommissioned. 
On the old railway line above valley

There were many of these markers on our route through UK
 Some sections have wonderful boulder fields above.  The motorway is far below on the valley floor. At the top of the climb it was a speedy descent down to Killin and the special Dochart falls.
We meet Merryl and Ian, Moira who is Ian's  aunt and  Ians dad John Flux. Ian, Merryl, John and I are all members of the Hutt Valley tramping club. 
Heading off after lunch

Lunch with New Zealand friends
We go and have lunch together at a hotel. It is a great chatty lunch, sharing lots of cycling stories.  
We hear about an interesting visit they made in the morning to an archeological site called the Crannog centre. We still have plenty of kms  to go so we're on our way by 1:30pm. Up and down we ride beside the Loch. We  get to Kenmore -  where we visit the recommended Crannog centre with the reconstructed house over the water from 2500 years ago. 
This is how our Scottish ancestors may have lived and it is a great presentation of how life would have been. Normally the walls of this  round house are filled with bracken which gives heat retention and wind protection. Bracken is different from fern in that it does not just sprout from the plant base but continues to branch from up the stem of the plant. Fern doesn't. However the bracken has been late for harvesting this year. So the walls and floor are rather porous and a cold wind is flowing into the house.  We get very cold as we sit an listen.  We see some of the ways people of this time would do wood working, dye wool, weave and cook. There variety of food they ate was very extensive. We got to taste some examples. 
Great hill walking about
Then with the same strong tailwind we do a fast ride to the Weem Inn,  our accommodation for the night. 
A castle on the way
A nice house on the way

The Weem Inn - looks OK from the outside

  This is a strange and poorly maintained place in a potentially great building.  From the outside you would think it was top class. But inside the opposite.  The gentleman on reception is vague and doddery.  I think there is only one other person staying in what's probably a 20 room hotel. We but buy Indian takeaways for dinner from Aberfeldy down the road  and eat them back at the hotel. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 15 - Penrith to Gretna Green

Image
Day 15 –  Penrith to Gretna Green We leave around 9:00 am. The hostel stay here has been great.   It is a quiet, sunny and cool Sunday morning. Churches have cars parked in front of them. They are busy enough. We are slightly confused for a few minutes on our route so things feel normal. Then we're off -  route found. Nice gentle riding with a few ups and downs.   We climb up a bit to 230 metres. Then it is generally downhill. We come across a completely delightful house beside our quiet path. We have a chat with couple who are working in their beautiful garden. They tell us about their house and show us more garden around the back.    They voted stay(no Brexit). As did everyone we talk to if the topic comes up. We find there are defibrillators everywhere. Even small towns have several on display. Including in old phone boxes. This is reassuring on some of the more taxing climbs. Below - This was probably the only phone box we saw with a phone in it. More
Read more

Day 4 - Holsworthy to Barnstaple

Image
Day 4 - Holsworthy to Barnstaple Not many photos today. The heavy rain keeps the phones away in plastic bags. The White Hart hotel where we stay was built in the 16th century.   It feels like it with its pokey little rooms, low ceilings and rough finish. But we have a good night's sleep. In the morning,  as is becoming our routine, we repack everything ready for the bikes.   At 9:00 am Peter Rivett from Lands End Cycles arrives with a new bike for Zita. Peter and I spend 40 minutes swapping the handlebars. He's driven 100 miles to get here. Which is fair enough considering the hire cost of the bikes and the trust we have put in them.   Once the bike is set up the gears seem good and during the day Zita is very happy with the new reliable stable gear changing.   The forecast is for rain. It has been threatening to rain since yesterday afternoon.  It starts to rain. Really rain. We have toast and tea / coffee for a simple breakfast. Then reload our bikes at the back of t
Read more

Day 1 - Lands End to Redruth

Image
Day 1- Lands End to Redruth. We leave St Ives by the smaller local 10.15 train for Saint Erth - where we had come from 2 days previous.. Waiting for train from St. Ives Our train connection to Penzance and our hire bike pickups is supposed to be at 11:00 AM. But the train is delayed by 30 minutes. The official reason it is delayed we are told is   - “it was late coming out of the station”. Really!!  At 11:30 we board the train to Penzance.   Then to get to the cycle hire shop we're told it's a 20 minute walk. But it looks much longer with our heavy panniers etc. So we wait for the 12:05 bus to take us along in the right direction. Then we have another ½ mike walk. Peter Rivett, who we are hiring the bikes from, gives us a friendly welcome. However he had forgotten that we would bring our special Jones handlebars from New Zealand so we proceed to work together on getting the old hand grips off the normal bars so we can take the brake and gear levers off and re-insta
Read more