All present a correct at the clubhouse for a 9am start (except for me who couldn't quite find all my cycling gear in the right place and cursed myself for not doing it the night before, and finding my bike rack wouldn't fit for some unknown reason, luckily everyone waited as I rushed in at 10 past).

In all it was Brian Sproul, Phil Morris, Andrew from Fife (Fifer!!), Billy Warden and Myself. Brian's pickup proved to be a great help again and easily took all our bikes and bags (I think the record is 7 bikes in the pickup and 2 on the towbar).

The plan was to head to bankfoot and meet up with John McClaggan who was going to be the trek leader as no-one could be bothered doing any map reading, although we think billy is pretty handy with a compass (especially when heading from his living room to the bathroom if I remember rightly from Fort William :-). After unloading everything at bankfoot Phils new Giant XTC composite (flash git) decided to throw a wobbly and required the first mechanical attention of the day. Something to do with the brake hose routing, which required a complete rebuild of the front of the bike, thats what it looked like from where I was standing. That wasn't the end of Phils woes as he found that he could only get 7 out of the 9 rear gears, but was able to fix it half way through the ride.

The route involved heading through the single track path at Glen Garr which would bring us out at the foot of birnam hill on the A9. Glen Garr was truly excellent and not too steep to cycle up. It was also great to ride along the side of the hill with a pretty nasty drop off to the left, one which billy almost ended up in after somehow going over the bars on a few bumps, show off. I managed to show of as well pulling an excellent wheelie through a ditch which would have made me look pretty good at a trials comp (until about two seconds afterwards where I would have fallen of at the next obstacle) The run from the top of Glen Garr to birnam forest was again excellent and pretty damn fast, as we headed full pelt down some forestry tracks which had some big ditches cut into them, and a few strategically placed trees to cause major braking panics.

John thought it would be a great idea to head up to kings seat and then head back through birnam and the hermitage rather than attempt loch ordy which seemed a hell of a long way away at this point. After doing a bit of free-riding through a stream we picked up the track and started heading up and up and up and then up again. The track gets pretty steep so most of the time we were pushing or carrying our bikes. The steps at the top were quite a surprise and took a long time to get up while carrying my big heavy trek!! Luckily it gave me a chance to turn around and look at the view which was pretty stunning from the top, and gave us an idea on how far we had climbed. A quick bite to eat at the top and then it was off on the near vertical descent down the other side. This was actually the best bit of the day as I just held on as best as I could over the back of the bike and allowed it to skid and wobble all the way to the bottom, constantly bouncing sideways over rocks and tree roots. At the bottom there was a definate smell of burning brakes from everyones disks, and a strange smell from Phils shorts after he headed into a tree. Also of note was Brian who did a superman on the descent and managed to crack his helmet but luckily not his head. Andrew and John showed their excellent skills and left everyone else behind in a race to the bottom.

Me and billy were pretty knackered at this point so it was good to slowly wheel along a wide track down into birnam and have a quick stop at kates where Mike had come along to meet up. Unfortunately no coffee or cake as we were all to muddy to stay. From then on most of the ride was a bit of a slog for me as I was getting tired (probably due to not eating enough the night before), we headed through the hermitage and then along some excellent tracks back to the Glen Garr track and back to Bankfoot. A krypton factor moment occurred on the way out of the hermitage where a bridge had been removed and we had to carry our bikes along a steel girder about 6 feet of the ground, luckily no one fell in.

Rain started at this point so we hurried back to the pickup to get into some clean clothes. And that was that, all that was left to do was get in the jeep and head back to Dundee and sink into a nice warm bath.