Story

Roam Scotland Rally 2022: Access, freedom & limits

by Calum Munro

Freedom

Everyone experienced loss of freedoms during the pandemic. Our access to connect with one another was disrupted, for the greater good. Safety and survival, should trump our need to come together. Limits and prohibitions can drive our curiosity to explore and connect anew when our freedoms do return. Our minds need that stimulation to grow by stepping out of our usual experience of the familiar.

Our bodies need to stand up from the chair and unfurl from the screen hunch, to rediscover that knack they have for self-propulsion. But without the access to ‘new ground’ our curiosity is caged and we can become stuck.

As the battle with the virus ebbed and flowed, there was the odd foray to explore N-S-E-W from covid homebase. Scrolling over Ordnance Survey contour lines and pinning Ride with GPS waypoints, is a kind of exploration;  but there’s nothing like being out in the world. Out in your body, pushing through the arc of the pedal stroke to engage the grit under your tyres. These few trips sustained me, but it was a whole different thing to bring people together again to ride a rally.

   Shared Access

The first rally gathered in Edinburgh May 2019 and rode to Inverness with some cold, some rain, and a lot of camaraderie. So to be free to gather in Lamlash on Arran and see who’d show up to ride, was a special treat after two years of frustrated plans. A week to immerse in the more than human world and connect with the soon to be more than strangers found riding alongside. This is what a Roam Scotland Rally is to me – fresh ground beneath my tyres, new light in my eyeballs and a fresh voice or two in my lug-hole¹.

Us Scots are fortunate to be able to return, post-pandemic, to our legal right of access – the ‘right to roam’. Access is needed for freedom, but it’s not enough in itself, we need curiosity too. And so, we were inevitably a curious bunch who met in Lamlash, leaving our everyday constraints to wander up the west coast together. German gravelmeisters, Belgian baroudeurs, Kiwi cruisers, the courageous Canadian and many stealthy sassenachs² raiding north of the border. I doubt many have the access privileges at home which we enjoy in Scotland.

Curiosity & Limits

I might be wrong, but I suspect most Scots rarely stray north of Perth or wander west of Loch Lomond, to exercise their access freedoms. I know not everyone has the money for a bike, a bivvy and some bike luggage, but I got to wondering if many of us are constrained more by our minds, than our bodies, or the limits of money or laws? What stops us pressing up against our physical or mental limits, exercising our freedom to explore and challenge ourselves?  Are we too afraid of not being as ‘good’ as someone else, of getting hurt or wet or eaten by midges? Perhaps our curiosity can help us learn something new about how to be.  The West & Island roamers: the native half, the return visitors, those new to Scotland, the female 25%, or the blokes; the skint and the wealthy, were to a person, open-minded, curious, adventurous souls.

I had the experience of a bike carrying me 100km in  a day, before I was twelve.  The experience of a tired body, intermingled with joy, was tucked away in a little corner of my mind. Of loose limbed spinning and straining muscle grinding. Of testing my limits, and of fear my dad might test me a step too far. A belief sown. I figure somehow or other, all my roaming companions had arrived at something similar.  We’re privileged to have found this confidence to explore the new, without too much fear holding us back.

At the start in Lamlash, I’m sure many of us were anxious about the tough riding ahead.  I know my vulnerability and weaknesses well. I have periods of depression, my shoulders slip out of their sockets with little encouragement, amongst other things. I’m generally a sensitive wee sausage, despite being 6’4”. “Oh god he’s talking about his bloody feelings again”. That’s my missus by the way – aka the goddess. She soars up the road ahead of me, accelerating away from more chat about feelings. But none of us is actually superhuman, we all have limits. The rough stuff is not her favoured parcours, so the bumpier West Highland Way section towards Fort William on day 5 was met with grumbles, “grrr *#^~!! mountain biking hrmmph”… and worse. I kept my distance for a bit. Forgiveness blossomed along the flowing grade-A gravel carpet ride down the strip of Loch Shiel from Glenfinnan, but we all had tired legs to take on the brutal 20% grades of the Bealach Feith nan Laogh climb. The goddess joined us mortals, pushing up a hill.

The Value of Vulnerability

So heed the warning, I’m talking about the heid³ stuff now. I actually value my vulnerable feelings. Maybe that sounds a bit weird? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like having no energy, feeling low or anxious, or my shoulder erupting in a volcano of pain, but I value it. It’s my body and mind reminding me I’m fallible, that I’m vulnerable and need to look after myself. That’s what vulnerable feelings do. They tell us we’re human and that we’re sometimes going to struggle and fail. Suffering these uncomfortable feelings, tells us life is challenging, inviting us to step up to the struggle and learn to get the most out of ourselves. This incredible but flawed human being system will carry us through our three score years and ten or twenty or thirty. If we can access curiosity without fear about our vulnerability, if we can tolerate our suffering and learn our capacities, and our limits, we might learn better how to ride the ups and downs along the way.

Despite the benefits modern society brings, it seems like a tough ask these days to roll with our feelings and find some contentment. We’re in a crisis of mental ill-health. Many forces push us into seeking perfection or invulnerability, into always striving for more comfort or more control, rather than accepting our normal vulnerabilities and healthy limits. It’s getting us into all sorts of trouble. It’s making us more lonely, more miserable, more demanding or angry and more overweight. Its making us destroy the more than human world around us. This madness of more – more growth, more consumption – it does not make for more security, contentment or joy.

Access limits

One section of our route followed a remote track into estates and forestry around the Morvern peninsula. It’s glorious. When I reccied it on a bright Saturday in October I found three locked deer gates to clamber over, deep into the loop. Simon, a local Gravelista, had tried to get them opened before. We joined forces to challenge the council access officers to press the landowner for access, our right to roam. Credit to the council and the landowner, some stiles were in place by the time of our ride in Spring. It was still a pain to lug our loaded bikes over three stiles in relatively quick succession, but it was safe and this is the sort of inconvenience I’m OK with. I get the desire for a landowner to protect their track and forestry from muppets driving up them and getting stuck, leaving rubbish or nicking their wood. I think it’s alright to rub-up against some limits, create some friction and see what gives. Perhaps what gave, was just about enough access, but not too much to make it easy for anyone to easily wander into this beautiful remote place and treat it badly. More isn’t always better.

Passing-place-police

Whether we’re riding our bikes or doing anything else, we all need to be safe enough. The balance between encouraging folk to be safe, yet free to ride the rally however they want, and where my responsibility begins and ends, is usually on my mind. Given I err heavily on the side of letting folk crack on, it was a surprise to find myself getting all pointy with my mate Patrick, when he pulled right into a passing place on a single track road by Loch Awe. The Highlander in me was getting all ‘Oi – you cannae do that- it’s against the rules!’, but to be honest, I’m not sure there was even a car around. I think I was just a bit tired and narky, when my mind seems particularly good at conjuring an Audi driver doing 100mph around every corner.  Patrick with his usual droll delivery, punctured my narkiness with “What are you, the passing-place-police??” and the Goddess joined in, taking the piss. She knows the narky over-controller well. It was safe enough for us all to trust our awareness and common sense on the quiet single-track road that day. Nothing is 100% safe and trying too hard to make it so can crush our joy.

 

Courageous Canadian

There are no rules that would’ve prevented the serious accident of the trip. Jim, our courageous Canadian, crashed on day 3 and suffered a knock to the head, a shoulder injury and broken ribs, needing a hospital overnight stay and ending his ride. It was disturbing for those on the scene to see him seriously injured and in pain, but if you’ve seen the joyful Jim, revelling in the toughest days, who is anyone else to set rules limiting his bikepacking hit? Perhaps that risk-reward relationship will shift as he gets deeper into his 70’s, or perhaps not. That’s up to him right? I was glad he made a decision to wear a helmet because that undoubtedly saved his life, but he didn’t need me to tell him.  I like to think he and the other riders, like that I give them a line on their bike computer, over some good enough tracks and wee roads, for a reasonable distance, with some places to eat. Some guidance, some limits, some containment. But nobody needs the joy-crushing passing-place-police getting all pointy mcpointy!

Rampaging Rhododendron

The Rhododendron made me think again about access. The big bright pink blooms blossoming above their dense shrubbery were spectacular on our ride. I’ll always associate them fondly with my Granny & Grandpa’s house by Loch Melfort. The Rhodie arrived in Britain courtesy of landowners seeking more bling for their formal gardens and thick cover to shelter their game birds, increasing the ease with which the tweed-clad could blast birds full of lead. ‘Sport’ apparently.

No doubt in the 1760’s bringing ‘exotic’ species to botanical gardens was considered progress. We know better now. Rhododendron Ponticum is a rampaging threat to Scotland’s biodiversity. It’s insatiable appetite for territory and sunlight see’s it block out native species and attack them with its toxic leaf litter or with the phytophthora disease it smuggles in whilst we’re distracted by its flashy pink blooms. All that appears strong and bright is not necessarily good. It threatens much of our west coast temperate rainforests, with their ferns, mosses and lichens.

It’s not the Rhodie being a ‘non-native’ that’s the problem. The problem is their behaviour. Given access and opportunity, they dominate and accumulate more than they need of the wealth of the sun’s rays and the grounds nutrients. Disrupting the finely balanced interactions between our land and diverse native species. They need limits to contain them and their rapacious behaviour. We know that now I guess.

Sea Pinks & Thrifty Scots

Quite different is the Sea Pink. I rode past the wee pink bobbles of the Thrift – it’s other name – swaying in clumps by the shores of Loch Sunart. Learning more about it and it’s thrifty associations, I’m reconsidering my perception of the thrifty Scot. These pink pom-poms have adorned our shores, cliffs and mountain tops for millennia, unperturbed by us colonising their native territory. Co-existing with our forebears, eking out enough for an existence from our craggy bit of earth’s crust. A delicate looking wee thing is the Sea Pink, but like the thrifty Scot, it thrives in tough environments. Listen to one of our stellar folk musicians, Karine Polwart in her song “Dig In”, inviting us to consider Thrift as an example of conserving scarce resources, as a healthy challenge to us, rather than a miserable hardship.

The idea of the thrifty Scot, in my mind at least, was associated with a Calvinistic over-cautious miserliness. Too afraid of not having enough to enjoy the richness of life. Maybe it came from being a relatively poor country with a tough climate, who’s people needed a strong work ethic and an ability to thole⁴ discomfort. It’s not like that now, we’re a rich country with plenty of resources to go around, and comfortable buildings to protect us from the elements, even if these resources and comforts are far from equitably shared. Perhaps we need to rediscover the wisdom of our thrifty Scottish ancestors and learn from these modest wee plants too, rather than follow the example of the rapacious Rhodie or those humans who behave similarly?

Balance

I was far from sure I’d manage the rally this year. A bout of Covid and my usual seasonal mood dip, left my training a bit light. Listening to my body as best I could, I choose a short-cut on day 1, let go the wheels of my faster riding companions, and went light on the beers. I rode myself into the week and found some more energy. I found a balance that worked for me, somewhere between pushing into the joys of the ride and holding back from blowing up. I spend my time, as a therapist, helping people push into their emotional discomfort whilst also finding a gentle enough nurturing way to be with themselves, because we all need that too. I fear how our society drives us into the madness of more and excess. To find some psychological comfort, I think we need to find both our gentleness and our limits more often, for our mental health, never mind for the sake of saving the planet from our rapacious tenancy.

Perhaps the question of access, like many things in life, lies in finding a balance. Limits are not always negative, they can be containing, help us feel secure. Unfettered freedom would terrify me. To have no boundaries, no limits, no rules, no norms – aaargghh!! The Land Reform (Scotland)  Act 2003 is perhaps worth returning to here for a moment. The right is not, as it may be misinterpreted, the ‘right to roam’ wherever you choose, but the right of responsible access. To access Scotland’s land responsibly invites us to consider others, the human and the more than human. Others freedoms, needs and safety, in balance with our own. Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to love the camaraderie of this kind of rally bikepacking ride because it feels like we are coming together to do exactly that. Of course, when roaming or in life in general, perhaps we all occasionally become a joy-crushing twat, despite our best intentions. So if you have some forgiveness in your heart for the failings of your fellow human beings and you like the sound of sharing some responsible access to Scotland’s glorious gravel, come join us to roam, replenish and find your own balance.

Scottish words glossary:

1. lug-hole: ear
2. sassenach: English
3. heid: head
4. thole: to suffer and endure

Bikes are the ultimate vehicle of freedom aren’t they? The freedom to explore and the freedom to be. Throw in a tent, some provisions and some like minded folk, and you have yourself a bikepacking rally. This spring, my husband Keith and I took part in a unique event and the first of its kind in Scotland: The Roam Scotland Rally. This may be the most enjoyable multi-day ride I have ever done, so I wanted to capture it and write it down to share the story of this special event.

  

Photo Credit: Shona MacPhearson

Sometimes bikes can be way, way more important than simply the freedom to explore beautiful places for a week or to reconnect with yourself and the world around you. Sometimes bikes can be about improving physical health, they can be the conduit to confidence and self esteem, they can build community and even be a reason to get up in the morning.

Rather than paying an entry fee for this event, riders made a donation to the Gallatown Bike Hub in Kirkcaldy. This is a social enterprise which brings all good bicycle related things to the local community and beyond. It would be our hope that by making this connection with a great community based project that a bikepacking rally could spread the biking love and perhaps give opportunities and inspiration to youngsters and their community that would give biking benefits stretching way beyond the event itself.

Photo Credit: Gallatown Bike Hub

So what was the inspiration for the Roam Scotland Rally? In part, it was the Torino to Nice Rally and in part,  Scotland’s right to roam. The first Roam Scotland Rally took place in 2019, with a small hiatus for Covid, we signed ourselves up for the next one in May this year. For 2022, the Grand Depart was at Lamlash on Arran with  around 50 intrepid bike packers from as far flung as Shetland to London in the UK, and Holland, Belgium, Canada and Germany for our international riders.

To roam is to move about or travel aimlessly or unsystematically, especially over a wide area. When this wide area takes you through stunning and rugged parts of the Scottish West Coast, Highlands and Islands, you want a  capable, dependable steed that will accommodate your kit and efficiently cover large distances day after day whilst defying you not to have a ridiculous, goofy grin on your face as you fly down long, snaking hill passes. A bike that will keep rolling that front wheel up and over craggy, bouldery sections of the West Highland Way as perplexed hill walkers look on in slight disbelief!  Most of the Roamers chose gravel bikes, but there were one or two others like ourselves who chose hard tail mountain bikes to get them across the 700km of mixed terrain to the finish in Oban.

Photo Credit: Bernd Wichman

The basic formula for the rally is for all of the riders to gather at the start and then ride the route in their own way, at their own speed and finish somewhere in and around the finish area for each day. It is not a race, more a chance to discover new places, meet like minded folk and take time to drink in the views, wildlife and local sights. That, and you have carte blanche to eat as much as you like guilt free as it is no longer calories, but fuel!

Each rider is given a detailed route plan and gpx track when they sign up for the rally with options for a long or short route each day as well as top tips and local knowledge. This proved invaluable when considering places to resupply, places to eat as well as places to stay. It is very much a case of riding the rally your way. This might be on your own, or with a group of friends. It could be traveling fast and light with minimal kit and staying in B and Bs or hotels each night.  For us, a bikepacking adventure means carrying tent/camping gear and other essentials.  These include items such as our water filter, copious amounts of Smidge to keep the pesky midges at bay and a frame bag often bulging with flapjack and bananas! We knew that to be able to cover the daily distances for the long route each day (averaging 100km) we would need to travel light, so for the first time ever, we left behind our camp stove. This sacrifice shows you just how seriously we were taking this challenge as it meant starting the day without coffee. No coffee!!  It also meant that we were able to trim the rolling weight of the loaded bike and kit to around 26kg.

By taking on a challenge that you have hope, but no certainty of successful completion, you can end up surprising yourself with weird and wonderful solutions to the unique scrapes you might find yourself in! Somehow, I managed to damage the master cylinder for my front brake so that it leaked out all of the hydraulic brake fluid, leaving me with no front brake. The back brake alone could not cope with the weight of my fully loaded bike on the long descents. Back brake duly cooked, I had only my feet left for brakes! We were many miles from the nearest bike shop, so needed to conjure a better solution than my size 8s for brakes. Whilst there was no bike shop, there was a small cafe, and so using the resources we had at our disposal Keith came up with a slightly alarming, but none-the-less effective braking bodge! He reappeared from the cafe with a cunning plan and a cup of olive oil, much to the amusement and concern of our fellow roamers who had congregated at the cafe. The next tricky task was to somehow inject said oil into the tiny hole on my brake cylinder. Again, the universe provided, with a piece of stout cardboard from the cafe’s recycling bin folded into a v shaped funnel. Carefully, we were able to drip enough olive oil into the system that I had solid, functioning brakes once more.  Returning inside the cafe to buy us some celebratory snacks, the lady who had dispensed the olive oil voiced her concern over our Heath Robinson brake fix and wanted reassurances that we would go directly to the nearest bike shop. It turned out that this was not necessary as my olive oil worked a treat for the remaining 400km of the trip!

Problems aside, I love the simplicity and the daily rhythm of bikepacking.  Pedal, eat, sleep, repeat. Pedal, eat, sleep, repeat. It is a total reset and a tonic for the complexities and distractions of regular life. Time is of little consequence and is more governed by the rising and setting of the sun than by the time piece on your wrist. We tended to rise about 5,30am as the sun started to warm our tent.  The midgies are out in force, so we quickly pack up the tent and would often have breakfast on the hoof, out of the reach of the biting blighters! My bar roll and bag make quite a good breakfast table for my spread of banana, granola bar and milkshake. By rising early, we get a good head start too.  Most days the gravel bikes cover the ground fast, so would catch us up at some point and we would have other riders for a spot of company and banter. The miles fall away quickly whenever you are chatting.  Sometimes it genuinely would make us faster too. Our 29er steel hard tails could masquerade for a bit as racey gravel bikes as we would join the efficiency of an impromptu peloton and push our heart rates for as long as we felt like it!

Mostly we pottered along at a more relaxed pace. This allowed us to drink in the constant supply of incredible views, take pictures and enjoy some of the wildlife around us. We passed very close to a herd of deer plus geese and goslings on a coastal estate. I nearly rode over a snake-like slow worm and although we missed the otters and seals that other riders told us about, we made up for this by spotting a golden eagle on Mull,.  Maybe this is not so hard to do as Mull has the highest density of nesting golden eagles in Europe!

  We had some comedy moments along the way.  Climbing up a long, winding fire road, we caught up with a couple of Belgian friends who appeared particularly heavily laden. It turns out that they were carrying an extra pannier belonging to a 3rd friend who was blissfully unaware that he had jettisoned half his luggage and gaily ridden off up the hill unencumbered. This situation was animatedly explained to us, and we were duly dispatched to chase down the errant Belgian! Once caught, this rider wondered why his friends were taking so long, and if they had had a problem that was keeping them back! We explained that they had indeed had a problem, in fact about a 6 foot problem who was standing right in front of us! He had had no idea.

There was another international rider from Canada whom we had been most keen to get a chance to talk to at some point on the ride. He is an absolute bikepacking veteran, now in his 70s, who has ridden many long distance trails all over the world. Riding Roam Scotland his way meant flying into Manchester, collecting and rebuilding his bike and then pedaling it from Manchester all the way to the start on Arran! We did get to meet Jim and enjoy some of his tales of adventure first hand, but certainly not in the way we would have wanted. It was the only rainy day of the trip, and Keith and I were trying to make up some time on a road section of the ride, having had a delay whilst we poured olive oil into my brakes earlier in the day! Rounding a bend, we could see someone lying on the tarmac with 2 bikes on the ground. It had all happened so fast, but minutes earlier Jim’s front wheel pulled him further into the gravelly rough at the side of the road and resulted in an unscheduled dismount at such speed that his helmet was smashed in two. Fortunately, he had been riding with another Roamer who had already done the immediate first aid and called for an ambulance. We, and later a few more Roamers were able to assist whilst we waited for the ambulance. By alerting the very occasional traffic to the situation, they could pass by with care and we also got Jim wrapped up as warmly as we could and sheltered him from the rain with waterproof material that we held over him like an umbrella. Despite the pain he was in, he remained in remarkably good spirits and told us about some epic rides that he had done such as the iconic Continental Divide Trail from the Canadian border to Mexico. We knew of only one other Canadian Bike Packer, through spending too much time watching You Tube during Lock Down! It turns out that Jim not only knew of this fellow countryman, but had once bumped into him on the trail and ridden a section with him too. What a Legend! When the ambulance arrived, and the paramedic was checking Jim over, she wanted to know if he had any movement in his feet or legs. This hardy bike packer took this as an invitation to do some “air cycling” to demonstrate that he could ride a bike! Sadly, he was not able to ride his bike to the finish of this ride, but he got patched up in hospital, repatriated with his bike and was already planning his next adventure before he had even landed back in Canada.

There was one section of the ride that was billed as a “rough stuff”  alternative to the main route. For this section, the only other mountain bike on the trip teamed up with our pair of Moxies to take on Glen Kinglass to Glencoe. This was probably the most enjoyable day of the whole trip for us. We were truly in our element, concentrating on line choice as we rode through rough, loose, bouldery sections or revelling in the riding over slabs of granite.  It was lovely for me to get the chance to know a fellow, female mountain biker, and one who also shares my delight in wild swimming! Keith and I had both developed a bit of heat and swelling in our achilles tendons by this stage, so planned to submerge them in the cold river water for a bit. Fellow rider, (also Lindsay) had a better idea though and suggested full body submersion by the falls and pools further along the route. Total heaven on this hot and sunny day!

Keeping up with the laundry is just one small part of  the daily maintenance that is so essential to keeping bikes and bodies happy for longer multi day trips. We tend to ride in one set of kit, carrying a spare set to wear whilst washing and drying the first. Drying may be air drying with a cord washing line at camp or clothes secured to bar/tail bags with elastic when we get dry riding days. If it is wet, the only solution is to put the damp laundry onto your warm body inside your sleeping bag, and by morning it will be pretty much dry. In this way, we can have fresh shorts each day which is a key part of our strategy for avoiding saddle sores. It may be the physiotherapist in me, but I am also pretty determined about stretching regularly to keep the body moving well. Tight hip flexors and hamstrings are a perennial problem for cyclists. These can be stretched out from a standing position, but we also made use of our tent’s ground sheet to allow us more of a full body stretch. Yoga in a midge net is quite the look! Apart from brake servicing, there was rudimentary bike maintenance to be done. We carried a cleaning rag which allowed us to wipe the worst of the muck and grit off the chains each day before applying a squirt of good quality chain oil.

 

Photo Credit: Keith Terraventure

Sometimes the end of the day would bring us together with our fellow Roamers as we might share a pint of Guiness in a beer garden with loch side views or settle in to a cosy climbers’ bar for some hearty pub grub.  Other times, we would have found ourselves a remote wee spot to pitch our tent all on our own.  Once pitched we were ready to rest our tired bodies, so would nestle into our sleeping bags and have a small evening meal made up of something simple that we had stashed in our saddle bags. This could be a sandwich or maybe some oatcakes and hummus.

Our various strategies  paid off this time, and we managed to complete the long route every day meaning we rode 700km in 7 days, fully self-supported on mountain bikes and climbing more than the height of Mount Everest from sea level over the course of the trip.   What did we learn, apart from the fact that hydraulic brake fluid may be overrated?!  We discovered that Mull has its very own hill classification system!  I am vaguely familiar with the different category climbs that you hear about on the Tour de France commentary. Mull does it differently and I think more poetically.  You can tell how brutal a climb is by the number of yellow grit bins there are along it! We also learned that bikepackers are a really friendly and interesting bunch and have already been inspired to further adventures by some of the new friends we made along the way!

Photo Credit Shona MacPhearson