Tuesday, June 4, 1996

From Kingussie to Elgin

66.6 miles

Looking towards Cairngorm

The weather forecast had been right. When I got up there were only a couple of clouds in the sky and the sun was already shining. I left Kingussie about 9 o' clock and rode on down the Spey valley. The sun was shining, it was warm and the wind was blowing -- but for the first time it came from behind me. The road itself was very good, I think the reason for that is that it's used by all the trucks coming from the distilleries, so they keep the road in a pretty good shape. After the last two days which had been hard to cycle this day was a kind of relaxation. All the way until I reached Aviemore I had a beautiful sight towards the Cairngorm mountains.

Spey valley

An amazing thing about the Spey valley is, that the air in that valley has a smell of it own. You really can smell all the distilleries along the road. At noon I had my lunch break near Cromdale. For the evening I wanted to visit one of the distilleries but then I suddenly heard a sharp noise from my back wheel and felt that something was wrong with it. I stopped and checked the wheel and found I had a broken spoke. And, of course, the one that was broken was on the right hand side where you need special tools to remove the chain wheels. I know, I should have bought some of these.

Near Cromdale

But the situation wasn't too bad, because just a couple of weeks before I started the tour, I saw a spoke replacement in the catalogue from Globetrotter Versand which was made of kevlar and should be easy to handle. It cost something between two and three pounds so I had bought it just to have something in case I needed it. And there I was trying to fix my wheel. And I have to say, that Fiberfix kevlar strip really is amazing. You don't have to remove the wheel, you don't even have to let the air out of the tube, all you do is screw it in the spoke's nipple, put it where the old spoke had been and screw it up until it's tight enough to adjust the wheel. In the description they even warn you not to screw it up too tight because you can damage the rim.

The FiberFix spoke replacement

After fixing the wheel I went on. But I dropped the plan to visit a distillery because I wanted to get to the next city to get the bicycle properly repaired and looking at my map I decided to drive to Elgin. If I would have known how good the replacement spoke would work, I would have taken more time, but I never had tried it before, so I was always expecting that after some miles I would get into trouble again. Remember, I had a lot of weight on the back wheel.

Near Craigellachie

But I was lucky and could enjoy the rest of the ride to Elgin where I arrived at half past three. I first went straight into town looking for a bicycle repair shop. I agreed with the man running the shop to bring him my bicycle the next morning and then went out to the camping site. The Elgin camping site is really nice (and it was the cheapest I ever stayed on) if you don't mind the hundreds of rabbits running around. I cooked something for dinner and later in the evening I went into town to check out the pubs. I think it was nearly half past ten till I got back to my tent and went to sleep.

Elgin