MTB Shortcuts

Today we went for a small cycly up near Aberfoyle. Starting from the car park a Bravel ( or whatever) we followed the route as per the image below. Steep start but reasonably enjoyable, the weather started out fine. I quite liked the route as it had some tricky section which were kinda fun. Found some mud that swallowed a full half of my wheel. Managed to get the front out but the back stayed put. My bike squeaked for the rest of the trip. We got to the point 14 km in and I thought "we could just nip over that hill and save tonnes of time!". Wrong. dragging our bikes up the 22% gradient to find a blighted and impassable plateau led to an eventual short cut of 2km. 1 km short of the original route, but the original route was practically level. I got us lost again at 18.5 km (that conspicuously pointless arm that goes to a quarry and is on the wrong side of the hill; or nowhere...) but after that it was plain sailing. Well no. Lots of steep uphill and gravelly steeper downhill. Oh yeah, the sun pissed off about a third in and I was a bit miffed.

Summary? Weird route that needs two bikes. for the NCN 7 sections you need a road bike, for the others a hard tail will suffice, although on the rocky sections you might like more cushion.

Additional: We travelled counter clockwise and we heard a woodpecker! :o)