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Since I have returned, there has been further announcements on the visitor centre front, new bottlings mooted and released and an Islay Whisky Festival.

Feis Ile 2010, from what I could read on the various blogs, was quite an extravaganza. More maltphiles from all over the world flocked like barnacle geese to the tiny island in the Inner Hebrides famous for its peaty, seaweedy whiskies than ever before and were rewarded. As per usual, limited bottlings were made available for festival goers but it is not those I am concerned with. Not that there was any evidence of it while I was there, but Lagavulin have released a new distillery-only bottling. In a similar style to Caol Ila’s it is a no age statement cask strength malt and costs £70, so quite a bit dearer than Caol Ila’s. This is only one in a quartet of Diageo distilleries to soon offer distillery exclusives. Check out the press release at John Hansell’s blog.

Glendronach have followed suit, and they offer an exclusive expression in their visitor centre: a single cask from 1996, said to be a classic example of the house heavily-sherried style.

Cragganmore, too, is rumoured to be releasing a 21YO expression in the near future. Though not yet confirmed, a source at the distillery suggested that a new release could be on the cards at that age.

Perhaps more interestingly, there is a new distillery-only tour now available at Glenglassaugh. This recently re-opened distillery on the Banffshire coast in Speyside has completed its visitor centre. There are two types of tour on offer: their standard tour costs £5 and involves a trip to the warehouse; all good so far. There is also a ‘Behind the Scenes Tour’ which will set you back £25 and takes you to the darkest corners of the distillery. Drams are rather special: their new make and also the 21 and 30YO Glenglassaughs.

Of most compulsive and restive interest to me is the news that Glen Garioch are about to release the third vintage in their latest series of limited bottlings. Joining the 1990 and the 1978 cask strengths will be the 1991. I would still expect this to be peaty, their own floor maltings having ceased with the peating in 1994. I will get back to you with a price and strength when I know more.

I’m back now, and whilst I may miss my simple, if at times seriously debilitating life on the road, I am in a position to appreciate and marvel at the world of Scotch malt whisky on an entirely separate astral plain. You want to know (I assume) what was good, bad and indifferent, and where you can be guaranteed an unfeasibly large slice of chocolate cake should you be pondering an attempt at something similar (and you really should).

Therefore, this is a plenary post, an awards bash, for what really shouldn’t be missed if you are within 100 miles.

AT THE DISTILLERIES

Drams of the Odyssey

The Glenlivet Nadurra 16YO, 54.2% - Floral, honeyed and teeming with butterscotch and vanilla. A superbly bold Speyside from the more delicate side of the family.

Aberlour 14YO Single Cask First-Fill Bourbon, 63.3% – Full and intensely sweet. Freshly-sawn pine, wood oils, toffee. The malt by which I shall judge all other Bourbon-matured whiskies, and indeed single casks.

Benromach 10YO, 43% – Sweetly heathery, malty and peaty. My kind of whisky.

Ledaig 10YO, 43% – Properly, evocatively peaty. The first heavily peated malt I had tasted since Talisker, and an auspicious herald of the peaty monsters shortly to come.

Laphroaig Quarter Cask, 48% – Awesome. Perfectly assertive oaking, seaweed, smoke and power.

Lagavulin 12YO cask Strength, 57.9% – I was assaulted by this malt. It butted me in the ofrehead then kneed me in the groin. But I loved it. Smoke and sweetness. I need to find this again.

Longrow CV, 46% – Oily, wood smoke. Enormously complex.

Guides of the Odyssey

The Longer Shortlist:

Clare at Royal Lochnagar; Chris at Aberlour; Dagmar at Highland Park.

The Shortlist:

Gavin at Tullibardine – What more can I say about Gavin that I haven’t already? He is one of the most enthusiastic and friendly people I met on my travels. I phoned up the distillery once I returned to research exclusive bottlings in the VC and he remembered me after I mentioned that I had been the boy on a bike. He was brimming with admiration and congratulations, and eager for me to head back to Blackford. I’m just as keen.

Jim at Edradour - For being just a very funny man. His jokes were equally appreciated by the other twenty memebers of my monster tour party. As dry a Scottish sense of humour as you could wish to find.

Fiona at Glen Garioch - Fiona was another guide with an irrepressible sense of humour. Together with Jane, she gave me the much-needed kick up the backside, and in my darker moments thereafter, the thought of being in a position to roll up to Old Meldrum some time in the future and say “I did it,” kept me going.

John at Ben Nevis – It is very difficult to describe where John Carmichael fits in to the architypal breeds of distillery guide. He is  most definitely not the wide-eyed seasonal student; nor the passionate but casual part-timer, nor a member of the production team. He is, however, a complete professional, and a tour with him around the distillery (and he is the head tour guide so chances are good) is not to be missed. He is the second generation to have been in the industry all his days and it shows. His humour (dry), knowledge (supreme) and demeanour (you would think it was his distillery) are all compelling qualities. I learnt more from him about whisky, whisky hospitality and whisky history than from anyone else. It is plain, when he speaks of industry luminaries such as Richard Paterson, that he too enjoys a niche within the inner circle of people whose passion and experience are a good few rungs above everyone else. 

Ruth at Lagavulin - My tour of Lagavulin was perhaps the most relaxed and somehow intimate of my whole odyssey. It was a lovely warm day, the distillery was ticking over nicely and the tour group wasn’t too enormous. Ruth was spectacularly informative and was able to root out a bottle of the 12YO CS, something I’m very grateful for.

Henrik at Glengoyne - Henrik has kept in touch since I met him last month. Another very professional and passionate guide, he took time out of his regular duties to shoot the breeze with me after the tour. He said that he hoped I had enjoyed my tour with the “sweaty Swedish tour guide.” I assured him that these tours were my personal favourites. Michael, the Australian walker I shared a room with in Glasgow, had toured the distillery with Henrik, too, and he praised  his character and performance, as well.

A special mention to Martin at Bladnoch – not technically a tour guide at all but he delivered a top class performance anyway. I don’t think there was a dusty corner of the distillery I didn’t get a glance at. Obviously, his  chauffeuring was an added bonus, but if he does choose to follow his dad into distilling, the future of Bladnoch and distilling in Dumfries and Galloway is in extremely good hands. Thanks again.

And the Winner is…

Robert at Bunnahabhain – As I waxed in my post for the distillery, despite everything that had drained, annoyed and bored me that day, I hung on Robert’s every word. This can’t have been his first tour of the day, but the pride for his plant couldn’t help but shine through so brightly. Hilarious, and with the insight that only comes from actually making the stuff, Robert was by far the best guide of the tour – and he insisted he was “only a stillman.”

Tour of the Odyssey

To win this accolade, it is vital to show the visitor unique insight into the whisky-making process, accommodate them comfortably and stylishly and dram them well. Bowmore, Kilchoman and Springbank would qualify under the first requirement; The Glenlivet and Tullibardine are notably superior exponents of the second, and Aberlour and Glenfiddich are streets ahead in terms of the whisky handed over. There can only be one winner, however.

Highland Park – The emotions triggered when I think back to my visit are wonderful, unique, inexpressible. The location; the unusual logistics of getting there; the typical difficulties with the Scottish weather; the one-to-one tour; the maltings; the spitting, sparking kilns; the warehouses; the video; the beautiful VC; the drams – it was all deeply special.

***

Cafes of the Odyssey

‘The Arch’ in Fettercairn; the wool place on the road between Strathdon and the Lecht Ski resort, ‘Fresh’ in Aberlour; the cafe on the A9 bridge in Helmsdale; ‘Morag’s’ in Wick; the chocolate shop in Tobermory; ‘The Kitchen Garden’ in Oban; ‘The Craft Kitchen’ in Port Charlotte; ‘Fresh Bites’ in Campeltown.

Restaurants of the Odyssey

‘The Ramsay Arms’ in Fettercairn; ‘The Clockhouse’ in Tomintoul; ‘Taste of Speyside’ in Dufftown; ‘Chapter One’ in Forres; ‘The Red Poppy’ in Strathpeffer; ‘The No.1 Bistro at the Mackay Hotel’ in Wick; ‘The Port Charlotte Hotel’ in Port Charlotte.

Locations of the Odyssey – the Best Places to Cycle

Between Gilmerton and Aberfeldy in Perthshire; Angus; Between Forres and Inverness; The North-East coast to John o’Groats; Orkney; Skye; Mull; Arran; Dumfries and Galloway.

Beds of the Odyssey

Stirling Youth Hostel; Pitlochry Youth Hostel; Kishmul B&B in Fettercairn; Argyle Guest House in Tomintoul; Norlaggan B&B in Aberlour; Milton of Grange B&B in Forres; Carbisdale Castle Youth Hostel; Netherby B&B in Wick; The Picturehouse B&B in Ard Dorch, Skye; Inverasdale B&B in Oban; The Carradale Hotel in Carradale; Lochranza Youth Hostel; Glasgow Youth Hostel.

To be Avoided

It would be remiss of me to not warn you of the less rewarding components in the Scotch whisky family.

The Distilleries that Could Do Better

Glenturret (too expensive); Old Pulteney (too expensive and your questions won’t be answered); Oban (never mind too expensive, this is highway robbery); Caol Ila (disinterested guide and not much on show).

***

If you have any questions about anything you have read, or there is anything which you feel I haven’t fully described or made clear, just drop a comment and I’ll do my best to help out. Scotland is an unspeakably beautiful, pleasingly accessible and thrillingly complex country made for exploration, just like the unique spirit it creates.

Pagodas, sea, sky and a bike. Just right now I can't think of a more stirring combination.

I wanted to throw a rug down and have a picnic. Sadly I had no rug, no food and no time.

Bladnoch, Wigtown, Wigtownshire, DG8 9AB, 01988 402605. Co-ordinated Development Services. www.bladnoch.co.uk

APPEARANCE AND LOCATION:      *****      Dumfries and Galloway has to be one of the prettiest parts of Scotland, and Bladnoch, with its river, bridge and domestic feel to the various buildings, is one of the country’s most attractive distilleries. It was such a shame I was pressed for time, because more photos whould have done this little place, with the feel of a real backwater about it, justice. To lounge about on the lawn by the river, perhaps with some oak-aged gin, would be nothing less than perfect. The countryside is rounded, tamed, but ancient, too. The pagoda hood stands out, telling you it is a distillery. Otherwise, it could be a village hall, and indeed there is a room in the distillery which is used infrequently for civic gatherings.

TOURS PROVIDED:

‘Standard Tour’: £3. See ‘My Tour’ below, although be advised that I did not take the true ‘standard tour’.

DISTILLERY-EXCLUSIVE BOTTLINGS:      Bladnoch operates their Forum, which bottles casks of whisky independently. Their website is well worth a look, both for information regarding this service and how you can sign up and get lovely single cask whisky from all over Scotland sent to you bt also what is likely to be in the shop when you turn up. Gavin D Smith describes the retail outlet as one of the most complete in the industry, and that is saying something when one reflects on the malty madness of Bruichladdich and Glengoyne.

THE RUNNING COMMENTARY:      **      (NB: I didn’t receive the standard tour: Martin is not a guide as such, but the boss’s son. He has grown up with the distillery, though (he isn’t that much older than me), and his knowledge was staggering. The ladies I spoke to for the purposes of arranging an out-of-hours tour, however, were very friendly and enthusiastic, so I think you can expect good things if you come to Bladnoch.)

THE PROCESS AND EQUIPMENT:      **

Notes:      Much like a number of other distilleries, this one grew out of a farm set-up with farming requirements very much in evidence in the architecture. The first warehouse I was taken into is very low, and contains ome of the oldest casks from the new owners. In the mill room, the water from the lade, dug by farmers in the 1800s to bring fresh water to Bladnoch (the river at this point is tidal), runs directly underneath. Martin was perpetually apologising for the simple industrial look of much of the equipment. The mash tun is certainly functional more than beautiful, but it makes the wort, which is hardly a glamorous role.

The still house is like a modern barn: steel girders and cladding. The stills themselves were one of the few things Diageo didn’t take with them when they closed the distillery for the last time in 1993. The stills were also left, and both, interestingly enough, are technically wash stills. The spirit still has windows in the neck. Whilst the stills were left behind, new plumbing and pipe-work needed to be installed. The stillman, whilst the same guy as when the distillery last operated, had to re-learn how his own stills worked. They now run the stills slowly, which produces a smoother, more flavoursome spirit. No distilling was taking place that day, so Martin showed me inside the low wines tank. On the surface was a translucent, scummy film, which he disturbed with a rod. Fusel oil. Every distillery will have it floating along the top of their low wines and feints, and it just goes to show why everyone distills it again, to remove such impurities. I’m shown towards the end of the tour the enormous computer bank which controls some of the mechanisms and circuitry upstairs. This would struggle to fit in most cruise ships and had to be fully rewired.

Some of the older "new" stock in a very traditional, and above all cool, warehouse.

More warehouses, thankfully, follow (the warehouse is part of the standard tour). I’m shown a huge paletised warehouse and the one adjoining the filling store. In the latter is a rack of “oak-aged gin” which the Armstrongs are keeping “for a friend”. Martin whipped out a valinch and drew a sample. It smelt superb: spirity and spicy, with a sweet mustiness: rather like some of the Pakistani and Indian-run convenience stores I went into in Glasgow. The taste was… different. I could also smell the products of two Sherry casks, both filled from the same batch in 1992 and left beside each other in the warehouse. They were markedly different: one sweeter and creamier than the other. They buy the same Bourbon barrels as Arran does, straight out of Kentucky for $110. I could also see casks from Kenwood Vineyards in California. These had contained red wine, are £350 a barrel, and there should be an interesting Bladnoch expression resulting from those. Speaking of new expressions, last autumn they distilled a batch of malt peated to 50ppm. This should be equally intriguing when it reaches maturity. Martin, before I arrived, had been busy bottling for private individuals. There was a whole table full of ruby-red bottles: Arran single casks. Someone had bought a puncheon of Arran stock, 13-years-of-age and 800 bottles of the stuff. Bladnoch sell casks, too, but Martin recommends buying a tenth share in one, which leaves you with a much more manageable return of malt. Whole casks are around the £1000 mark. Bladnoch, by way of developing a bit of a buzz about their own bottlings, have created the Forum. If you sign up to this, there are periodical bottlings from a broad range of other distilleries in addition to Bladnoch, and these are posted out for discussion. I’m shown label-less bottles full of golden liquid. “This is the latest Forum bottling which I’m just finishing,” Martin said, pointing to a bottling machine in the corner of the office which can apparently allow a whole hogshead to be drained and bottled in half a day or so. “A 30YO Caol Ila.” My eyes lit up. “I suppose they are all spoken for?” I asked, disregarding for the moment that even if some weren’t, I couldn’t fit one in my panniers. Martin nodded. If I had been a member of the Forum, though, it would have cost me £50! Single cask, 30YO Caol Ila for £50. Incredible.  To return to Arran, however, Warehouse No. 2 contains nothing but. It is full of maturing Arran stock, and only Arran. Bladnoch charge 18p per cask per week, and it fills up empty warehouse space economically. A couple of times a year they also run a four-day Whisky School. Just like at Springbank, you can pay your money and involve yourself in every part of the process.

GENEROSITY:      ** (You are given a dram of the 18YO, and anything else you like. As Martin explained, the approach is to let you try before you buy. A jolly good policy, and one I can’t believe the massive conglomerates can’t finance, if plucky little Bladnoch can do it.)

VALUE FOR MONEY:      **

SCORE:      8/10 *s.

COMMENT:      I cannot express what a joy it was to tour Bladnoch with Martin, a treasure trove of information and humour. His hospitality and generosity will never be forgotten, and I hope that his finals went well. “I should be revising but my Dad said he needed me to do some bottling.” So, whilst it wasn’t the tour you will receive, I can recommend Bladnoch whole-heartedly.

Oak-aged gin. I suspect the world isn't quite ready for this beast yet...

Glasgow to Bladnoch, to Barrhill, 54 miles

Few mornings on tour combined stress, trauma and surrealism in quite such a befuddling cocktail as this, my final one. A tough task master to the end, I woke myself up at 5AM for my 7AM train to Ayr. Immediately post-dawn Glasgow in early summer is not the most awful place to be. As I descended through the parks and smart Georgian terraces to Sauchiehall Street, I experienced that thrill you get when you are awake and doing while everyone else wastes the peace and calm in bed. Once on Sauchiehall Street, however, I began to spot clusters of folk who plainly were only just on their way to bed.

The roads were largely empty, which was just as well because I’m not sure all of my city centre riding was within the Highway Code. I had street maps, obviously, and I knew the general location of Glasgow Central Station and the rough direction in which it lay. I was not helped by road signs, however, and all of a sudden I was quite undesirably on a bridge over the Clyde. I barrelled back across on the pavement, cut into a left lane and only after I had ducked under the railway bridge itself which sprouts out of the concourse did I spot a sign. I still had to come back the way I had come, further east, but I found the entrance. Finding the main platform was harder, and whether it was the poor night’s sleep or insufficient rest compounded over six weeks, tasking my reserves of logic to find it from the ground floor entrance did not work. I ended up hauling the bike along a deserted access corridor, down into the underground station and eventually found a lift which took me up to the concourse. The relief I felt was uniquely potent.

I caught my first train, which was devoid of any facilities to stow my bike. After running the length of the short train to try and find a little bike symbol at one of the doors, I wheeled it on and kept it in the space by the doors. I was positioned in a seat nearest to this area so that I might keep a hold of it. I guzzled most of a bottle of water and texted mum. Stage One complete. ‘What would you like for pudding?’ was the reply.

As the train sped south out of Glasgow, mist cloaked the fields and industrial estates. By Ayr it had cleared up, precisely when things became most shrouded and arcane for me.

I have decided to include the oddest and most traumatic encounter of my entire tour because it is in fact rather appropriate as a dramatisation of impressions and conflicts which had been developing within me over the six weeks. Meeting my first stark raving God-fearing lunatic was important, although its significance is most likely solely attributable to the coincidental occasion which witnessed it. For some weeks, I had keenly missed company, cameraderie and the ability to share with others that which I was experiencing. This had taken me by surprise at first, for I had always considered myself very independent, indeed perfectly happy in my own company. I had expected to lap up every moment of blissful solitude. As it turns out, I need people. This is a good thing, though, because if I ever decide I don’t, I might just turn into the paranoid, doom-propheting hermit who, several times over the forty-five minutes he enforced his presence upon me, insisted that he just wanted to be left alone. I wished, without hope, that the hypocrisy of his actions and desire would occur to him. Once he had expounded his theories on the non-existence of time, the government keeping tabs on him due to his fearless and pure lifetsyle, he got on to preaching. It was very clear that he thought I was one of the many people destined to burn in Hell. All the while, I’m trying to savour the frankly gorgeous hills, forests and coast of South Ayrshire, proffering the bare minimum response which was in any case often all I was capable of, so regularly would he start off on a new tack with something I couldn’t quite believe anyone would say to a complete stranger. So draining and bizarre was his constant onslaught of drivel that when the time by which we should have arrived at Barrhill station approached and I got his name wrong as we parted, it had a pre-determined feel about it. He got rather nasty, in fact, and gave a fairly bleak diagnosis as to the state of my soul. My complete absence of inner strength, as he would have it, seemed a trifle at odds with the three quarters of an hour I had endured with him out of politeness, however. In fact, I rather fancy it was my openness at Ayr, waving him and his many bags onto the train ahead of me, that marked me out from the herd. Had I stuffed earphones in, swore, spat and scowled a bit, he might not have been so keen to latch on to me. Still, as a writer I can see the positives of unusual interactions such as this one.

I got off the train physically shaken. After such an early start, on my very last day, this was not exactly what I had needed.

Beautiful Barrhill: it looked just as gorgeous (and welcome) when I passed through six hours earlier.

I had just under two hours, after changing in the lane up to the station, to get to Bladnoch. Dumfries and Galloway pacified me, cleansed me of my morning struggles and was the perfect epilogue to my travels in Scotland. I have never been to this part of the country before, but I will return. The sun was warm, the air fresh, fields green and full of lambs. Hills were low and rounded, forests plentiful and pine-fresh. I reflected that if my bike conked out, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. I followed a single track forestry road, almost completely empty of traffic save for one huge tree truck which demanded an unsteady emergency stop in the grass verge. Besides that, I couldn’t belive how beautiful it all was.

I began to head further south, having bypassed Newton Stewart. Trees nearly swept the road with their new, ethereal leaves. The landscapes which opened out before me on such stunning frequency were soft, busy and idyllic. Everywhere hummed, in the cheeriest possible sense, with the aroma of cow.

11AM, my tour time at Bladnoch, was approaching fast, and I wasn’t seeing any signs to Wigtown. Soon, I rejoined the main road and phoned the distillery. Martin answered the phone. “I’m at the Torhouse stones,” I said. “Oh, you’re just a mile and a half away. It’s all down hill from there.” I began to wonder if this was some cruel joke of his, or maybe we were thinking about different Torhouse stones. I was faced with a sequence of rolling hills, and then I went straight on over the road that could have taken me cheekily right and straight to Bladnoch. As it was, I passed through Wigtown which at least gave me the opportunity to scout out a Co-op for lunch. I made it into Bladnoch at 11.15AM, only for Martin to tell me that I had taken the long way from Barrhill. I was told that, for my return leg, heading through Newton Stewart would be much quicker.

Simply, cycling heaven.

In the sweltering and still building heat, I was given a superb tour of what is a unique distillery. Martin knew everything there was to know about its history and place within the local community to this day. It was with the help of the villagers that the Armstrongs succeeded in reversing the ruling by previous owners Diageo that Bladnoch could be bought but must never distil again.

You need more than an hour in Bladnoch.

I made it a bit of a frenzied tour, I must admit. I had asked for the tour to last an hour, but so enchanted was I by all the doors Martin was opening (he says that the hardest job is locking everything up again after his father has conductd a tour) that I rather lost track of time. After taking a photo in the beautiful grounds, I checked my display and read 12.36. I needed to be going. Martin reminded me of the route I should take then broke off. “I could give you a lift to Newton Stewart.”

The first part of my final leg of cycling on tour, therefore, was spent in the Bladnoch Transit van. This is how they transport casks from Glasgow to the distillery and back. Other companies use swish trucks, the Armstrongs use a builder’s vehicle. The bike was stashed in the back amongst cardboard boxes, bags thrown in any old how. As Martin hurtled along Dumfries-shire roads, these a tad busier than those I had taken earlier in the day, he gave me a potted history of the local area, which had played a significant part in the Second World War, an RAF base stationed to the west of Newton Stewart. Regrettably, quite a few Spitfire pilots misjudged the altitude of the Cairnsmore of Fleet, and flew into it.

He deposited me on the main street and I thanked him from the bottom of my heart. Once I had bought lunch and escaped the throngs of the town, I began to appreciate just what a timely favour he had done for me. Shade was essential to pack in my last meal, and I found a sturdy tree on someone’s driveway to eat sandwiches and shortbread. Across the road, sheep panted and tried to take advantage of the cover granted by the same tree. I mixed the last of my electrolyte tablets with the water I had taken from the tap in the Bladnoch courtyard and set off for my final time trial. It was 1.30PM, I had less than two hours.

Again I must stress the beucolic beauty of the area, but I could not appreciate the gentle meanders, rises and falls of the roads, the bluebelled woods rising from the carriageway, the verdant fields, the glorious sunshine because I had a train to catch. And if I failed to it would be dicey as to whether the next trains could fit me and my machine on.

Moist and exhausted, but so very chuffed.

The ferocity of the sun became a genuine concern, as opposed to a luxury. So open and bare are some of the landscapes in South Ayrshire where forestry has been cleared, and so windless is it, that it feels as though you are pushing the pedals with a burning bouncy castle strapped to your back. I saw a sign saying 15 miles to Barrhill but the next one, which seemed to come many hours later, said only 11. Four miles had taken me what felt like an age. I began to doubt the accuracy of my bike computer, I began to doubt my ability to push on as the food I scoffed provided negligible sustenance. The road began to climb, not seriously, but markedly upward. I was pushing on the pedals with all my might but feeling a little lost and doubtful for the first time since I had been condemned to eternal damnation earlier in the morning. So wonderful, surprising and beautiful had my time since that surreal encounter been that I began to wonder if I had in fact dreamed it. As the road began to descend, I could pick up some serious speed and cool off, I genuinely doubted that it had taken place at all. Barrrhill appeared, and not before time. 2PM was developing nicely, and was indeed already too late for the village shop, where I would have bought some Lucozade and some chocolate bars. I was absorbed in food matters, and couldn’t quite remember how far along the village the turning up the hill to the station was. After maybe half a mile further into Ayrshire countryside, I realised that I had passed it. A frantic U-turn, and needlessly savage climb up to the station later, I had made it. 2.45PM, time enough to change out of my dripping cycling gear, put some water back in, and reflect on all I had achieved. I passed a pleasant few minutes on the platform with a lot of swallows and the scorching sun, which still wasn’t backing off.

The bike at rest: its job was done. Check out the swallow in the top right - I'm quite pleased with this picture!

The train back up to Ayr was not especially full, and I secured for myself a double seat. All of the windows were open and most of my fellow passengers seemed to have been hypnotised, those that weren’t already asleep on their bags or tables. I joined them in slack-jawed, blithely smiling abstraction. I was deliriously happy, and profoundly dehydrated, of course. I could enjoy the anonymity that public transport provides, whilst sharing a smile with the rest of the carriage when we past through a tunnel and all the windows slammed shut.

The change at Ayr was a swift one, and whilst there were plenty of bodies already on the train, I succeeded in blagging another seat by the doors so I could look after the bike. It turned out I didn’t need to be anywhere near it. Masses of exposed, burnt Scottish flesh boarded the train, couldn’t find seats and so squashed into the seatless spaces. One man found my pannier rack a useful cup holder as he fielded and received calls for the duration of the journey about what he and his friends were likely to be up to that night.

Once in Glasgow the stress returned. I had misread my timetable, and plain forgotten which train I was to catch. I thought it was something like a 5.30PM train, and when I got off my train from Ayr at 5.10PM and couldn’t find it on the departure boards, I panicked a little. I also panicked about locking the bike in the bike park in such a way as to make theft impossible, but also appeasing the urgent signals from my bladder. In the end I only secured the front wheel to the rack, which would have made it very easy for anyone to steal the rest of the bike by flicking the quick-release level to detach front wheel from bike. Anyway, I used the toilet, bought sandwiches, crisps and a large bottle of water from a standing-room-only M&S and returned to find the bike where I left it. Sweating copiously, I wheeled machine and my baggage of six weeks to the departure screens. My train was actually the 5.50PM. Seeing ‘Alnmouth’ scroll along as one of the stops was not an overly momentous sight at the time. However, when I had found the right platform, belatedly the right carriage for the bike (the guard’s van right at the front of the train, my carriage being towards the back), remembered just before we moved off that I’d left my M&S purchases in said guard’s van, had my provisions returned to me and taken my seat; then did I realise that my travels were over, and I had done it. Out of Glasgow, through Motherwell, I couldn’t stop smiling. The evening was as beautiful as the day had been. I ate, sipped and thought. My mind pedalled its way back to Glen Garioch, Tomintoul, Skye, The North, and all of my testing moments in the Central Belt. My thoughts then sprinted off ahead of me into the future. “Stephen,” I said, when he phoned me up, “do you want to come on the next one?”

A sight of the Forth Bridges, through Edinburgh and down the East Coast: all of these familiar sights seen with new eyes. The train raced into Northumberland and I recognised landmarks from my many training miles. That hit me rather hard. When the train stopped in Alnmouth, I hit the side of the guard’s van rather hard, too. I had notified the steward of my exit stop, and that I had precious cargo stowed away. I had made my way to the first class carriages in readiness to alight on the platform and be ready for a speedy handover. But I couldn’t get into the carriage. I hammered on the door but no reply. I had vivid, livid visions of my bike making it as far as Birmingham when I detected in the far distance a man in a hat jogging laboriously towards me. “It’s chocker in there,” he gasped, opened the door for me and in a flash I was on the platform, the train pulling away. I was home.

Out of the station and into the surrounding estates. The smell was different somehow. Down into the village everything had exploded into life, including the local pub where I work, very busy at 8.45PM on a Saturday night. Back at the house, I unhooked the panniers as I had done a hundred times before in foreign parts, wheeled the bike into the garage and without realising or necessarily agreeing to it, became abosrbed once again into the real world.

The picture doesn't show it, but I was battling a coach-load of new arrivals and the relentless traffic to gain a clear shot. The distillery sits on a very busy road indeed.

 Dumgoyne, Strathblane, Glasgow, G63 9LB, 01360 550254. Ian Macleod Distillers. www.glengoyne.com

APPEARANCE AND LOCATION:      *****      The area around the distillery could be described as semi-Highland. It has grandeur, space and elevation, gradations of colour and mountains, but manageable. It is quite an adorable little place on the edge of the Trossachs national park and very well-serviced by roads. The distillery is on one side of the busy road, the warehouses on the other, technically in the Lowlands. A large, bulbous hill rises behind the distillery, and there is a waterfall walk to take advantage of the beautiful wooded glen that extends towards the hill.

TOURS PROVIDED:

‘Standard Tour’: £6.50. See ‘My Tour’ below.

‘A Wee Tasting Tour’: £8.50. The standard tour plus a tasting of the award-winning 17YO. One hour.

‘Tasting Tour’: £15. A tour of the distillery and an in-depth tutored tasting in the Club Room of the 12, 17 and 21YOs. One and a half hours.

‘Master Blender Session’: £30. After a dram of the 10YO and a toour of the distillery, guests are taken to the Sample Room where thyey contruct their own blended whisky. A taste of the Langs Select blend and the Glengoyne 17YO get you in the mood. Your blend is bottled in a 100ml sample bottle and you are given a certificate. One and a half hours.

‘Cask Idol’: £70. The tasting notes and evaluations provided by you over the course of this tour will help to decide the next Glengoyne single cask release. An in-depth tour of the distillery leads on to a visit to Warehouse No. 8 you are taken back to the distillery and tutored through the last three Glengoyne Single Casks, and asked to give your opinion on three samples drawn straight from maturing casks. Whichever one you choose as the best could be bottled with your name and tasting notes on the label. Two hours fifteen minutes.

‘The Masterclass’: £100. “The most in-depth and comprehensive distillery tour in Scotland,” says the website. At this price, and with a duration of 5 hours, it had better be. Following a tour of the distilleries, you are taken into the warehouses, return to the distillery, taste the 12 and 17YOs, three single casks, and six samples of sherry. A light lunch is laid on, which I think is a good move, for you then construct your own blend, 200ml of which will be bottled for you and handed over together with a Masterclass certificate and Glengoyne commemorative book.

‘A Century of Whisky’: £150. An in-depth tour is followed by a dram of the 10YO, the 40YO and the Isle of Skye 50YO, served in crystal copita glasses which you take home. Two hours. 

DISTILLERY-EXCLUSIVE BOTTLINGS:      The Glengoyne Christmas Cask (see here), and numerous other single cask releases. There is a whole series of single casks to be found; ranging from 15 to 21-years-of-age. The dearest is an 18YO “Robbie’s Choice”, from 1989. This is a Port Hogshead and commands a price tag of £220. There are also the Lost Drams, more single casks for £200 each. By way of a more economical distillery exclusive, though, there is the 14YO Heritage Gold, a 1 litre bottle for £45. There is also the option to buy a whole cask.

My Tour – 21/05/2010

THE RUNNING COMMENTARY:      ***

THE PROCESS AND EQUIPMENT:      *

Notes:      I wouldn’t normally include the detail that the mash tun and stills are in the same room, but on the day I visited it was more like the Seychelles than Scotland and the distillery a sauna. At 2PM, with the sun directly overhead, this was no time to be inspecting heated metal vessels. As Henrik, our excellent Swedish guide told us, it isn’t exactly ideal conditions for making the stuff either. The distillery was besieged by tourists, to compound the truncated, slow pace of the afternoon, and we had to wait around in the baking courtyard, then the mash house, then the tun room, for the preceding group to move off so that we might take their place. The distillery itself is neatness personified, as well as being full of light and charm. The washbacks are all wooden and what better time, with an Indian Summer gripping us and plenty of time at each piece of equipment, to go into some detail about how fermentation in such circumstances must be controlled. On hot days, it is not only difficult to condense the distillate, but if the worts are too hot, the yeast will expire soon after pitching and fermentation will not have occurred optimally. They then add the yeast when the worts have been cooled to 12 degrees Centigrade. This makes for a slower, but more complete and efficient, fermentation. The smell of apples at the spirit safe is extremely pronounced, and Henrik claimed that even if the stillman couldn’t take samples or see into the spirit safe, he would know by the intensity of the Cox’s Orange Pippin aroma that the heart of the run was then in progress. Perhaps for reasons of health and safety, we did not cross the roads to visit the warehouse, which would have been a most welcome relief from the heat. The shop, however, was cool enough. The explanation of the maturation given instead of the opportunity to see it ‘live’ is first-rate, however.

GENEROSITY:       (1 dram)

VALUE FOR MONEY:      *

SCORE:      5/10 *s

An Aladdin's Cave of single cask wonders.

COMMENT:      After all of the traumas endured earlier in the day, I wasn’t about to miss this distillery, the cover star for Iain Banks’ Raw Spirit. Famous for its tours, I wanted to see for myself. When I arrived, I was stressed, hungry, thirsty and very very hot. The waterfall walk looked tempting, if only so that I might have doused myself under it. There is the distillery, the shop, and the visitor centre at various points on the path up the hill, and of some disgruntlement was the distance between where I had to tie up my bike and whichever building I was required in. I made it for the 2PM tour, and everyone seemed pretty dozy and laid back. The dark and cool of the shop was profoundly welcome, the secluded video room even more so. Trying to stay awake, however, as we shuffled around the site in the clinging heat was not easy, but Henrik chased away any sleep impulses. He is Swedish, but has been in Glasgow for a few months, long enough to become fluent and even cultivate something of an accent. Some words had a Scandinavian inflection, but most were unmistakably Scottish. Bless him, he knew his stuff, and he was exceptionally friendly and thorough, but he suffered. Once inside the distillery, the Glengoyne blazer came off, and with each new piece of equipment, the swallow-and-deep-breath routine before he launched into the next explanation showed just how much effort he was putting in to fighting the noise of operating machinery and the heat. Evidentally passionate, he elevated what was a fairly bog-standard tour. The sheer volume of punters I’m sure didn’t help. At one stage there seemed to be four tours taking place simultaneously, with nearly as many guides floating around as tourists. Everyone was so very friendly, and when I was presented with my personalised 17YO, a service they do for both the 10 and 17YO expressions which comes in a black cannister with your name and date of visit on the label of both bottle and tube, I was rather overcome. I had been chatting with Henrik after the tour, all about my travels and experiences of Glasgow in particular. He seemed to enjoy relating what would almost certainly happen to me if I got very drunk and wondered into a shady area alone. I’d said my goodbyes to him, and was refilling my bottles for the parched journey back to the city centre, when another guide took me back into the shop and asked if Mr Saxon’s bottle was ready. Obviously I had no room for it at the time, but it was a lovely gesture.

Park Terrace to Gear Bikes, to Dumgoyne and back, 27 miles

I can now totally empathise with Mark Beaumont’s tears when his bike demanded professional repair. My Giant has been the only permanent companion throughout these 6 weeks, and now it is in a pretty bad way. It isn’t so corny or ridiculous as personification. It never had a name, nor did I imbue it with any sort of character. But it was the durable, functional tool which allowed me to find my most extreme limits, to discern who I am and what I can do. And now, instead of carrying me through Glasgow it is in pieces in a bike shop.

It seems that bike shops are like distilleries, and don’t open before 10AM. I had set out to find the two premises that my hostel receptionist had highlighted for my just after 9AM: a small independent on Gibson Street and a much larger one at the other end of the Great Western Road. The former said it would open at 10, the latter made no mention of when it would throw open its doors. I squeaked back to the first shop, locked the bike to a rack outside its door, popped into the neighbouring cafe and waited. What more could I do?

The dustbin wagon arrived, and a man in an apron carried large flat cardboard boxes out to intercept it. I took this to mean that the shop had opened.

I was not the only cyclist looking for Joe and Ian to sort out my equipment issues. They were very very busy indeed with people coming to collect serviced bikes, buying new ones and bringing in more poorly cycles. I am so grateful that they did all they could as quickly as they could to sort out my own problems. Initially, their expert eyes could see that the front derailleur had slid down from its original position, so was effectively coming into contact with the big chainring. They also found that the front mech was bent, and this required a few trusty blows with a hammer to correct. A number of other things received minor tweaks and I was sent round the block to see that everything was back to normal. It wasn’t at all. One of the guys took it for a ride. “Bearings,” he said. “Your bottom bracket is bust.” This was very Mark Beaumont, and I was asked to give them about an hour to sort it out.

I wandered around the various convenience stores in the Great Western Road area, reflecting that an hour meant a little after 11AM. I had wanted to be at Glengoyne for 10AM. I walked back in to the shop, was handed the bike again and took it for another spin. The noise was more cacophonous than ever. The other guy took it out and came back muttering and cursing. I went for another walk, then returned to the next-door cafe for a tea and banana cake. Time past. I was sipping water, watching the world go by and pass me by, when one of the men bounded in, a look of something like triumph on his face. “We think we’ve worked out what it is.”

This is not a photo I can easily look at. 1300 miles together and my bike is in bits.

I followed him into the shop and there was my bike, resting on its saddle and handle bars, devoid of cranks, one of which was in a vice. “There’s movement between the crank and the spindle,” he said, jiggling the crank in the vice. “Has the bike had a fall?” I replied in the negative. He thought that the only explanation for it was an impact on the right side, which had partially broken the weld between the crank and spindle which passes through the bottom bracket. It was a one-piece job, and would need to be replaced. “Do you want me to try it first, just to see whether that is the problem, or do you want a price?” Years of reading procycling had given me a mental inventory of expensive components and I closed my eyes at this point. He put the new crank in, and fixed everything up. As he tightened and knocked he said that I had been really rather unlucky. Based on what I had told him about my itinerary, his first guess would have been the bottom bracket, failing that the pedals may have had a problem. The crank? 10 or 15% chance. I gave a wry smile. Such is life. One whole day to go and it just couldn’t quite hold out. “You could have risked it,” he said, “but if it had given way the crank would have fallen off and you would have been in real trouble.” Not liking the idea of breaking down definitively in the middle of a Glasgow motorway, or in the wilds beyond it for that matter, I just paid my £120 (part plus labour) and was ready to be on my way. “We like a challenge,” he smiled. “Obviously its not ideal, but you couldn’t have guarded against it. It would have been silly to carry a spare crank.” He gave me a couple of protein energy bars, I changed into my cycling gear and applied sunscreen, the day outside my dark little shop having developed into a real broiler. Mark Beaumont actually made his way into the conversation. It seems that Gear was his local bike shop when he was at the university. Every couple of weeks he would bring his bike in, deconstruct it and modify it ahead of an ambitious weekend challenge. Even then, they said, they could see he was set to do something rather insane. I had suffered some of my hero’s mechanical malfunctions, and indeed used the same shop he once employed. For all the circumstances were very stressful, worryingly expensive and time consuming (Auchentoshan was now a no-no), I could at least glory in the feeling of being on the road again, that because of a sixth sense about this particular alien noise, my tour could continue.

On the way out and up towards the Great Western Road I was nearly swiped by an overtaking car, and mindful that I was less easy to fix than the bike, I stuck to the extreme edges of the road from that point on. This wasn’t always a better option for the bus lanes and bus stops within those bus lanes were even more likely to bust a wheel than some of the stretches on Islay. In a city, you average about 2-3 mph more between traffic lights, so you are fairly gunning along when an enormous sunken pothole nearly kills you. Until I got to where the A81 heads north through Milngavie and on to Strathblane, it was all rather stressful, so much traffic, so many people, and so bloody hot. I hadn’t the baselayer on today, but even so the sweat was pouring off me, and I’d sucked one bidon dry within the first 8 miles or so. The thing was, I was loving it. I may have felt afraid, nervous, panicked, but I felt so alive. Avoided cars parked in cycle lanes, broken glass, trying to make it through on the green light, finding the necessary name on a road sign: pell-mell and just brilliant. With Milngavie and its awful roads conquered, I was suddenly in the countryside, and seriously buxom, beautiful countryside with big trees, lush fields and blue skies. I began to recognise sections from our drive to Auchentoshan in 2008, although the potholes and the traffic were new to me. It was still very busy, and very up-and-down, and so hot!

I passed the Mugdock country park, where we had had a picnic the last time we were in the area. This made me feel very nostalgic indeed, for our Auchentoshan visit, picnic and evening meal in Swinton for my eighteenth birthday was one of the loveliest days I have known. Returning to somewhere I had been before also introduced the familiar, and a suggestion that I was nearing home at last. I stopped in the woods by the loch a little further on, took off my reflective jacket and stood in the shade for a few minutes so that I might escape the damned heat. The remaining miles to Glengoyne were again quite hilly, but a good deal more pleasant. The Strathblane Hills sat lumpily on the horizon, not as spectacular as I remembered them, but then I have seen my fair share of jaw-dropping mountain scenery of late.

Glengoyne is right on the road, surprisingly. None of the photos you see of distilleries really give you an idea of their place in the regular human world. It is still a staggeringly beautiful distillery and I had a great time there.

It was 4PM before I leave, and I’m rather overwhelmed. My next door neighbour has connections with Ian Macleod, and had promised to arrange something for me for when I visited. This turned out to be a place on the Master Blender Tour, one I had to decline because of course that is not the point of this adventure, and a bottle of the 17YO with a personalised label! It had my name on it and the date I visited. Not that I could take it away with me there and then, of course. Many thanks to Robert and Johnny at Malmaison Hotels and everyone at Glengoyne for giving me a very special momento of my travels. Nowhere else did I find quite so many tour guides and staff, and they were all super. It is still fabulously hot, I’ll hit Glasgow in time for the Friday night rush hour and I haven’t put in enough calories today.

I feel better once I finally depart and the route back to the hostel is relatively stress-free. Again, I feel very much alive as I tank round roundabouts, dodge traffic and buses and hurl myself into the pace of city travel. I arrive at the hostel utterly soaked with sweat, but I have done it. Despite the most acute stumbling blocks, I did my best to honour my itinerary and, as always, was rewarded.

I found the nearest supermarket so that I might have something for breakfast the following morning, then had fish and chips in the adjoining coffee shop to the hostel. It was such a relaxing evening, and it is tempting to tinge it with sentiment now that I come to relate it but I had by that stage honed the ability of putting my day’s troubles behind me, to savour simply having overcome them. I flicked through one of the outdoorsy mags that you find in such places, had a long and fascinating chat with a half-naked Australian who had just completed the West Highland Way, passed the time of day with the other occupants of the dorm, and was generally full of goodwill to all men. I could barely sleep so happy and inspired was I by passing this last night on tour, in Glasgow, knowing that the following night I would be in my own bed, that my plans were about to be completed.

Lochranza to Glasgow, 58 miles

I hadn’t much of an appetite for my toasted Hovis rolls this morning. It had been a struggle leaving the shadowed, undemanding nowhere-land that was my hostel bed. The world must be faced, however, and if I didn’t catch the 1.30PM ferry, I would be cycling into Glasgow at midnight. Not desirable.

A chat with a Frenchman who bore a resemblance to the tennis player Gilles Simon distracted me nicely, but he and his girlfriend left, I handed over my unused and unwanted washing powder and hunted out the distillery. As I waited in the grounds for signs that the tartan-skirted folk inside wanted to take my money, listening to the aggrieved cries of the real-life Arran peacock, lured away by an unscrupulous neighbour with more interesting tidbits, I doubted I would stay dry today. The idea of spinning effortfully through the Central Belt, soaked and harried, did not appeal.

I was as wet as I was going to get, as it turned out, racing two very fit young ladies on unencumbered road bikes who flashed past the distillery entrance just as I was tip-toeing across the cattle grid and afterwards wishing violent, ignominous death in an oblivious motor-home driver. I passed them with some ease on the hill out of Lochranza towards the east coast. It had much in the way of authentic Highland scenery about it, though, and I guess you could call it a proper mountain. It was appallingly hot and airless, however, ribbons of cloud flapping gently in wooded glens away to our right. Having so carelessly overtaken, I didn’t now want to stop and take off my pointless baselayer. The descent was a mixture of the sublime with the ridiculous: perfectly smooth, sensible tarmac giving way to roads that would not look out of place in Basra. It was as I was negotiating one of these sections that one of the girls flew past me, seemingly with no thought to her wheels. I was deeply concerned about these, and certain soft pieces of my anatomy which I did not share with my fellow competitors. Just before the hill bottomed out, the second lass put me behind her and sped away up the next incline. I was tired of racing, and these girls were plainly mildly insane, so I watched them disappear into the mist and small villages.

The mist was an enemy of my mental equilibrium. In much the same manner as it had goaded and tormented me the previous day, I felt trapped and constricted. Nothing beyond the rocks on the shore were visible: the rest, sea and air, was a featureless unity. I suffered more disappointment with Arran roads before Brodick appeared, tree-lined routes especially pitted. There were craft villages, cheese shops, the brewery and ornamental gardens in country houses. Had I not got a ferry to catch to my certain doom, I would have liked to have stopped and explored.

I clicked into Brodick just as the mist began to coalesce and fall as rain. I bought my lunch and dinner for tonight, reasoning that I hadn’t a clue when I would arrive at the hostel in the centre of Glasgow and, after the mini breakdown in response to what I had endured, would not know if there would be anything still open to feed me, it would be a good move to have food with me. I should explain that I fully expected to be mugged, stabbed, run over, assaulted, jeered, kidnapped and any number of other unspeakable things when I got to the big city. This was partly my dad’s fault: he had even offered to drive me to the Glasgow distilleries, and partly the inconceivable contrast from four weeks in the most isolated pockets of Scotland to the noise and bustle and human threat of a built-up area. This is why there are no pictures of my journey to Glasgow: I’m ashamed to say that after the distillery I put my camera’s memory card in my glasses case and that at the bottom of my panniers. I now know that it was a gross over-reaction, and the act of facing my fears and just doing it made for a far more enjoyable ride than I had expected, and I would have liked to have had pictorial evidence of it. At the time, however, I was atrociously anxious and wary, and could not have been too careful.

I checked in at the ferry terminal, and sat on the wall beside the area reserved for ferry-bound cars: a concreted expanse the size of a football pitch all covered in vehicles. I wondered how on earth they were all supposed to fit, as traffic snaked off the ferry from the mainland which had since docked. I didn’t even have time to finish my lunch before myself and two other more senior cyclists were being waved on.

The Ardrossan ferry, the last I would board on this tour, had a completely different feel again to the others I had taken. There was an impression that this was less for tourists and holiday-makers, more for commuters. There were builders and businessmen, and me sat in the soft grey gloom, trying to read the paper, knowing that forty-five minutes from now I would be facing my greatest test of the whole tour: the real world in all its unpredictable, flawed glory.

Land ahoy. Down to the bike. The cars bounce out and screech away. Me and the other cyclists follow into Ardossan. They are off to Troon and we wave as they take the first right. I continue over another roundabout and follow the little blue signs which will be encouragement and cause for concern in equal measure over the next four hours.

I change by the sea front, still swaddled in this timeless, soporiphic mist. The cycle route leads me on what feels a little like a wild goose chase for the first few miles: along the coast, through a park, over some dunes, along the side of the railway line with its trenches and broken glass. Oh there was lots of broken glass. The nightmare scenario of actually puncturing in this grim place was almost paralysing. A couple of times I would hear crunches beneath my rear wheel, only to find that the tyre bulge was just as healthy as it had always been.

I soon left Ardrossan and Saltcoats behind, and it began to look rather pastoral and pleasant. Until I got to Kilwininning. Work on the main street meant that I abandoned the cycle route temporarily, and this was of course enough to very nearly get very lost. If I hadn’t seen another blue sign in a residential street across the road, I could have been lapping Kilwinning for some time after. Everywhere, even the estates, was deserted. The cycle paths leaving any built-up area, however, were clearly the coliseums of the local bored youth: graffiti’ed, broken glass everywhere and scorched by aerosol cans or other inflammables. It was rather intimidating, and indeed on this section I decided to push the bike until the terrain became less prickly.

I did begin to enjoy myself a bit more after that. The cycle route was incredibly well signposted and avoided all of the seriously busy roads, for all I was granted good views of them intermittently. It was now after 4PM, and Glasgow had started to appear on my signs, but was still 30 miles away. It felt rather like a treasure hunt with all the blue signs and little tarmacked cuttings I had to dive up with little warning. Now that Iwas there, in the beating heart of Scotland, it was less menacing. As I swept down into Highlfield, I experienced a thrill: there was beauty here, and the evidence of other people prepared to get out and appreciate it.

The Kilbirnie Tesco takes some of my money and I then get a little lost. When I catch up to a female mountain biker and ask about the cycle route she says I have come quite a way away. After shopping, I should have headed back the way I came. I thank her and do as she says. I learn from this experience that unless there is the little route number in red on the sign, if isn’t the official route, just a branch line off it.

By Lochnwinnoch I encounter fresh water, which means insects. By this point I am on a wonderfully flat and straight piece of path which is quiet but peopled with enough joggers and cyclists to keep one’s spirits up. After Kilbarchan, I have no shortage of company. Johnstone is next and that basically means Glasgow. I’m eating every ten miles for energy, and I have no problem finding bushes when nature calls, allaying one of my biggest irrational fears that I would get caught short as the buildings sprang up and that finding public conveniences with somewhere to lock up the bike in time would become more difficult and stressful.

At Johnstone I cross another major artery in the Central Belt road network. It is bright, but not too hot, and everything is going to plan. Reflecting on it now, it was a very exciting ride with so many new challenges. One such new challenge began after I pushed off following a sausage roll and shortbread stop. A faint crunching and grinding whenever I put power down to get myself moving again. I follow the disused railway line over the motorway and into Johnstone proper. Here I get a little lost again but quickly return to the cycle route. However, stopped on the main street, with an unknown equipment problem, I feel very alone and conspicuous.

Paisley is rather terrifying. The advantage of cycle routes in general is that they take you away from the busyness. In disadvantaged areas of urbanity, however, the busyness can be a protection. The underpasses, litter, high-rises and quiet folk sitting by the canals smoking is not an environment I wish to return to soon.

The route seems to be flinging me all over the place. After the run-down suburbs I’m back in a park, and here I largely stay, give or take a few more estates and main roads, until I hit the centre of Glasgow. All the while I have been slowly counting down those little blue signs: City Centre 9 miles; City Centre 6 miles. There is no getting away from the fact that I am already deep into built up Glasgow however, with all the traffic lights ramping up the fear as all that grinding and squeaking erupts when I move off from stationary.

Another underpass, another climb back up to rejoin the main road, then it is back into another park. Once again I’m in the newish suburbs with people, threatening to me by their very presence, going about their Thursday evenings in a manner so very alien to mine. I regain grass and trees. I come across lots of people running – for leisure, not due to criminals.

I cross a busy road, head up a big hill and there is Glasgow. It is oddly stirring to see it, knowing I have made it so far already. I cycle in parallel with the motorway for a stretch, then meet the beginnings of one of Glasgow’s central business districts: pizza restaurants and underground stations. The blue signs don’t let me down, and I follow those for the SECC. Another cyclist is the benefit of an earlier green light to my left and he scythes expertly through the traffic about to cross the arched bridge over the Clyde. I join the queue. There is the SECC, here are lots more traffic lights (there is so much traffic and I’m in such a state of nervous tension that I don’t hear the complaining drivetrain), there are lots of girls crossing the road with little concern for their own safety, here is ‘Govan’ written on the tarmac, there are signs for the city centre, here is the M8. I stop myself in time, I’m pleased to say, but it required a couple of cars overtaking me at about 50mph before I realised that I was on a slip road. I get out the A-Z and frantically search. The hostel seems to be to the north of Kelvingrove Park. After a spell on the pavement, then on the wrong side of the road, I finally join onto Finiestown Street legally and reach the set of traffic lights I would have encountered last October when my mum and I walked from Sauchiehall Street to the SECC for Fleetwood Mac. I get distracted by an Audi R8 and a pedestrian alerts me to the green light for my lane. I follow signs right off Argyle Street north to Kelvingrove galleries. The one way system baffles my planned sequence of streets. But wait: there is Kelvingrove Park, I must be able to go through there. My companions now are students: students sauntering, students sitting, students playing lacrosse. I reach the top of the park and is that Park Terrace? I abandon any adherence to the one-way system now, and very quickly the hostel sign appears. I sag with relief and pride. I’m here in this leafy, neo-Georgian terrace having fought through seemingly everything. My bike is probably knackered but it has got me here in one piece. In my room I chat to two walkers, then make myself some pasta at 9.30PM. I read a bit of Raw Spirit in the lounge, fabulously relaxed. Just like the day to Glen Garioch and back to Huntly, I had done something I neither wanted to nor thought I could do, and my reward was quiet, peaceful exhaustion.

Port Askaig to Carradale, 31 miles

Sunrise over Jura: a mystical and auspicious start.

The promise of freedom and the open sea pacify my inclination to whine at a 5.40AM start. I would feel much worse waking at 9AM in the knowledge that I still had one more day imprisoned in the hotel. It is just the best time to appreciate the beauty of this part of the world and the particularly complex environment that is the shore of Islay, the shore of Jura and the mad sea in between.

Breakfast costs nearly a tenner, but I need the calories that only a canteen cooked breakfast can provide. As I read Raw Spirit the southern-most tips of Islay and Jura slide by. I’m facing north in my seat, and the rocky coast with that famous triad of distilleries is in view for maybe an hour. Before long new land approaches, and so shaky is my grasp of the geography between south western Scotland and Northern Ireland I think it is the latter. It is in fact the Kintyre Peninsula and we are making for the port of Kennacraig.

I change in the car park, and put on some warm stuff: it may be bright but there is a real chill to the wind. At the junction with the main road, right says ‘Campbeltown’, left says ‘Glasgow’. I gulp but go left anyway. It’s just after 9AM, there are only 20 miles separating me with the mercifully three-star Carradale Hotel and I might as well check out Tarbet, that other important harbour.

Riding on the mainland is an unexpected shock to the system. Roads are wider, faster, and better, and motorists don’t wave at you anymore. I make it into Tarbet in good time. It has grown steadily warmer and feels very summery indeed. In the town I look for OS maps of Glasgow and find onlt street level charts for the city centre. I buy one. I have a piece of coffee cake and a hot chocolate, source my lunch, and then head for Carradale.

On the way back I appreciate the reappareance of heavy traffic. Unfortunately, the roads in Argyll are sinuous and knotted, clinging to the sea-chewed land but trying to avoid big hills and forests. This means that if you get a tanker stuck behind you, it is deeply unnerving when they eventually find a straight (and it often isn’t as extended as you might have liked) they must make to overtake you from a near stand-still. This, when you are dealing with a ten-ton truck, calls to mind what it must have been like on board Pricness Leah’s ship in the first Star Wars film as they waited for the star destroyer with Darth Vadar on it to dock. Once sunlight and silence returned to my world after the latest ponderous, glacier-paced manoeuvre, Kennacraig came into view again, and it was time to find my minor road.

It was no such thing. The B-road-cum-cycle route from Kennacraig down the eastern side of the Kintyre Peninsula is neither particularly quiet, nor is it safe. I’m being deadly serious, unless you are just nipping across to the ferry at Claonaig, take the main road. After more than five weeks on the road, this was the worst riding terrain so far. Once you leave the main road it is immediately uphill, and not gentle, nicely rhythmic uphill: short, sharp and painfully steep. It gets worse when you finally start to head south. I made it up the first series of inclines, whistled down the other side where I found more tourers looking very unwell, past signs for Claonaig and began to suffer. The picture you see of the bike with Arran all blue and romantic in the background is indicative of the views to be had on this stretch. Not that I could enjoy them. The picture was taken at the foot of a rearing road that had a 16% gradient warning sign, and it just continued thus for the next 14 miles or so.

One of the most raw and beautiful locations in all of Scotland. But it will eat you if you come with a bike. I'm typing with my thumbs: my other fingers having been digested by the Kintyre Peninsula.

Concerns over water rationing and psychosomatic panic attacks about my chain breaking typify my state of mind as I battle the terrain, the heat and the intolerable head wind. There is nothing between me and Carradale, and if anything the roads are gettig more and more insane. Unless you are a fusion of Alberto Contador and Steve Peat, or are training for a sportive in the Belgian Ardennes, do not come here. The uphills were bad, but the downhills were significantly worse, so steep and twisting with varying levels of surface integrity that I doubted whether my breaks would last.

Midday comes and goes. I want to get out of the sun, if only to stop feeling quite so mad, but the roadside vegetation is too thick or non-existant. At last I find a lonely spruce, and stand in its shadow. I reflect on how pathetic I feel, and how I don’t feel at all prepared for Glasgow. The loneliness is ramped up still further.

Some food inside me, I ought to have felt better. Unfortunately, the road just wasn’t going to let that happen. Grogport, far more attractive than it sounds with unparalleled views of Arran, is in the dip of a horse-shoe of hills. The one down to sea level is about 200 metres long and 16%. The one out again has hairpin bends and averages, AVERAGES 14%. By this stage I have to stop in each passing place that follows a serious incline, and they all are, because they all have big red triangles telling you so. I don’t know how I’m to carry on on the same road to Campbeltown, then retrace my route back up to Claonaig. Either I will die or my bike will. At the time, my degree of fatalism was even more dynamic than this Catch 22 would suggest.

I cannot stress enough how glorious the surroundings were. Deep glens with lush green sides and forests everywhere. A long, more steady downhill section allowed me to appreciate this, but only slightly. I knew I would be grovelling up it the following day. Not too soon, a sign. Not spiritual or religious or anything: just a sign for Carradale. It had spiritual and religious overtones, however, because I was very desperate indeed by this point. I passed further signs promising much in the way of home comforts and fine-dining in the area. here were craft shops and a cosiness that belied its extreme location. I arrived at the hotel, signed in, and hid in my room for a bit, mixing electrolyte cocktails for my hydration and revival.

I feel better for cleaning the bike and myself; worse for a call from home. Three times the signal cuts out, and by the third time we realise that there is very little point in continuing what is less a conversation more a dirge of a soliloquy on my part. At least it proves beyond all reasonable doubt that home cannot help. I must sort myself out. I eat curry, watch some telly and fall asleep, wishing like I have never wished before that it won’t be raining when I wake up.

***

Carradale to Lochranza, 56 miles

Oh, a weather sytem with a sadistic streak. It isn’t really raining, but it might as well be: that special strain of drizzle that succeeds in getting you wetter than proper rain. I had wanted to be on the road no later than 8.15 to get to Springbank for my 10AM tour, but what with one thing and another (breakfast, visits to the toilet, not being able to move about the hotel quite so fast on account of all the sobbing), it is closer to 8.30 when I push off into the mist and become instantly soaked.

I have to put the overtrousers on. It is too heavy to simply get a little damp. The road continues in the same vein as yesterday: ruinous elevations and sudden, terrifying descents. On the former, your head is drenched in sweat anyway, so you want to take your hood off, but on the latter you would freeze to death. I stop after the third ramp that demanded me to slog it out in very bottom gear and pant. I haven’t panted since Cairn o’Mount and the Devil’s Elbow. It only gets worse: a 16% blind hairpin bend. Fortunately I was able to move into the middle of the road slightly, because being forced into the corkscrew inner bend would have been impossible. I squeakily brake on all the descents, but I still fly off the bottom of them at more than 30mph. When I see Davaar island, I know I’m close. We holidayed in Campbeltown a few years ago and enjoyed weather very different to this. When the tide was low we walked to said island, saw the cave painting and walked back, harvesting mussels for our tea as we went.

I still have some memory of that time, and it was deeply incongruous to be in Campbeltown again under present circumstances. After many wrong turns and contraventions of the one-way system, I find Cadenheads. They send me on my way again because the distillery is elsewhere. At least I knew I was lost, and so aborted my charge on the main road back up towards Kennacraig. On the way back into town, I then saw the sign for the distillery.

An hour later I left Cadenheads for Campbeltown and some lunch. I didn’t fancy a Bangladeshi curry so found a cafe which served me soup, a toastie and some water while I waited for my jersey to dry. It never truly dried, but I never truly cared. I did some shopping, bought a whole box of washing tablets when I only wanted two and made the sensible decision that I would return to Claonaig via the main road. This turned out to be very sensible indeed. It was falt and it was fast, with a nice tailwind. It wasn’t even that busy, either. I accepted that I wasn’t likely to make the 4PM sailing but that was alright: I’d bought more food in the Co-op for just this occurrence and it was actually quite warm and pleasant with these nice views of Gigha. Then the rain returns.

Looking from the main road west towards Gigha.

When the weather closes in on the west coast of Scotland, you feel utterly lost and alone. Your vision is restricted to a soft sphere of about 70 metres in any direction and it begins to feel like a moving asylum. When I heard a huge crunch from my chainring area, I thought my chain had snapped into many small pieces, stranding me. When I continued to move forwards my moving my legs up and down I reasoned that it must have been nothing after all. In such situations, though, one niggling anxiety can assume megalithic proportions and genuine, physical weight.

I stop and check the map, because this road has now outstayed its welcome. I’m not that far from the turning to Claonaig now. I eat some food and carry on. I skid onto the “minor road” for the second time in two days. The hills and drops are all about survival, and I manage to make it to the ferry terminal by quietly talking myself through each up and down, counting them off in my head.

The view to Arran, playing with its silk scarves of mist.

I sit in the bus shelter, the only form of protection at Claonaig if the weather turns nasty, eat my crisps, sausage roll and chocolate bar, talk to my good friend Stephen and feel imeasurably better. I have achieved. I have tired out my inner touring cyclist and now he can give me a bit of peace. I nearly freeze on the ferry over: yet another different way of doing things over the seas. You walk on over the same ramp that the cars use, buy your tickets on board and prop your bike up against the wall of the car deck.

There is some joy as I disembark at the other end. Lochranza has just a lovely feel to it: not a village as such but a sequence of houses strung like beads along the road. Lochranza Castle, the sea loch and the massive bulk of the heather’ed and bracken’ed hills are wonderful to behold. So focused was I on completing today that I have even managed to forget about Glasgow! Oh no wait; there it is again…

Lochranza is completely lovely, even in the grey. There is a happy, island feel to it that I couldn't help but respond to. It's so peaceful, too.

The golden eagles may have been up there somewhere, but I wasn't likely to see them.

Lochranza, Isle of Arran, KA27 8HJ, 01770 830264. Isle of Arran Distillers. www.arranwhisky.com

THE APPEARANCE AND LOCATION:      *****      Arran is often described as Scotland in miniature and the more in-land portion of the village does evoke the Scottish Highlands to an impressive degree, even down to the thick mist. Mountains, beaches, sea lochs, golden eagles; all are within a stone’s throw from the distillery. The distillery itself looks quite similar to a collection of eco-homes. I’m not sure I like so many separate pieces of architecture, although it is clean, minimalist, and a model for all modern distilling sites.

TOURS PROVIDED:

‘Standard Tour’: £5. See ‘My Tour’ below.

DISTILLERY-EXCLUSIVE BOTTLINGS:      N/A

My Tour – 20/05/2010

THE RUNNING COMMENTARY:      **

THE PROCESS AND EQUIPMENT:      *

Mash tun and stills.

Notes:      The tour begins at the end, almost. You are taken out of the smuggler’s bothy in which you watch the obligatory video and out into the grounds. This is where you see a rack of dis-used casks of varying sizes and where you receive the maturation and wood policy talk. At Arran it is quite impressive, with not just the standard ex-Bourbon and Sherry oak employed, but wine casks from all over Europe. The mashing, fermenting and distilling all take place under the one roof. The open-plan layout makes the whole process very easy to follow.

GENEROSITY:      ** (A choice of the 10YO or the Arran Gold Cream Liqueur, then another from the impressive range of wine finishes.)

VALUE FOR MONEY:      *

SCORE:      6/10 *s

Washbacks and stills.

COMMENT:      I had actually visited this distillery before, but long long ago before I was ever interested in the stuff it produced. This would have been very soon after it opened, though, so one of my parents should have been taking notes in the off-chance that I might become a single malt fanatic. The VC is stunning, there’s no other word for it. Deeply modern with an indoor waterfall and barley field (not growing, I hasten to add). There is the Eagle’s Nest cafe just upstairs which has a very good name. The whole eagle connection is because in the hills above the distilleries there is to be found nesting a pair of golden eagles. Construction of the distillery was postponed for a few months so that the birds could raise young. Allegedly they performed a “fly past” on the day of the VC’s opening but I’m not sure I believed that. Kate, our guide, had had some first-hand experience of Arran’s now vanished illicit whisky-making traditions. When she was a girl, playing in the hills, she came across a secret still hidden away. This personal footnote was wonderfully effective at evoking how things were done when distillers were outlaws and Arran was famous for producing some of the best illegal booze in Scotland. I appreciated the tales of the lengths people went to smuggle it off the island under the noses of excisemen. I was a bit confused as to why we couldn’t see inside the warehouse, though. As a distillery built to capitalise on this age of the tourist, I would have thought that access would have been arranged. I forgave them this oversight because they were very keen on pushing my other whisky touchstone: terroir. Arran’s is supposed to be a combination of sea breezes, mountain air, mosses, heather and rowan blossom although a point I have always made about Arran is that it hasn’t a truly distinctive island (maritime) character. This was a very relaxed experience, and would have endured as such were it not for the cattle grids they have to obstruct ones entrance and exit. The metal sleepers that comprise the contraption are rounder and more widely-spaced than most cattle grids, and so I elected, in my cleats, to walk the bike carefully across for moist metal and thin tyres have never to my knowledge got along. This would have worked a treat had some complete fool not decided in his motor home that he couldn’t wait for me to make the crossing and roared into the grounds himself. The rattling and flexing caused by the progress of this moron could have been enough for me to loose my footing. As it was I avoided a broken angle and experienced the greedy continued nourishment of the hatred I have for the minority of other road users.

I apologise, but it is very difficult to find an alternative angle for photographing the distillery.

Well Close, Campbeltown, Argyll, PA28 6ET, 01586 551710. J & A Mitchell. www.springbankdistillers.com

APPEARANCE AND LOCATION:      ***      I missed the lane that has the distillery at the end of it on the way out of Campbeltown. I didn’t spot the Chinese restaurant the man in Cadenheads had given me as a key landmark. I found out where the Co-op was, though, and on the way back down I saw the sign on the inner wall advertising the whereabouts of one of Scotland’s best-loved and most prestigious malts, attempting to keep the Campbeltown appellation alive by itself with three different malt epxressions and the newly re-fitted Glengyle. It is tucked away in the very heart of commercial and residential Campbeltown, but feels like a pocket of the past, so traditional and functional is every courtyard and space.

TOURS PROVIDED:

‘Standard Tour’: £6. See ‘My Tour’ below.

‘Tour and Tasting’: £10. The standard tour but, when you return to Cadenhead’s you receive four malts to taste and a miniature.

‘Silver Tour’: £15. When back in the comfort of the Cadenhead shop, you are taken into the Tasting Room and are met with 6-7 drams, plus a miniature.

‘Gold Tour’: £20. This involves a tour of both Springbank and nearby Glengyle. Then it is back to the Tasting Room for 6-7 drams.

DISTILLERY-EXCLUSIVE BOTTLINGS:      N/A

My Tour – 19/05/2010

THE RUNNING COMMENTARY:      **

THE PROCESS AND EQUIPMENT:      ***

Notes:      This had to be the most interactive tour of the entire odyssey. Obviously, it helped that I was the sole recipient of the tour for the first time since Highland Park. Jim, my guide, said I was very lucky to tour when I did: the Springbank team is comprised of six men who malt the barley over the course of a week, and then distill. I toured at a time when distilling was taking place and malt was to be seen on the floors, as well. The maltings are airy and smart, with artwork adorning the walls. A panel was removed when we got to the mill and this was my first peak at the machinery’s inner workings. There isn’t much to report: it’s as you would expect it to be, but a worthy addition, nonetheless. Then I was allowed to dip a finger into the underback and appreciate just how sugary wort is. From the mash tun, which much of my clothing was propped up against following my hellishly damp ride to the distillery, we moved into the still room and the ajoining tun room. The smell was remarkable, and frustratingly I can’t pin point why. It just smelt more organic and “traditional”; dusty and musty with a real punch of sweet, pungent alcohol. It caught my attention, at any rate, which must count for something after 38 distillery visits. They were making a spirit run using local barley, the first time they have bought and used malt made from Campletown farmers since 1966. Ten years from now, there will once again be a Springbank Local Barley expression, and I got to stick my finger in the spirit safe as the middle cut was running. Again, it was quite powerful stuff, with a steely edge and sweetness. I wasn’t completely won over by it. They ferment for a very long 70 hours and the resulting wash is charged into the wash still which is fired with a direct oil flame. That which runs off the spirit still may not be called Springbank. If it was made using unpeated malt, and distilled three times, it is Hazelburn. Two-and-a-half times distilled with a phenolic count of 12-15ppm is the eponymous Springbank. Longrow is kilned over peat fires for 30 hours, resulting in malt of 50-55ppm of phenols but is distilled only twice. In the warehouses, casks are filled up to three times, and all casks vatted to create an age-statemented bottling will be the same age. This surprised me. As is well-known, when marking on the bottle an age statement, that is the youngest whisky in the bottle but there may well be portions within it that are significantly older. According to Jim, and I double-checked with him on this, your 10YO Springbank will be 100% 10-years-old. The moistening of my index finger hadn’t stopped with the spirit safe. Jim took me deeper into the fecund murk of the warehouse where there was a cask with a bleeding wound on its side. This was a 4YO Springbank, and tasted very authoritative indeed. There is a Springbank whisky school which allows you to come and work in the distillery for a week, gaining a practical insight into every stage of the process. There was a crowd of Americans in residence while I was there who seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely on the malting floors.

GENEROSITY:      **

VALUE FOR MONEY:      **

SCORE:      9/10 *s

COMMENT:      Despite the truly disgusting conditions (both meterological and terrain-wise) I perked up considerbly thanks to my tour. Jim was very enthusiastic and knowledgable and his attempts to fashion a launderette out of the mash tun were admirable, for all they fell a long way short of the Glen Garioch still room. It was a relief to get out of the wet stuff, even if only 40% dried effectively. Springbank is another independently-owned distilling enterprise and is super traditional in its design and approach. Nothing is superficial or unnecessary. The whisky produced is commonly said to be a malt-lover’s malt. Well, for the distillery aficionado, it presses all the right buttons, too. Worth the journey from wherever you happen to be, and as you can see, they have no qualms about amateur photography.