Ride 10/08/2025 Aug Randonee Pitlochry

Forgot to post this yesterday.
Today’s ride was the Aug Randonee up to Pitlochry and back. 5 of us doing this today and weather wise it’s warm, little wind but a little overcast here and there. This is the longest Randonee I’ve organised this year, since I’ve never actually ridden up to Pitlochry, but one well worth doing on a ‘good’ weather day 😀 Not exactly a flat route, which does make it a little harder with the distance, but not an insurmountable one either. We would start off by heading over Cleish and along and down to Milnathort before heading over Wicks O’Baiglie and Glenfarg and down to Bridge of Earn. From here we would head into Perth for our first stop of the day, which for me was just a cup of coffee, I was carrying a lot of energy gels/bars just for this occasion. Once out of Perth we would be cycling quieter roads on our way to Dunkeld, over a still lumpy route, although most of the big stuff was behind us, and of course would need to be traversed again on the way back 😬 Once at Dunkeld we would then be using mostly cycle track (route 77/7) which was because at this point we were paralleling the dreaded A9 which at points we would have to cross, and unfortunately this is where my routing skills would let me down ☹️ it pays to ride this route myself just to iron out the kinks, but I just don’t have time for that. One of the A9 cosses was right across the A9 itself, which wasn’t too bad the first time since it was still morning, the other times were via the cycle path which was fine, but on the way back this would cause some issues. Anyway we got to Pitlochry without incident and stopped for our second cafe stop at Escape Route cafe (formally Jessie’s) for some much needed food. Soup, coke and pancakes were had for the day and most welcome it was, although I may have over done it on the pancakes, I ordered 5 but could only manage 3, the guys picked up the leftovers 😁 We then headed back the way we came back to Dunfermline. It was on this part of our journey we had to do a little detour, as said crossing the A9 was an issue if you weren’t using a path or bridge and we did try to cross the road itself on the way back, at the same place we came in on, but by this time the road was just too busy to cross so we detoured back a little bit to use a underpass to get across but other than that the route back was identical as the route up, next time I’ll amed this to take the A9 into better consideration. Anyway on the way back we stopped in Perth again to fill up on water and food as required before heading back to Bridge of Earn and up to Milnathort. Of course we would now have to do a lot of climbing on very tired legs, especially over Wicks O’Baiglie and Cleish 😆 but we hadn’t gone too fast today and I had fuelled well, so the climb, although slower than usual was fine. From here it was mostly downhill to Dunfermline although I didn’t go into town but rather along to Kingseat and Cowdenbeath and home that way. So, 132 miles clocked up, over 7500 feet of climbing 🫣 at an avg speed of 16 mph, which equates to a tough but great ride to do 👍😄