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Paradise
Lost
Back on track after fording the stream the going soon becomes firmer and faster, at a sudden rise the path scales a rocky outcrop then another with a scary off-camber to the right. Hit them fast and without (too much) fear and you'll ace them. Don't fluff the off-camber section! A long bracken bordered grass straight follows until you reach a gate in a stand of trees. immediately after the gate is a drop in to a 'v' shaped ditch. Yank up your front wheel or you'll come a cropper in the bottom of this bike trap. Finally and with a sense of great loss you swoop down to a farm track and the valley has at last run out of magic, so we thought. Up through the gate and past the farm yard with it's obligatory fierce and vocal collies then bearing left bags you the bottom of a brutal climb.
Please
Sir... Can I have some more?
The brutality of this one is it's nightmare like, seemingly infinite perspective. Keep your eyes on your front tyre and you'll be OK, look up and your mental fate is sealed. A short way after the top the loop is complete as the forest road joins the lakeside outward leg from earlier on. Now we were tired but we were surely not done. A quick look at the map and we decided to do the second, shorter loop as well. Turning left on to the now familiar lakeside trail of three hours ago we set a fast pace to match our ambitious new route plan. In short order we reached the turn off which heads up towards an isolated looking barn. The isolation turns out to be an illusion as a little further on the bridleway passes through the yard of a small farmhouse.
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It's a kinda
Magic
An unassuming rocky grass double track climbs from here and affords one fun drop, before rising and fading on to high open grassland. There are faint ruts bearing right across here and we followed these as the gradient tipped in our favour. Suddenly the magic of the Doethie valley struck us once more at full force, we were high up on top of it's steep left side with a birds eye view of it's grandest aspect . This experience is what walkers call 'The Surprise' when the finest view of an entire route is suddenly revealed and you stop in your tracks to gawp and wonder. Not for too long though, a madcap
descent awaited and we plunged over it's edge with a devil take the hindmost whoop of joy.
We barreled down this grassy Eden way too fast and almost missed the right turn down and through a rocky cutting then left to follow it almost to the valley floor. The singletrack gets a little swamped under the bracken here but remembering our mornings course we picked it up quickly and soon completed a glorious take 2 of the lovely lower Doethie. Which put us right back at the bottom of that brutal climb again...
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