Life broke out at the same time, 0700 with another nice little fire and a set of kettles and billy cans. Chris continued to gorge himself on a fine concoction of exotica with lice, and Tim also consumed delicacies known only to himself. The other three were a tad more conventional and the scrawny one even stuck with cereals.
0900 and time to nip up the road to meet Suzanne again at Onich, where she was waiting patiently in her car for us. She followed as we headed up the lochside again through the Fort and up through magnificent Leanachan Forest to Spean Bridge. Keeping right there put us on another fabulously picturesque route along the A86 following the river through Glen Spean with Terry desperately trying to identify known landmarks along the way to Strathmashie Forest. Very hard to avoid arriving at Laggan though, although it ain't the only one up these parts with that name.
We arrived at the Trail head at about 1000 to start the ride soon after in brilliant hot sunshine with the ground bone dry, yippee! We climbed to the top of the Black, deviated a while to take in some of the Red around the back of Airs Rock. The leaders got a bit lost leaving the Gollum as the only one on course to complete the Black, so he backtracked and rejoined them to complete the top Red loop, culminating in the bermy dash down the Blue/Orange to the Centre. Speaking of oranges, Jason was so far extremely pleased with the performance of his new bike, hardly bothering to alter any of the suspension settings on his surprisingly lightweight new toy.
We took a lunch break as it was around that time, then saddled up again to finish what we'd started. This time we started where the Red pulls away from the Black to take in Airs Rock again before continuing back up the hill to the Wolf's Lair way above us on the twisty singletrack climb, reminiscent of the Grizedale North Face done back-to-front. We were on the Black proper now, and Terry managed to get his nose in front for the start of the circus. He'd christened this affectionately as "Dubh bàs" or Black Death after his first trip here, and it was about to show us why.
The first few rocky chutes, drop-offs and rock gardens were taken at a fairly measured pace until we began to get some rhythm and speeded up a wee bit. Soon after the Gollum hoiked himself off onto a few small rocks, but was up again quickly and still in the lead. Less than a minute later he did the same again, falling on the same side and doing his right wrist. Again he had time to remount just in time to stay ahead of Jay, now picking up speed dramatically as he got to grips with the new bike's handling. Of course, Terry didn't know who it was snapping at his rear wheel so he shouted "Who's the b@st@rd?" at which Jason cackled and according to him later, dropped back a bit. However, the third and most painful error from Terry came only a couple of minutes later when he actually saw his front tyre let go as it crossed a moisture line on a lovely boulder garden. Wallop. Face down onto a rock with a loud bang and a "f;;k me!", but his "pal" behind who had "dropped back" proceeded to try and chop off his left ear as he took avoiding action. Some gap that was, not.
Meantime behind, Suzanne had gone off the side of the trail and appeared with a nice little bullet hole in the side of her left calf with blood oozing nicely. She seemed to think a twig had gone in there rather than colliding with one of the zillion possible sharp rocks. She ignored it and rode on regardless. We took a little care with the final chute and then lasted out to the finish. Up the fireroad to the picnic table at the head of the Orange Freeride trail where we stopped for a rest. That's when Terry decided he'd ridden up enough hills and lost enough blood for one day, so he waited there while the others succumbed to Tim's suggestion to head back up the hill again and do the missing chunk of Red.
About half an hour later (and a discreet walk into the woods by the lone rider) the squad returned with grins bigger than Whales. Or Wales, it don't matter. "You missed the best part, you old w@n:er!" they all yelled in unison. Or GMWU, I'm not sure. Typical, bloody typical. Whatever, I just didn't have the energy to follow them upwards again so there you go. I'll get it next time. Sods.
We were manic beasties down the final Orange run - built for speed as an upgrade to the old Blue back to the Visitor Centre this thing is your typical racetrack with tabletops, whoops and fantastically quick berms. It's Spooky Wood on lighter fuel and put the icing on a sumptuous if slightly poisonous cake. We loaded up and headed straight home again, this time with Suzanne following us in her car to find out where the Red Squirrel was so she could meet us tomorrow for the long drive south. We paused in Glencoe Village to buy a sack of logs and some barby topups before settling down to brilliant clear evening sunshine, a raging fire, sausages and burgers by the score and a game of darts with hardly any score at all. Bed at 2315. Sno... the usual, he never fails.