The Ordnance Survey’s
We give some love to the Ordnance Survey Explorer 440 (Glen Cassley and Glen Oykel) – the worst-selling map in its entire range
Explorer 440 (Glen Cassley & Glen Oykel) is the worst-selling map in its entire range. Undeterred, Trevor Ward travelled to the wilds of Scotland for a Highland adventure involving a flat tyre, a leaping stag and guntoting Slovenians.
It’s a moonless October night and I’m racing along a remote single-track road in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, holding a torch for illumination in one hand and gripping my front brake hood with the other. As the last light of the day ebbs away, the whistling starts. Having been given an impromptu lesson about the wildlife by a group of stalkers at my hotel bar the previous night, I recognise these as the calls of female deer.
Then I hear another sound, a cross between a grunt and a roar, and I see a large dark shadow on my right converging quickly with the road.
The stag leaps a ditch and lands directly in front of me. My torchlight picks out a rippling haunch and glassy eye. I’m not sure if it looks threatened or threatening but one flick of its huge antlers could send me into the middle of next week.
I’m still halfway through my elongated, one-handed braking when the beast disappears into the darkness. The sound of his roaring has been replaced by the drumming of my heart.
And then things take a turn for the worse.
I’ve lost sight of the truck taillights I was chasing. My co-rider, a 71-year-old audaxer, is in that truck. He’s being driven away by a group of armed Slovenians, and now I’ve lost them. It’s just me and the whistling and roaring of various sexcrazed animals. I resume pedalling as fast as the pencil-thin beam of light from the torch will let me.
As Big Rides go, I’ve definitely had better. Twenty-four hours earlier, in the bar of my hotel, one of the regulars had asked if I was here for the shooting or fishing. For a bike ride, I replied. A deathly hush descended before the groups of stalkers and their international clients resumed their chat about shooting boar, stags and badgers. You could almost cut the testosterone in the air with a 12-inch Bowie knife.
I unfolded my map. The OS Explorer 440 (Glen Cassley and Glen Oykel) isn’t just any map, however. It’s the worst-selling map in the OS range. For some reason, the 800-plus square kilometres it covers haven’t captured the public’s imagination. Explorer OL17 covering Snowdonia, for example, sells 180 times more copies.
Most of the map is a swirl of brown contours and green patches,
interrupted by the blue smudge of Loch Shin. The nearest thing to a conurbation is the village of Rosehall, which boasts the hotel I’m staying at, a post office and a public telephone.
“It’s one of the least populated parts of Britain,” says my drinking companion. “That’s why I moved here from London five years ago.” He pauses, before adding darkly: “But it’s changing for the worse. We’re starting to get overflow from the North Coast 500 because that’s so busy. I never used to see more than three cars on the eight-mile drive to Lairg [population 900 and just off the map]. These days it’s more like nine.”
It had been impossible to plot a loop that kept entirely within the confines of the map, so I settled on a 145km circuit that extended beyond it, taking in a stretch of the NC500, before returning to Glen Cassley via a road delineated on the map by double broken lines – “other road, drive or track.”
Enarg Falls is a set of rocky steps transporting a thunderous rush of crystal-clear water
My co-rider, local audax organiser Steve Carroll, tells me this section includes “a few miles of rough stuff” but that we’ll be fine. Following his advice, I’ve stuck some 28s on my road bike’s wheels.
His saddlebag is the size of a bungalow, so I assume it contains everything we will need in case of an emergency, including pump and lights. I therefore leave my own behind at the hotel, a decision I am to regret several hours later.
We set off into Glen Oykel. My drinking buddy had recommended a little detour off the main road to see some leaping salmon, so I duly turn left after crossing the River Oykel and plunge down a road that soon dissolves into a rutted, grassy track. Steve doesn’t fancy the additional mileage so has continued ahead.
After a couple of wrong turns I find Enarg Falls, a set of rocky steps transporting a thunderous rush of crystal-clear water. It’s a beautiful sight – I recognise it later on the cover of a fishing brochure in my hotel – and I have it all to myself, but sadly don’t spot any salmon. When I catch up with Steve, he claims to have seen a Golden Eagle hovering overhead, which strikes me as gratuitous one-upmanship.
We have climbed out of Glen Oykel and are now on an empty plateau offering views of some distinctive peaks on the horizon, notably the double-humped ridge of Suilven, rising from the moorland like a sleeping mammoth.
Steve was an accomplished mountaineer – his three daughters are all named after Scottish peaks – before he took up cycling. He joined Audax UK and earned its Super Randonneur award after riding a series of 200, 300, 400 and 600km events in a season. He is now the Highlands organiser for Cycling UK.
By now we have joined the route of the NC500, though the traffic is thankfully much lighter than during the peak summer months when petrolheads of the two- and fourwheeled varieties descend to take advantage of roads largely unencumbered by traffic lights, roundabouts or speed cameras.
The first test of the day is the 4km drag up from Loch Assynt over the Quinag hills. Steve lets me stretch my legs on it while he spins along on his 1960s custom-built steel frame at a more gentlemanly pace. A bigger challenge is the scarcity of places to stop for coffee, lunch or supplies. By the time we reach Kylesku on the banks of Loch Gleann Dubh, we have completed 60km and barely passed a solitary building, let alone one serving flat whites and carrot cake.
Having researched the rest of the route, I know there’s likely to be nothing else available, so we decide to fuel up at the village’s only hotel. Like everywhere else on the NC500, prices are exorbitant but our haddock and chips (£15) go down a treat.
After crossing the Kylesku bridge – a modern masterpiece of sinuous simplicity that replaced the vehicle ferry in 1984 - the hard work starts as the road winds through the barren, rocky landscape in a succession of short, steep climbs. It’s a relief when we turn off the NC500 and the road flattens for the stretch back south towards Loch Shin.
We are now once again amongst the closely packed contours of the Explorer 440 map and the drama of the scenery shifts up a notch. We
are in a narrow glen with a loch on one side and the looming mass of Ben Stack on the other. We eventually arrive at the turn off which will lead us to the highest point of today’s ride.
It’s a private, gated road built by Scottish Hydro to service two power stations, but walkers and cyclists are welcome. The road surface belies the fact it’s one of the remotest Strava segments in the UK – mine is only the 19th name on the leaderboard.
The statistics – three miles at an average gradient of seven per cent, peaking at 17 and reaching an altitude of 402 metres – inevitably don’t do justice to the raw beauty of the surroundings. A ripple of whaleback ridges, bathed in a pink glow from the setting sun, extends as far as the eye can see.
My only concern is when I check on Steve’s progress and see that the gap between us is growing. It’s about 15 minutes before he finally joins me at the top. He wants to rest and get his breath back, but I’m worried we are running out of daylight.
The steep and technical descent delivers us into the depths of Glen Cassley. From here, the road becomes a rocky, rutted cart track where we have to wrestle our wheels through a sea of stones and boulders.
Amazingly, we complete the sharply undulating four kilometres without incident, no punctures, not even a dropped chain. But by the time we’ve reached the road that will take us the 18km down Glen Cassley to my hotel, the sun has already set and the light is fading fast.
At the crest of every rise, I look back to check on Steve. I’m worried that he’s slipping further behind and his hi-viz jacket is getting harder and harder to pick out in the gloom.
At one point, there is no sign of him at all. I wait and the minutes drag on. I ride back and find him after a couple of kilometres. He’s suffered a puncture. He’s replaced the inner tube but is now struggling to inflate it in the near pitch-black darkness. “Don’t you have lights in your bag?” I ask. “I have this,” he says, handing me a small torch. I hold it while he connects the pump to the valve. But the seal is broken. It’s not inflating. And I’ve left my own pump behind. We’re doomed.
“Give me your phone and I’ll ring the hotel and get someone to rescue us,” I say. But there’s no signal. Then I see headlights coming down the glen. It’s a 4x4 truck driving home after a day’s hunting. Despite the evidence of our mishap strewn before him in his headlights, the driver asks, “What can I do for you?”
He has room for only one of us. He has a stalker and a Slovenian couple from my hotel in the truck with him.
A ripple of whaleback ridges, bathed in a pink glow from the setting sun, extends as far as the eye can see
Sensing that Steve would be just as happy to bed down in the middle of the glen for the night – earlier he’d told me how he’d once spent 12 hours abseiling overnight down a glacier in the Dolomites - I practically have to bundle him and his bike into the vehicle before the offer is withdrawn.
The final twist is when I get back to the hotel after my encounter with the stag – there is no sign of Steve or the Slovenians. While I shower and change, I consider the possibilities. They’ve got lost? Unlikely, as there was only one road to the hotel. Kidnap? Steve’s a nice bloke, but probably not worth that much. It’s only when I’m in the bar wondering whether I should call the police that they eventually turn up. They’d dropped the stalker off at home before returning to the hotel.
We slump down in front of the fire and toast our survival with pints of the local brew. Explorer 440, unloved by so many, bears the creases and stains of a day’s adventure. The crackle of testosterone fills the air.