’cause there’s no road.
“what, exactly do we have the Victorians to be grateful for?”
-forbye puritanical sexual repression, gloomy over-stuffed morning rooms and the moniker of Royal Deeside? A pertinent question that’s been with me for a few days now.
The credit crunch and the demise of oil are said to have hit the north-east and Aberdeen badly. Jobs have ceased, property prices have shrunk, progeny have returned to mother; however, it’s difficult to conceive of these woes as I cycle into the city. Sunday morning and the preponderance of passing traffic could be classed as luxury off-roader-sports saloons, generically Germanic, generally tagged with personalised plates. I’d taken to surveying, keeping a score, counting one hundred cars and totalling forty-three hits. It helps to keep auto-angst at bay as yet another under-sexed over-sized, engrossed tonnage of steel passes uncomfortably close. The North Deeside road was never conceived to handle this affliction of auto-obesity. Some of today’s cars are 25% wider than their original prototypes; unfortunately the asphalts aren’t. It’s not only the family saloon that’s expanded, as a Brobdingnagian dung spreader comes rumbling around the next bend, down the middle of the road. One wheel mushes the far verge, road-kill gutters squirting across the road, whilst the other tyre has appropriated a disproportionate percentage of my carriageway. Dwarfed. Shrunken. Overshadowed. Now I know how that other traveller, Gulliver, must have felt.
Fortunately we don’t have to play for too long out here, as I can make out the tricolour signature in red, white and blue, a sign pointing to the bed of a railway track, and a rails to trails route. The blessed relief of escape as I slip off that highway is palpable, relaxing in the knowledge that we have this cycle haven for the rest of our day, all the way to Ballater.
The quiet contemplation of the River Dee lies to one side, with the constant grumble of traffic on the other; screaming motorcycles head for the rally, timber wagons head for the mill, campervans head for hell. It’s not just the safety, but also the sense of unconditional entitlement. I’ve a right to be here. Its a timely reminder of the enlightened efforts by local authorities, sustainable transport campaigning groups and the myriad of volunteers, who have created this pleasure. Twenty years ago, we would have been competing for that grudgingly surrendered part metre of leaf-littered road-gutter. Actually, I wouldn’t. I’d be away some other place, for which I’d like to think that both I and Deeside would be the poorer. That, and the chip shop in Ballater would have been down a couple of pie suppers.
Tombstone sleepers.
So it’s a thank you to the ‘Victorians’ for the railway’s construction, although possibly not a full hearted one and that’s due entirely to one Victorian in particular. The original intention of the Great North of Scotland Railway had been to extend the line beyond Ballater; however, The Queen has purchased her retreat and would rather not have to share her Balmoral with her plebeian ‘day-tripping’ subjects. She wouldn’t have been amused. Whereas, I most certainly am. So much so, that we cycle the North Deeside trail one and a half times, even camping out on one frosty night at Dinnet, just to be able to prolong the experience.