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Further Elements #1

A bike race around the Scottish Cairngorms, October 2023

By Greg Annandale

November 1^st, 2023

Further Elements: 27th - 30th October 2023, the inaugural edition of the Scottish version of Camille McMillan's series of bike races. 450+km and 7,000+m of riding / climbing / hiking / river crossing / bog-wading.

The weather was, predictably for Scotland in late October, wet. Fortunately not quite to the level of the preceding weekend with storm Babet, but enough to ensure that the first day was particularly grim and that the rivers were still swollen and fast-flowing.

Congrats to everyone who took part in a pretty remarkable race, and in particular to the joint winners Neil Phillips and Laurens ten Dam (finishing in a frankly incredible 26 hrs 50 mins). For more information and the full leaderboard / race replay, see the Further website and the race tracker at Follow My Challenge.

Thanks hugely to Camille for putting all of this on and having me over once more, to Jon at Restrap for making my trip up possible (and doing all of the van driving), and Rupert from Albion for being an excellent van & photo companion throughout the weekend.

As ever, the nature of these races make them particularly difficult to cover anywhere close to their entirety; here are the images captured from a few choice spots along the way...

(see the Further Pyrénées #1 story)

Where?

The route started and finished at Corrour which is the highest mainline train station in the UK (the most western point on the map below), and we were hosted by the wonderful folk at Corrour Station House.