I’m going to come right out and say it – for the longest time I have felt like a bit of a fraud.
Not that I’m deliberately fooling anybody of course, it’s just that at its core Stolen Goat is all about a sense of freedom. A passion to get out there and cycle in beautiful spaces for all the pleasure, health benefits and inner peace that it brings.
Honestly, I haven’t been living up to that for a while now.
Since riding Chase the Sun in the summer of 2023, I’ve only been on the bike what feels like a handful of times, a mere fraction of my usual activity. The reasons are various but it was the kind of things that can impact all of us from time to time – pressures of family life, work and a couple of health issues all adding up to the point where cycling and adventure ended up taking a back seat.
As the summer of 2024 came and went in the same vein, I realised that a hugely positive part of my life had almost entirely faded into the background. As this disconnect grew, I knew that something had to change.
When Phil of Find Flow got in touch, suggesting that we meet up to experience what he had on offer in the cycling paradise that is the Cairngorms, I decided that the time had come to embrace adventure again and responded with a resounding “YES!”.
Gathering a couple of great friends, Raz and Alec, piling bikes into the van and escaping on a Scottish road trip turned out to be the absolute tonic I needed to reignite my love of cycling but more than that, a love of adventure shared with good people. It was, in fact, a perfect weekend in every way.
Alec, an incredible visual storyteller, has kindly taken our experience and brought it all together into this fantastic online magazine. If you love adventure, beautiful scenery, cycling trails and stories of friendship or even if you just want to know more about how we found flow in the Cairngorms… Please grab yourself a cuppa and dive right in. Click the image below to see the full magazine (opens in a new window)…
