Day 1 - After a sleepless night on the sleeper train, we had a full Scottish at the Blair Atholl Arms and headed off for a day of beautiful weather and terrain!
The singletrack section along Loch an Duin was a personal highlight of the day.
We pitched up outside Drakes Bothy for the night.
Day 2 - Things got interesting. An easy start to the day out to Loch Morlich with some breakfast and a resupply at the Pine Marten then it was back on the singletrack and solid few hours of hike a bike through rain, sleet & snow. We stopped at the Fords of Avon refuge to get some shelter from the wind, make some hot chocolate and try to prepare ourselves for the final push to Bob Scott's bothy.
We arrived at the bothy around 8pm and chatted to a couple of Dutch guys who also had a fun day hiking
At midnight another bikepacker arrived looking extremely wet and glad to be out of the rain. 
Day 3 saw more hiking over some boggy terrain (thanks to the previous days rain) to get over into Glen Feshie. We had the option here to take the eroded footpath, or cross the Feshie 3 times. We went for the river crossing option but when we reached the second crossing with no safe way across, we made the decision to retreat to the footpath.
However......in our crossing back over the Feshie we had a small incident involving an Ortlieb QR fork pack getting knocked from the mount and waving goodbye as it sailed down the river. They float very well.....
Once we were back on dry land we realised that the bag contained our main stove (luckily we had a spare) but unfortunately both of our gas canisters. Our lunch plan of a warm rehydrated meal was floating down the Feshie and our lesson learned that the spare gas might be better carried in a different bag!
Onto the foothpath, with a few eroded sections to deal with.....and then onto Ruigh Aiteachain bothy to eat some snacks and esacpe the rain before heading into Aviemore. The last section of road was very welcome at this point and we made it in time to grab some gas! We stayed at Oakwood campsite just outside Aviemore and the burger van there was also very welcome!
Day 4 - A pleasant day back on the outer loop. Lovely trails through Abernethy forest, hot soup in Tomintoul and of course a few more river crossings.
A final stretch of singletrack by Loch Builg then lead into a stunning decent into Braemar. We stayed at Rucksacks bunkhouse were the owner Kate went above and beyond to make sure we had everything we needed and could dry out all of our kit for the final day.
Day 5 - Covering some of the same ground along the River Dee before we were back on the singletrack heading towards Glen Tilt. Perhaps we should have carried on here instead of following the ITT route, as we had another hard afternoon in the wet and boggy conditions.
We made it back to the Blair Atholl bar by 6pm with a few hours to enjoy a well deserved pint and some food before heading back on the sleeper train.
I've put together a few clips of the trip here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqY-vvom_ek
Thanks for reading/looking!
Sam
