The Oldest Munro Bagger, A Secret Bunker and Bikes Galore

Calum Maclean meets Kerry MacPhee and Beth Legg of Bike Trossachs at the Gravelfoyle event in Aberfoyle, where the gravel bike racing season started with a race called the Gravelfoyle 10.

The Nevis Range mountain bike season has just kicked off and the Mountain Bike Uplift is open. Mark meets John Sutherland to find out how the gondola works.

Helen Needham joins artist Jane Frere as she puts the finishing touches to her latest exhibition The Ark, which is showing at The Barn in Banchory. At the centre of the exhibition is a giant pastel of a tree of life containing drawings of over 170 species facing extinction.

In this week’s podcast excerpt, Mark meets Harry Fleming, owner of a cold war bunker on the Aberdeenshire coast. Mark hears the story of the bunker from the 1950s to the present day.

Mark and Calum are joined by vintage cycling enthusiast Scott Simpson, who runs the Vintage Cycling Scotland Facebook group and repairs and refurbishes older models to get them out on the road once more.

In 2022, Nick Gardner from Aultbea completed all of Scotland’s 282 Munros. When he set off he was 80 and he was 82 when he finished. A new film about Nick’s achievement has recently been released and Calum catches up with Nick and one of the film’s directors, Jay Golian, in Aberfeldy to find out more about The Oldest Munro Bagger.

Mark is back at the Nevis Range near Fort William to make his way down the Blue Doon bike trail.