Devil's Elbow - Spittal Of Glenshee

Starting from the services at Spittal of Glenshee I was instantly met by a very strong headwind which stayed with me beyond Braemar, I was surprised to see the Glenshee ski centre so soon though, I expected the climb to go on for longer, I remember looking down at my Garmin computer and seeing 10% quite often but I cant remember what the max gradient was, the descent to Braemar was a bit of a dissapointment due to the headwind and I actually had to pedal quite hard to keep a decent momentum going, this never bothered me though as I knew I would be rewarded with a strong tailwind on the return leg and I was enjoying the scenery, I decided to continue for about 10 miles beyond Braemar and then headed back, I grinned instantly as instead of having wind buffeting my face and forcing me to pedal hard even on the flat, I could hear nothing and I was accelerating very quickly with little effort, before long I was ascending the steep road back to the ski centre but this was made easy thanks to the wind, in fact I did the whole ascent on the big ring of my road bike. The descent back to Glenshee was insane, Im not keen on going too fast on a bike and if I hadnt bottled it at 50mph god knows how fast I would have gone.

My personal climb rating:

Not a very interesting climb, this. Its relentless going from the Spital of Glenshee up to the ski station and the A93 is quite busy with lorries at times. As the profile suggests the last km is hard. It felt more than 10% to me. Great descent to Braemar and wonderful scenery is some compensation for the climb though.

My personal climb rating: