This weekend just gone, I cycled the National Cycle Network from Aberdeen to Inverness with a young Australian.

I have lived in Australia and New Zealand and am well aware of how their "life is there to be enjoyed" attitude coming from living in a country
on the up contrasts with our own cynical mentality from years of living in a country which in many ways is so much worse than the one I grew up in in the 70s.

However I realised over the weekend that the National Cycle Network is one of our few chinks of hope. The Australian was amazed at the work
that had gone into the routes we cycled on, the quality of the granite infrastructure on the disused railway tracks that made up our entire
first night from Aberdeen to Fraserburgh and the fact that English country lanes are metalled where they would be dust in Australia. He
repeatedly said that nothing like the National Cycle Network exists in Australia. I can definitely say nothing like the network exists in New
Zealand either.

The Moray coast is very unknown and unvisited and rough camping on the shore was not a problem. You can take in Pennan, where Local Hero was filmed, and Findhorn, the hippy community.

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