Drive to the Lecht 07/03/08

2090ft/637m above Sea Level

The Lecht Ski Center straddles the A939 on the famous Cockbridge to Tomintoul road. Sitting at a dizzying 2090ft/637meters above sea level it is one of the UK's premier ski/snowboard venues. It's not the prospect of snow that caught our fancy on Friday, instead the promise of that famous road seemed like the perfect way to entertain ourselves on a Friday afternoon.

According to the ever useful Google Maps the drive should be 54 miles each way and take about 1hr 30mins. I am sure the distance is correct but I had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn't take us quite as long as suggested.

Map of Route:

Stuart, Ross, Callum and I met in Westhill, on the outskirts of Aberdeen. We decided to take Stuart's recently acquired VW Mk3 Polo G40 Coupe and Callum's trusty Honda EM1 Civic VTi Coupe for the run, with Ross and I riding shotgun.

Shiney Polo:

The cars were cleaned and fuelled up. We then devoured some sandwiches in the Petrol Station forecourt before hitting the road. Stuart recommended the Chinese Chicken, but with the prospect of only sheep and trees between us and the summit I decided to opt for something that I could trust, if you know what I mean. Chicken and bacon it was. I bought a Bounty for "desert"and I thought I'd save that till we reached the Ski Center. This turned out not be the best idea of the day, more on that later.

The sun was shinning and the weather was as good as you can hope for in the N.E of Scotland at this time of year (i.e. it was windy as heck and the temperature was teetering below double figures.) We first headed out towards the town of Alford.

The road hugs the River Don as it snakes out of Aberdeen. Traffic was quiet and any vehicles we came across were easily dispatched thanks to the long sweeping nature of the road. Plenty of long straights are sometimes a blessing in disguise.

The G40 is in its element, the torque of the engine propelling the light weight car forward with near constant urge through the gears. This presents opportunities to overtake that may not be available to other drivers. The Civic keeps up with the pace but using an entirely different method of propulsion. Overtakes require a down shift to get the rev needle dancing into VTEC and we can hear Callum pulling up behind...his car isn't exactly quiet...to say the least! It must be quite a sight hearing the whine of the G40 and its belches of boost as it whips past, closely followed by the screaming at 8200RPM Civic.

Braking hard:

Excuse me...I'd like to get by now please?:

Cock Bridge...

The Lecht is famous because of the snow fall it receives through out the winter months. I don't think any of us expected to see any snow when we arrived, after all, it was such a good clear day back home in Aberdeen. How wrong we were...

After driving up some very very steep sections of road that saw both the Civic and G40 labouring in the lower gears we emerged onto the weather beaten hill top. The tall pine trees rapidly disappear and are replaced with acres of heather. Almost as soon as we emerged into the sunlight it disappeared and we were surrounded by a blizzard of snow.

There is a Polo..somewhere:

Finally we arrived at the Ski Center...

Lecht 2090 Ski Center:

I didn't really get to enjoy my Bounty chocolate bar...

Chinese Chicken...gooood:

We got out, stretched our legs and took some photos of the car...

Ski Run Backdrop:

Parked Up:

Callum's Civic:

Head home...

We retraced the ascent in reverse. The road is transformed from a slow steep climb into a roller coaster ride with steep drops, rising humps and all manner of bends. The cars picked up terrific speed as the plummeted down the road. Stuart was concentrating hard on managing the grip that was generated by the compressions then robbed as we crested the next rise, I was concentrating on keeping my but in the seat.

About half way down we decided to take full advantage of the surrounding greenery and emerging sunshine to take some more photos.

Roller-coaster Back Drop:

Break Before Steep Descent:

We found a big rock to climb on, as you do...

Bracing Wind:

Castle View:

Back to Nature:

Back on the road and heading to Westhill....

Doesn't matter where you go there are always road works...

Keep Left:

Strathdon provided an amazing series of bends that snaked back and forth between pillowing grass banks. The surrounding are reminiscent of the Teletubbies set. The road was extremely greasy and I could see Stuarts right foot darting between the brakes and accelerator trying to manage the grip of the front tyres. Being a relatively sedate car the Polo gracefully slides into controllable under steer that seems to be easy to manage. Once the car is pointing straight....it's back on the loud pedal!

Tight & Twisty:

Not So Shiny Now:

--- fin ---

Edited 10 March, 200818 yr by Tav

Photoshop Banter:

I've been playing with Adobe Photoshop quite a bit on these images, trying to get a movie-like effect with some good depth of field, grain and strong contrasts. It's fun to experiment and I hope the pictures have come out better because of it. Here's the original photo that was used for the third image:

Before:

Here is the edited version for comparison:

After:

There is a mix of photos from Stuart's pocket camera and Ross' new Nikon DSLR. All the photos were taken by Stuart & Ross save for one or two. Always good to have some cameras on hand and some people who know how to point them in the direct directions.

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If anyone wants to read/see a bit more of the cars you can find them at http://www.tribeca-online.com/ >>> medya >>> cars cars cars.

Edited 10 March, 200818 yr by Tav

nice work!! great roads. pm'd

nice work!! great roads. pm'd

Replied sir.

nice photoshopping. not the usual ott shit you see every other day. also you see why colourists have such important jobs in tv, film and photography

awesome read....just finished my brew and am setting off to ulltimate dubs now!

well put together piccies are ace!

love the roller-coaster backdrop of that road!

once more the trilby is tipped in your general direction!

Christiano

Photo's look great , sounds like a good days driving

lovin that dude what do u do mate? u know so much about things n reply to topics with alot of write up! sounds like you're writing in a mag!

My hat's off to you on that photoshop work!

It doesn't take high-strung camera add-ons to make good photo's better - it takes photoshop!

Cool thread, looks like fun that road!

How did the boardin go?

Cool thread, looks like fun that road!

How did the boardin go?

I wish I could snowboard, we just went purely for the roads. Def. something I'd like to try. Every time there is a flutter of snow on the lecht people from uni used to rush off, sometimes in the middle of classes! There were a few hardcore soles out on sledges...as you'll see from some of the other photos I'll put up there wasn't much snow despite the fall we were caught in.

My hat's off to you on that photoshop work!

It doesn't take high-strung camera add-ons to make good photo's better - it takes photoshop!

Amazing what you can do with Photoshop. I found a tutorial on the internet for making this style of photo...it's really easy thanks to the way it's set out. If anyone wants a link to it drop me a PM, already pointed Spaniel in its direction.

nice photoshopping. not the usual ott shit you see every other day. also you see why colourists have such important jobs in tv, film and photography

Colour makes a huge difference. There as special feature on one of the LOTR DVD's that showed how they re-did all the colours, was amazing.

I never normally play with it but I tried to cool all the photos off...upped the green + blue + cyan whilst toning out the reds + yellows. Just a bit of trial and error with these. Sent them over to Pidge and he spotted at least one thing wrong with each one...too much grain here...or funny looking blurs there...sorted it and uploaded. Will def. try doing more photos in this style it works well I think.

Edited 9 March, 200818 yr by Tav

photos look ace dude!

if there a possiblilty you could send me a psd of the last photo?

I'm interested about the colour correction youve done.... it looks sick!

stunning pics!

i think i should have shaved before we went out...............

Was an awesome day. G40 deffo had the advantage up the 20% inclines! Like the work you've done on the pics too el tavio!

Added some more pictures...another three to go but it's that time again for bed. Will get the last of them up tomorrow and finish writing about the day too.

Glad I had the full B.C.S before heading out Stuart!

quality tav

Amazing photos's, could you send me the link to the tutorial you used please? :-)

More content like this can always be found at www.tribeca-online.com

Edited 10 March, 200818 yr by Del

Waw man, love these pictures, really like the film window effect, it works really accentuates the oodiness of the pictures.

Deffinately gonna have a bash at this myself now.

Thanks for the inspiration dude

looks like the perfect day out really

sweet pics and chopping tav