Don't Trust Trusta

This morning's run was a bit of an adventure. I had decided to have a shorter weekend run this week (the next two will be ramping up miles in preparation for the Speyside Way Race) but thought it would be good fun to cycle out to the woods, run around for a bit, and then cycle home. And it was good fun, despite almost getting lost thanks to the map being wrong (I think - if anyone knows better then I hold up my hands and apologise, but I'm pretty damn sure about this).

If anyone is interested - you can follow this on multimap here.

I started out from the red circle with the intention of taking the fairly direct track up Hill of Trusta, and then seeing if I could do a bit of total off-road heading East. However, I soon hit the junction that is marked Foggy Moss on the map and thought I must have missed the track so I kept going thinking I would take the next left and cut back towards the hill that way. Except that when I did turn left, I knew I'd gone too far so I decided to get the map out again, and cross-reference it with my phone's GPS to find that I'd arrived in the area of Hurlie Bog. Oh well, I thought, just keep going, left at the next junction and that'll take me back in the right direction. So I plodded on for a bit before I once again got the feeling that the track was not going the way the map said it would, so I checked the GPS and it told me I was just to the West of the track to Hill of Trusta marked on the map. Clearly I was on a track that despite being a proper forest road wasn't on the map but I decided to follow it a wee bit further until I could see that it was following the contours round the hill to "Moss of Anaholans" and points beyond - completely the wrong direction for me.

Thankfully, I noticed a muddy looking track down the divide between some older trees and newly planted ones which was heading South, back down towards the track I wanted, so I ran down that way and back to the car park where I'd left the bike, and headed for home.

In some ways it was quite good fun, but a little disconcerting thinking that I might have been lost and might have had to retrace my steps, just as the rain was coming on. Be careful if you're running, walking, or cycling around that bit of the woods - it looks like the maps are wrong.