That was brave of you to do the Fort William downhill run on a hardtail! I felt out of place enough going up in the gondolas with all the hard core downhiller types with their full body armour and 8 inch travel bikes. They were looking pitifully at me with my XC helmet, XC full sus bike and no body armour.
It was very nice weather up there in July 05

, but we got eaten alive by midges and horse flies
This is a photo of the trip between Aviemoire and Braemar. We did an off road route over the Cairngorms on the first day and then rode back to Aviemore on the 2nd day: