Scotland Part 1

DAY ONE
Friday 19th June 2006 10:20 PM
Youth Hostel, Torridon

Andy
Here we are in the Torridon YH having spent the day driving. It’s been a long one – we set off about 10AM and didn’t even get to Fort William until 5:30. Delays in the traffic at Glasgow and then an odd one in Glencoe when the traffic lights at the ongoing bridge rebuild got out of synch and the two sets of vehicles both arrived in the middle of a one lane road. Ho hum.

[One thing was proved at that incident and that was that drivers of large BMW cars cannot reverse to save their lives – I’ve never seen such a piss poor display of going backwards – how many cones did he hit – on both sides?!]

We pit stopped at Mike's place in Fort William and and having introduced me to his lovely family Mike made us a rather fine mince and tatties before directing us to Torridon via entirely the longest route possible: Inverness on the East coast. Err ... [Turns out this is the best way to go, so thanks Mike.] One thing we did discover was that the weather over there really is shite while over here in the lovely West it’s rather splendid.

The scenery is obviously jaw dropping with a ‘duvet’ of clouds apparently draped over the huge tops above Glen Torridon when we arrived.

The midges are out in full force already – just getting out of the car resulted in a rash of bites from the little fuckers.

The hostel seems very good, but there’s a large school party here so it remains to be seen how they behave.

[All the ‘proper’ Scottish Youth Hostels really were excellent – beautiful locations, well looked after; clean, tidy and they all had great staff. We mucked them about with moving bookings on several occasions as we changed our plans but without fail they sorted us out thanks to their web based booking system.]

One slight error on our behalf on the forward planning front – it’s self catering here and we have no food. Oops. (Free tea and coffee though which is great.) Luckily we have some bars and Rich’s bread to see us to the first spot of civilisation on tomorrows route which is Kinlochlewe: 10 miles back up Glen Torridon on the single track road.

Nice to see single track A roads with passing places – I miss that kind of Scottish Highland thing.

Deer all over the place round here. It’s hard to imagine that we are still on the same piece of land which contains Leeds and London etc. Scotland really is beautiful.

Rich is Studying the guide book looking for stone circles.

Rich
… and he’s blinking well found some and we are going to see them all!!!

This is a funny hostel – bit like a 1970s secondary school (possibly the feeling is helped by yelping pre-pubescents running amok (bless them)).

Andy has seen something else in my ‘Footprint’ guide: the bit about Applecross and the 2000ft (from sea level) climb up some “dramatic and torturous switchbacks”! But that’s next weekend – so that’s OK then?

(I’m a bit worried about Andy’s legs .. they are too big and strong and he’s going to leave me by the side of the road with the deer)

So, tomorrow should be fun: 90 miles, apparently- that’s a long way, but we’ve got to make coz our hostel bed is booked and there’s no backing out.

Andy

There’s a wooden cloud shaped pice of ‘art’ hanging on the wall in this seating area, and some rather bad taste curtains and tiles – they look like IKEA seconds from the 1980s. Still it’s all rather quaint in a dodgy wood panneled kind of fashion.

OK, yes, I hadn’t noticed the 2000ft climb on Applecross until just before, but that’s a week away and we will be dead fit by then…

We are now fully paid up members of the Scottish Youth Hostel Association (SYHA) by the way. And we are in room 10 where we’ve all but filled the floor with bags and panniers.

DAY TWO
Saturday 10th June 7:45 PM
Ullapool Youth Hostel

Andy
Neither of us slept very well last night for no apparent reason. Then I nicked my breakfast (bananas and toast) from the aformentioned children. Not a good start to the day but then again they should have been up earlier, the lazy gits (and they had tons of food). So, it was with shameful hearts but full bellies that we rolled out of Torridon. Sort of.

The weather looked ropey when we got up (at 7am I should add) – dull, drizzly and breezy. Yuck.

We did faff for an amazingly long time for the first load up of the bikes but were on the road for 8:30 which was excellent.

The weather wasn’t too bad in the end as we trundled back up Glen Torridon (dull but no rain or wind). The only thing concerning us was the deer and whether they were “frollicking” or “prancing” as they dashed across the road in front of us. Luckily they were of little threat and Rich didn’t need to resort to The Horn.

Rich
Ten miles after leaving Torridon we stopped for brekky at Kinlochlewe. The establishment was a shop-cum-café, and as we were settling in and large troup of rough hewn, loud folk wandered in, laughing and jeering each other and generally swamping the place. Turns out they were the stuntmen & horse handlers crew up here on laocation for some fantasy film or other (“Stardust”) starring Robert de Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer. Anyway, they were a friendly bunch and eventually insisted on buying our breakfast. And we had both thought they were Pikeys…

Andy

So, £5 of the budget of Stardust (what a shit name for a film) went on our tea an bacon & egg butties.

We rolled on. And it was all very pretty. And not long after the sun came out, and remarkably stayed that way for the rest of the day. There was a cool breeze at times but it’s genarally been hot, and we got our legs out at some point to celebrate.

Once at the coast the scenery really was amazing. Many “Wow” moments were experienced where we rounded a headland or topped out on a rise to reveal a new beautiful bay/island/beach(“bitch”)/mountain – or any combination of all of the above. One inlet in particular, Gruinard Bay, with it’s huge beach and dramatic backdrop of the Fisherfield hills was just stunning (an "inlet of distinction"). Beautiful colours too – the sea in particular.

But it’s above all been a LONG day, and to say that the coast road is rather hilly would be a slight understament. Our lunch stop was about 2pm at a B&B at a place called Laide. Delicious salmon and cream cheese sandwiches (the lady was happy to do Rich’s on his own bread) and LOTS of tea. At that point we’d done about 50 miles, so we were over half way, but with lots still to come. Including as it turned out two big climbs into and out of Little Loch Broom. The latter really was enormous and took forever.

Rich

…and ever, and ever. In short, it killed me. Or more specifically my knees, which brought our speed right down and necessitated several choccy stops.

We rolled into Ullapool at about 6:15 PM – later that we’d anticipated, but seeing as Andy’s computer was by then reading 92.45 miles (much of it the uppy-downy-flippin’-uppy-again variety) not ‘arf respectable mate.

The hostel is very sweet, right on the sea front and the view across the loch is rather impressive.

We threw on some clean chuddies and headed directly for what were were reliably informed were “award winning” fish and chips. Rather difficult to tell to be honest as we wolfed then down so quick!

Andy
Now we are sat in the comfy chairs, and to be honest I’m unlikely to ever get out of this one. Rich is reading “Land Rover World” (August 2005 edition) and, sadly, looks engrossed.

The view out of the window from this seat is of a beautiful sea loch, fishing boats and a backdrop of enormo hills. That’s Scotland out there then.

We are booked back in here on Monday night and plan to head up to the YH at Achmelvic, just north of Lochinver which I reckon is a mere 40k (25 miles). Piece of piss after the 90+ (and almost exactly 7 hours in the saddle) of today. Bit of a rest really!

10:20PM
Andy
On a pub crawl. OK, we’ve been to two. This one is the Ferry Boat Inn (FBI) about 2 doors down from the Youth Hostel. The other one was next to the award winning chippy.

It should be noted that all Scottish pubs are non-smoking which I have to say is a truly excellent rule, especially when you are on tour and have only one set of ‘going out’ clothes.

We did forget to mention that the film crew (remember them, from Kinlochlewe earlier on? Keep up.) sent two of the girls who were with them into the kitchen to help feed their own café invasion. This was the source of much sexist merriment as the girls (joining in the joke) delivered everyone’s (including our) food, tea etc. Most amusing.

DAY THREE
Sunday 11th June 4:15 PM
Achmelvic Beach Youth Hostel, Wester Ross.

Andy
A reasonably early start after a solid touring breakfast of a whole packet of bacon and a 6 egg omelette between us. The hostel had a party of 40 students from university in Edinburgh staying so things were a tad busy in the kitchen for a while.

We eventually got on the road at about 11 into pretty much the same dull and drizzly conditions as yesterday.

The first part of it was on the A road (A835) straight out north, and after 10 miles or so we turned off onto a real “road to nowhere” across west [round the north of Loch Lurgainn] to the coast. This single track road passes between sonme of the really big sandstone tops which rise dramatically from seemingly nothing in Inverpoly Forest. It was amazing stuff.

At one point (after a sandwich stop outside a particulary isolated house) we climbed up from the loch to a view point which finally revealed the mighty Suilven and it’s equally statuesque companions all stretched out around us to the north and east, plus view right down to the coast (the seaside!) over to our left. Another real “Wow” point.

We are sunbathing here by the way. The weather turns very chilly though when the sun disappears, and doubly so in the stiff breeze blowing from the north. At present we are sat on some rocks with our toes in the sand, out of the wind; with waves gently rolling over the white sands from the remarkably blue sea to our right. And it is red hot.

Once we’d turned out of the hills (where we’d been rained on a couple of times – just showers – and it was rather chilly so we’d put all our warm gear on) all of a sudden we were in the sun so we stopped just after the Inverpoly Lodge and stripped back down to shorts for the rest of the day’s biking. This was a beautiful section of single track road (much of it nicely resurfaced) in and out of sea inlets, and it undulated in that way that only Scottish coast roads do – up and over headlands – so it was hard work. Lovely though.

Uh – oh. A big cloud. Best get a shirt on. And perhaps my fleece.
[I should add here that everyone else (which makes it sould like there were crowds there - "the few other folk we saw" would perhaps be a better term) were generally decked out in fleece/GoreTex and hats for their visit to the sands.]

Rich

You have to be very hard to be a sunbather in Scotland. We haven’t seen many others so far. OK: none. A well as the cold you occasionally get sand blasted which just makes it all the more interesting.

We are here on the beach nursing our injuries from yesterday – the tendons in the back of the knees ache. We cannot get into the hostel for a healing warm shower, because it’s not open until 5 o’clock….

Andy
7:15 PM
Tonight we are shariing this cute little Hostel with a party of recently finished their finals students from Edinburgh. Actually, there’s only 10 of them this time and they seem most pleasant. We have been offered beers from them which is most kind.

Our genial hosts – Dave and Caroline - are great. Lots of chat and a great welcome from the. It’s a small place so it looks like they just join in with the guests.

Just bought some postcards of the beach so best write them.

[Also stopping at this hostel that night were 3 older women who were travelling round by car and doing some wallking. We chatted to them a while and they were very nce. There was another young couple as well who didn’t have much to say for themselves.]

Dave and Caroline had been in Canada for several years with a business until visa issues basically forced them out so they were doing the Youth Hostel warden thing for this summer before likely travelling off again. (They’d also lived for a while in New Zealand.)

[Achmelvic was the most basic Youth Hostel we visted with an outside loo (just the one for everyone) and shower building (same again – just one). It is a large beach hut, basically and closed in the winter. It is in such a wonderful place though. The second beach, just over to the left of the main cove was even more isolated and had pretty large waves rolling into it. Utterly beautiful, and the kind of special place which made touring up there so unique.]