DAY ONE
Saturday 10th June
St Bees Head, Cumbria
Well, here I am on tour #2. The lads (and girl) have arrived at the starting gate, are under orders and are raring to go.
Actually Ben S is fast asleep. He’s no doubt in recovery from the sad loss of his BRAND NEW sunglasses during our swim in the sea. Yes folks, the weather is boiling hot. It’s about 80F and the sun really is burning, so much so that we did have a proper swim in the sea.
The B&B we are at (Stonehouse Farm) is lovely and the temptation is most definitely to stop here for a week and make the whole trip up in posts to the North Leeds thread on BikeMagic.
No chance. We have seven days of off road mayhem ahead of us – err, how fab is that?!
We arrived here at St Bees almost exactly to the minute that Christian’s Tom Tom had forecast we would when we left Leeds. Spooky, Or clever.
There’s been some sort of football match today. England apparently are playing in the finals of some tournament, and this was their first game. They won 1-0 against the mighty Paraguay. We watched it at one of the three local pubs within about 50 yards of the B&B. We are, ts has to be said, a tad spoilt for choice.
After the footy we changed into swimming gear, walked the mile or so down to the beach and had a swim in the lovely Irish Sea. The sea, OK, was quite cold but it honestly was fine once you were in.
It was at this juncture that the aforementioned sunglasses loss occurred when Ben dived under a wave whilst still wearing them.
Jo didn’t quite “swim” and to be honest was heard to girlie scream quite a bit whilst avoiding getting properly wet. More an advanced paddle I would call it, but she is a girl.
We returned from swimming (and a round of ice creams at a conveniently positioned beach-side ice cream van) to get the G&Ts in on the veranda. This amounted to a half bottle of G from the local shop; 2 bottles of T; plus a lemon and a lime. Actually, two limes as Christian stole a second one the pikey twat.
So now it’s showers all round and then I think we are off to the pub for more food. So far today we’ve polished off (in the car) Jo’s fine selection of fruit (pineapple and apples) and a large packet of crisps. Then there was serious sandwiches for lunch at the pub and then the round of ice creams.
We are all HUNGRY now, again. Ben S and John are in room 1 here. Chris, Ben F and myself are in room 2, while Jo is upstairs in room 4.
DAY TWO
Sunday. Pennyhill Farm B&B Eskdale, Lakes
The day started from St Bees with the compulsory “dip” in the sea. Except we didn’t quite dip as the tide was out – we just rode onto the pebbles and then got our picture taken on the prom by some “old ladies” (as John called them – they were likely in their 50s) who were doing half of the walking coast to coast.
The Serious Six then started out on their trek with great gusto and enthusiasm for the mighty task ahead and were all knackered after the first (road) climb out of St Bees.
Stonehouse Farm did a marvellous breakfast it has to be said. There is an ongoing debate as to whether it scores a 7 or 8 out of 10. We need some more full English offerings down us so we can compare, and then maybe recalibrate the scoring system. [In the end no breakfasts were deemed better than this one. And it ended up rating an 8. Or was it a 7?]
The Ride: 34 miles or so was the task set today (23 off road). At least half of that total distance was done on the easy trails of the Sustrans C2C route from the coast, and then on the long fire trail down the lakeside and into the end of the valley.
The weather was warm, humid and mainly cloudy all day but when the sun did come out it was roasting hot.
[Mention should be made here of the lake-side bench under the trees lunch sandwich stop, which was wonderful for about 5 minutes until clouds of midges found us and got a serious biting thing going on. We quickly moved off and sat just out of the trees, amusing ourselves by throwing stones into the lake. Just then a disabled guy on an electric scooter and his partner rolled slowly passed us on the lakeside track. They too spotted the inviting looking bench in the trees and the bloke totally went for the off road option, banging his in no way off road equipped scooter over roots and stuff to get to the bench. Perhaps, yes, we should have intervened at this point and warned them about the marauding insect life, but no – his off roading antics were too fascinating to interrupt. Unfortunately for him his escape from the subsequent midge mauling was impeded by the fact that he couldn’t walk unaided and his heavy scooter was now grounded. His missus was no use as he was a big bloke so Ben S and I went to his rescue, dragging this guy and the equally weighty scooter out back onto the path. I dread to think what kind of state those two would have been in if we’d not intervened as they were pretty much stuck there. Bloody disabled day trippers eh?]
Fortunately we were not baked in the sun on the monster carry up Black Sail Pass. It was extremely hard work but to be honest the severe gradient at least meant it didn’t last too long.
Once at the top we waited while Jo walked for miles to find a suitable toilet spot which was out of the view of the walkers coming down from Kirk Fell. Then we were able to set off on the steep descent into Mosedale. This was mainly a further carry/push at the top as the surface was either a very steep rocky path or loose chossy shale, and rather risky to ride, this only being the first day of the tour. Ben F however rode it until he came off over the bars, and we thought he’d miraculously managed to get away without body or bike damage. The bottom half of the descent however was great – rideable, technical, fast and excellent fun all the way down into the valley.
As we rolled into the Wasdale Head Inn the sun was shining so we were able to sink pints of shandy etc sunning ourselves just outside the toilets. Nice. A sheep dog type dog added to the beer garden fun with it’s endless stick chasing enthusiasm. By this time we’d covered the best part of 30 miles including a big (1000ft) carry and we were knackered. However, onwards and upwards and we reluctantly rolled out into Wasdale past the camp site (and completely dry river bed) and up onto the tops again towards Burnmoor Tarn. Another [600ft] big pull and this time in the sunshine and it was hot. Once at the top we knew we had a load of descent to look forward to, right down to our destination: Eskdale. However, just before we got to the tarn, Ben F pulled up with a major technical – his rear mech hanger snapped off. This was likely a result of the Black Sail off he had. No amount of technical expertise from Ben S could salvage the situation properly so that was pretty much the end of Ben F’s riding for the day (and for tomorrow as he’ll have to bike shop it to get it fixed).
There was more to come as just past the tarn Christian had an off which resulted in him seriously twisting his ankle to the point where he could not put any weight on it. Serious stuff by the looks of things
We limped on (down a brilliant descent for those who could manage it )and eventually stopped at a pub at Boot where we were able to simutaneously ice Chris’s damaged foot and have a beer. We then pushed Chris on his bike the couple of miles up the road to the B&B here. The lady owner kindly drove Chris back to the pub so we could get some food (the pub in Boot I should add, as the one right near the B&B was insisting we eat “now” as they were busy) and also drove him back. John and I cycled both ways.
Decent food at the pub although there was some debate as to whether Ben S’s steak was in any way rare as he’d ordered it.
A beautiful clear evening – gorgeous weather really. Forecast is for some rain tomorrow though. Ben F and Chris are going to try and get a lift from the Packhorse baggage man to Ambleside (with their bikes). Chris needs to rest his foot and Ben needs to get his bike fixed.
So, that’s day one over and we have a 33% casualty rate so far!
[Cute lambs at the B&B by the way. It was a working farm and our bikes were locked up in the sheep shed.]
DAY THREE
Monday. High Close Youth Hostel, just outside Windermere.
The Ride:
Farm. Bridleway to Boot (for a shop stop) and a wade in the river. Hardknott Pass start. Harter Fell climb/carry. (Clouds lift after slightly drizzly start). Woods, boggy. Forestry descent (past crazy tree chopping monster machine); added bridleway fun; descended through Wallowbarrow; beautiful cheeky footpath option (bridge and river – Jo’s dad’s painting). Road at Seathwaite. Walna Scar Road ascent (bastard. “c” word). Met girlie walkers and dog. Descent of a lifetime into Coniston. Lunch (curly chips). Sunny. Tilberthwaite road climb out of valley and never ending descent into Little Langdale. Elterwater. Crossed Great Langdale and climbed road to (eventually) Loughrigg Terrace: stunning view & shit. More foul words. Amazing descent to Ambleside: everyone getting giddy. Jo giggling (this was possibly earlier). Climbed (via several wrong turns) to Jenkin Crag. Beautiful views of Windermere in the sun. Lots more ups and downs and finally arrived at Hostel at 6:45pm.
What a fucking fabulous day, frankly.
Christian was then picked up from hostel by his mate who’d driven out to get him, so now we are five.
Ben F had a bit of a nightmare in the shop with his bike: real arsey staff.
John has serious bum chafing issues: he needs arse lard and lycra.
Pubs ALL stopped food at 8:30: just before we arrived at them.
Nice taxi driver man eventually got us to a pub in Windermere where they played drum and bass but did excellent meals.
The boys are now playing giant Connect 4 here in the hostel lounge.
A strange woman is interrupting our conversations. Jo has to sleep with her. Oh dear.
Now we are posting on BikeMagic.
BIKE, EAT, SLEEP. C to C 2006.
Ben F:
Back to first thing… (Ben & Christian)
My day began with witnessing Christian once more crawl over the hall to the toilet. Then, having got ready the ritual breakfast grading began.
Once this was over it was time to watch the helmets pass the window as Christian and I settled down to watch “Homes Under the Hammer”. (Ahem, enough said.)
But then, our saviour Simon the Packhorse driver arrived and our 4 hour guided tour of The Lakes began. We toured much, including the infamous midgey patch at … [?]
My trip ended with a drop off at Biketrax in Ambleside. Having obtained the necessary replacement parts off a rather unhelpful bunch of later coined cock weasels (by Ben S aka Tin Tin) and Christian who continued to the YHA.
I journeyed (walking) riding my now single speed for 2 hours before meeting Christian at the hostel. Finally the rest of the guys rolled up at around 7, and I’m sure their day has been well documented.
Ben S (Tin Tin!) :
Some of the best riding I’ve ever had the pleasure of ascending and descending. Awesome views, big country! Today’s trip well described. Longest day to come tomorrow though. Walna Scar ascent will be ridden in 1 next year!
(We are now in the kitchen.)
BREAKFAST RATING (Penny Hill Farm):
V.Good sausage, poor bacon; v.poor fried bread. No beans. Good eggs.
General consensus = 6. Possibly 5.5. (Much arguments about sausages. Much arguments about eggs. Much argument about mushrooms.)
Oh, yes. Got tuna sarny with curly chips for lunch in Coniston but it was expensive. There was egg and chips consumed as well. Everything is expensive – it’s an expensive trip!
This hostel, although a bit piss poor in facilities, is in a fabulous spot overlooking Windermere.
BREAKFAST RATING (Windermere):
NOTE: Full English only visited by Jo and Ben.
Poor. Jo’s verdict: scrapes a 3. Ben’s verdict: 4. Ben got Porridge. Though, which has perhaps skewed his verdict. Ben F & John had “cracking” continental option with a croissant. Softies.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Coast to Coast (Part 2)
DAY FOUR
Tuesday. Kirby Stephen Youth Hostel.
We are at the very excellent Kirby Stephen youth hostel. It’s “mint” as Ben F stated. Why? Firstly it’s an old church and I am now sat in the chapel with pews for seats for eating, and the area under the balcony is a kitchen. It’s quite wonderful. The landlady Clare is lovely too. What a pity this place is one of those closing in October.
We are also in the middle of the town, and right opposite a Co-op, so we’ve been able to get over there to buy food (and beer) for dinner.
Ben S is being team cook and we are having spag bog with extras. Marvellous.
Our journey here:
Town End to Kirby Stephen (36 miles: 19 off road).
Passes: Garburn, 1475 feet. Verdict: excellent. Good climb – mostly rideable and (yet)another rocky horror high excitement descent. Stile End: Short and sweet, nice descent again, and thus took us into Longsleddale which looked stunning but the track turned into a real monster ascent. Ben S amused himself by nailing parts of it, but mostly it was a ‘too steep to think about riding’ job. Stunning situation, mind.
This took us up to Brownhowe Bottom and a traverse across some boggy moorland towards Mosedale. This was extremely hard work and despite best efforts we all ended up with wet feet. Ben F managed to go over his bars again but this time landed safely in a bog.
[We did see a large bird of prey disappear into some trees in front of us at one point along here and I’m convinced it was a red kite.]
Eventually we arrived at the supremely isolated Mosedale cottage where luncheon was taken (we had bought packed lunches from Windermere hostel which were great).
Then we had a seemingly endless undulating yomp across another fucking great moor…. did a bit of road and at some point landed at Shap – all absolutely knackered.
We found a top newsagent which provided excellent take away teas which we were able to down whilst lounging in the grass in a park just opposite. We were all, as one, wishing that we’d finished for the day, but we still had 18 miles to go! Jo was begging for drugs: EPO in particular, but had to make do with Nurofen for her knackered knees (body in general). 2:30 we arrived there and 3:15 we left.
Fortunately the remaining mileage was mainly on minor roads and we were able to crack it off in a couple of hours, with some undulation once again. One real off road drag up a big field up to Bank Moor, some seriously fast road descents and a lot of tired legs.
A complete change of scenery as we went though – from the rocks and crag of the Lakes to the fields and meadows of the Vale of Eden once we’d crossed the M6. But, we rode triumphantly into K.Stephen at about 5:30pm.
Jo’s “mad woman” slept with her suitcase apparently. The lads mucked about loudly in their dorm – much more loudly than the 40 school kids it has to be said. It was too hot and no one slept well at all.
Jo states that the Windermere hostel is extremely poor: v.small rooms for instance; expensive for what you got (especially when you are paying extra for breakfast) and generally not very good.
Mention should be made of just how HARD this C2C route is. Technically very demanding and physically it’s just plain bloody hard work with long days in the saddle. Great stuff though.
This Youth Hostel, would you believe, has a full Park bike tool kit for our use – and most of it brand new: still in it’s packets. There is also a Park bike stand in the shed: hundreds of quid’s worth of premium quality tech kit – not being used. Except by us. The bikes are all stabled after having had a much needed thorough clean and Park tooled maintenance session.
Suntans and white bits are being compared. Looks like everyone will end up with the standard cyclist’s tan which starts just above the sock line and ends half way up one’s thigh where the lycra starts.
Jon:
Jon’s arse trouble got slightly better today with the use of Andy’s lycra shorts and minty arse lard – which required Jon to drop his pants mid-ride and re-apply. Managed to find some new cream in the Coop over the road. [Note a £2.50 tub of kids’ Sudocream does the job just as well as a £12 tube of specialist cyclists’ stuff.]
There’s a chap staying here who’s WALKING Land’s End to John O’Groats. How come, when you are doing these things which you reckon are personal epics there’s always some twat who’s doing so much more and manages to put your efforts in the shade. Git.
Yesterday in the Lakes was an utterly fabulous day out biking. The trouble is we do SO much each day that it’s impossible to remember it all. The climbs [in the Lakes] are long and hard (often carries/pushes – “grunts”) and the downhills are rock strewn, chossy, steep, fast, dangerous and wildly fun. And there’s just loads of them. Yesterday seemed like a mountain bike perfection day. A ‘best of’ the Lakes and all done in fantastic weather with no technicals – not even a puncture. I guess we (bikers) aim for those big ‘moments’ where it’s just sheer joy/lunacy - a mountain biking high - “endorphin city”. There’s been a lot of that on this trip already. There’s also the team element where the experience is multiplied by the knowledge that everyone else is going through exactly the same thing and you are all in this madness together. Difficult to put into words to be honest but whatever it is it’s incredible and a day like yesterday really is what makes us all do this thing.
Oh, by the way, Christian’s ankle isn’t broken – just badly sprained and will take a mere 2 weeks to heal up. He’s been on the phone and texted a few times. He must be absolutely gutted, the poor sod.
DAY FIVE
Wednesday. Springfield House B&B Reeth, Swaledale
Another monster day on the bikes, but I guess that goes without saying really. The welcome here at the B&B – tea and scones with home made jam – was brilliant. Jo is just down the road in a different place and without tea and scones.
There’s a double and a twin so we drew straws for the beds – or rather (in fine mountain biker stylee) we drew sunglasses lenses out of a waste paper bin. Ben S and I got the clear ones so we get the twin room, leaving the other guys the double bed.
We are just off to see if Jo is ready to come out to play – we are off to the pub.
Black Bull Pub
No one has had the “Grunt & Granny” sandwich (hot pork and apple sauce). This obviously would have been the entirely appropriate option, but we’ve gone en masse instead for the more filling looking giant Yorkshire pud with beef casserole and chips. Yum.
The Ride:
Cheeky footpath out of KS and then 6 miles v.quick on road. Then some bridleway, followed by “The Field of Doom” or “Bog of Tufty Doom” on a none existent bridleway over tall grassy, shitey, hugely uneven moorland. As usual for that type of terrain it was very hard work, but at least it was dry.
Next up was a road grunt up to the famous (“Highest Pub in Britain”) and remarkable Tan Hill Inn where there was a St George’s Cross painted pet sheep called “Tan” who lounged by the fire and let people stroke him. Honest. Tan is usually a scrounging pest by all accounts, but he was on good behaviour today and therefore allowed to stay indoors. Great pub: ridiculous location.
Met a couple of roadie tourers doing a coast to coast from Barrow to Sunderland and swapped a few tales over a cup of tea, shandies, soup etc. Most pleasant.
Next up was the Pennine Way with a distinct lack of downhill and two punctures. Eventually we got some excellent downhill and a fabulous track into Swaledale (Gunnerside) along the valley where we passed some walkers in fine speedy style, and then had the indignity of them walking past us while we fixed a puncture. “Hair and tortoise” comments were heard from them as they smugly sauntered past. All manner of threats were then heard from us by way of nasty physical and verbal revenge after they’d got out of ear shot – but we didn’t lower ourselves in the end.
Beautiful Swaledale bridleway by the river and then… a bastard long climb of 1000ft or so up to Apedale. We were all utterly wasted, especially our Jo, but heroics won through and she got top the top. Then there was an exiting downhill … another big climb. Ben F and Jo were right out at their limit by this point, but Kendal Mint Cake this time was our saviour – that and some Eccles cakes.
We arrived in lovely Reeth about 6 pm, almost minus Ben S who was So close to hitting a BMW on the final narrow road descent into the village – down which we were all really motoring it has to be said.
Oh, the food... Lovely but done and dusted in about 15 minutes. Extra potatoes demanded by all. It should be noted that for the morning John has ordered a half arsed breakfast. While the rest of the boys go for the full English J opts for an, ahem, bacon fucking sandwich. Mr B&B, it should be said, was not impressed by this – insulted, even.
Technical report: Ben F’s rear hub fixed by myself: bearings replaced. His rear brake is still rubbing a bit though.
Maps of next couple of days being scrutinised. Tomorrow looks like a relative rest day – handy as we just HAVE to get to Osmotherly for a 4pm kick off for some England game or other. The day after in the N.Yorks Moors however looks like an utter twat.
9:50 Black Bull Pub. Still.
The darts in the pub are broken but we have showed Swaledale how to play pool. Sort of. Germany have just dumped Poland out of the World Cup. Pool table and juke box to ourselves and “Perfect Day” plays on the jukey.
DAY 6
Thursday Osmotherley. Pub 4:30 PM.
England’s second World Cup finals match is due to start in half an hour.
Bit of a rest day today as it was mainly roadie-ing across the flat bit between the Pennines and the North Yorks Moors. Osmotherley is not far from the A19, nestled just under the west side of the latter set of hills.
We arrived about an hour ago and almost made it here without much incident. But, there’s a very shallow (and mossy) ford on the road about half a mile from the village and Ben S managed to off going across it and hit the road in the water very hard indeed. No real harm done luckily – just a few bruises and a hold in the back of his shorts. But it was a painful one.
Oh, and we also had a puncture-fest a few miles back after having done a bit of ‘extra’ bridle path across the edge of a field, which resulted in everyone bar John getting at least one puncture. The annoying thing was we’d done the field and all sat down in the sun for a break and discovered a couple of flats when we went to get back on the bikes. Then everyone checked their tyres to find all manner of enormous thorns in them. So, team puncture fixing ensued and we almost got run down by a miserable post van driver. Twice.
We did do some off roading this morning, out of Swaledale and round the side of a valley down into Richmond. A rare pit stop in civilisation enabled the use of cash points, Greggs and a grocers. It should be noted the Jo is done in after the excesses of yesterday’s gradients – she missed out the off road bit this morning and took the road option into Richmond, heading straight for a tea shop. She was most pleased that it was an easy day, but is threatening to dip out again tomorrow over some of the tops. We hope she manages to keep to The Route [She did].
Our mantra: The Route is the Way, and the Way is the Route.
We have an influx of intruders on the tour this evening: Jenny and Ed are coming up from Leeds for the evening, and these two it seems are seeing Ben and Jo respectively. Which is nice.
Osmotherley is another lovely village. Reeth was beautiful too – real picture postcard locations. We have seen a lot of these lovely little places on this trip.
Weather today: Very hot: a lot of sun. Good job we weren’t in the hills really.
6:55 and England have just won 2-0. They were not entirely convincing it has to be said.
Tuesday. Kirby Stephen Youth Hostel.
We are at the very excellent Kirby Stephen youth hostel. It’s “mint” as Ben F stated. Why? Firstly it’s an old church and I am now sat in the chapel with pews for seats for eating, and the area under the balcony is a kitchen. It’s quite wonderful. The landlady Clare is lovely too. What a pity this place is one of those closing in October.
We are also in the middle of the town, and right opposite a Co-op, so we’ve been able to get over there to buy food (and beer) for dinner.
Ben S is being team cook and we are having spag bog with extras. Marvellous.
Our journey here:
Town End to Kirby Stephen (36 miles: 19 off road).
Passes: Garburn, 1475 feet. Verdict: excellent. Good climb – mostly rideable and (yet)another rocky horror high excitement descent. Stile End: Short and sweet, nice descent again, and thus took us into Longsleddale which looked stunning but the track turned into a real monster ascent. Ben S amused himself by nailing parts of it, but mostly it was a ‘too steep to think about riding’ job. Stunning situation, mind.
This took us up to Brownhowe Bottom and a traverse across some boggy moorland towards Mosedale. This was extremely hard work and despite best efforts we all ended up with wet feet. Ben F managed to go over his bars again but this time landed safely in a bog.
[We did see a large bird of prey disappear into some trees in front of us at one point along here and I’m convinced it was a red kite.]
Eventually we arrived at the supremely isolated Mosedale cottage where luncheon was taken (we had bought packed lunches from Windermere hostel which were great).
Then we had a seemingly endless undulating yomp across another fucking great moor…. did a bit of road and at some point landed at Shap – all absolutely knackered.
We found a top newsagent which provided excellent take away teas which we were able to down whilst lounging in the grass in a park just opposite. We were all, as one, wishing that we’d finished for the day, but we still had 18 miles to go! Jo was begging for drugs: EPO in particular, but had to make do with Nurofen for her knackered knees (body in general). 2:30 we arrived there and 3:15 we left.
Fortunately the remaining mileage was mainly on minor roads and we were able to crack it off in a couple of hours, with some undulation once again. One real off road drag up a big field up to Bank Moor, some seriously fast road descents and a lot of tired legs.
A complete change of scenery as we went though – from the rocks and crag of the Lakes to the fields and meadows of the Vale of Eden once we’d crossed the M6. But, we rode triumphantly into K.Stephen at about 5:30pm.
Jo’s “mad woman” slept with her suitcase apparently. The lads mucked about loudly in their dorm – much more loudly than the 40 school kids it has to be said. It was too hot and no one slept well at all.
Jo states that the Windermere hostel is extremely poor: v.small rooms for instance; expensive for what you got (especially when you are paying extra for breakfast) and generally not very good.
Mention should be made of just how HARD this C2C route is. Technically very demanding and physically it’s just plain bloody hard work with long days in the saddle. Great stuff though.
This Youth Hostel, would you believe, has a full Park bike tool kit for our use – and most of it brand new: still in it’s packets. There is also a Park bike stand in the shed: hundreds of quid’s worth of premium quality tech kit – not being used. Except by us. The bikes are all stabled after having had a much needed thorough clean and Park tooled maintenance session.
Suntans and white bits are being compared. Looks like everyone will end up with the standard cyclist’s tan which starts just above the sock line and ends half way up one’s thigh where the lycra starts.
Jon:
Jon’s arse trouble got slightly better today with the use of Andy’s lycra shorts and minty arse lard – which required Jon to drop his pants mid-ride and re-apply. Managed to find some new cream in the Coop over the road. [Note a £2.50 tub of kids’ Sudocream does the job just as well as a £12 tube of specialist cyclists’ stuff.]
There’s a chap staying here who’s WALKING Land’s End to John O’Groats. How come, when you are doing these things which you reckon are personal epics there’s always some twat who’s doing so much more and manages to put your efforts in the shade. Git.
Yesterday in the Lakes was an utterly fabulous day out biking. The trouble is we do SO much each day that it’s impossible to remember it all. The climbs [in the Lakes] are long and hard (often carries/pushes – “grunts”) and the downhills are rock strewn, chossy, steep, fast, dangerous and wildly fun. And there’s just loads of them. Yesterday seemed like a mountain bike perfection day. A ‘best of’ the Lakes and all done in fantastic weather with no technicals – not even a puncture. I guess we (bikers) aim for those big ‘moments’ where it’s just sheer joy/lunacy - a mountain biking high - “endorphin city”. There’s been a lot of that on this trip already. There’s also the team element where the experience is multiplied by the knowledge that everyone else is going through exactly the same thing and you are all in this madness together. Difficult to put into words to be honest but whatever it is it’s incredible and a day like yesterday really is what makes us all do this thing.
Oh, by the way, Christian’s ankle isn’t broken – just badly sprained and will take a mere 2 weeks to heal up. He’s been on the phone and texted a few times. He must be absolutely gutted, the poor sod.
DAY FIVE
Wednesday. Springfield House B&B Reeth, Swaledale
Another monster day on the bikes, but I guess that goes without saying really. The welcome here at the B&B – tea and scones with home made jam – was brilliant. Jo is just down the road in a different place and without tea and scones.
There’s a double and a twin so we drew straws for the beds – or rather (in fine mountain biker stylee) we drew sunglasses lenses out of a waste paper bin. Ben S and I got the clear ones so we get the twin room, leaving the other guys the double bed.
We are just off to see if Jo is ready to come out to play – we are off to the pub.
Black Bull Pub
No one has had the “Grunt & Granny” sandwich (hot pork and apple sauce). This obviously would have been the entirely appropriate option, but we’ve gone en masse instead for the more filling looking giant Yorkshire pud with beef casserole and chips. Yum.
The Ride:
Cheeky footpath out of KS and then 6 miles v.quick on road. Then some bridleway, followed by “The Field of Doom” or “Bog of Tufty Doom” on a none existent bridleway over tall grassy, shitey, hugely uneven moorland. As usual for that type of terrain it was very hard work, but at least it was dry.
Next up was a road grunt up to the famous (“Highest Pub in Britain”) and remarkable Tan Hill Inn where there was a St George’s Cross painted pet sheep called “Tan” who lounged by the fire and let people stroke him. Honest. Tan is usually a scrounging pest by all accounts, but he was on good behaviour today and therefore allowed to stay indoors. Great pub: ridiculous location.
Met a couple of roadie tourers doing a coast to coast from Barrow to Sunderland and swapped a few tales over a cup of tea, shandies, soup etc. Most pleasant.
Next up was the Pennine Way with a distinct lack of downhill and two punctures. Eventually we got some excellent downhill and a fabulous track into Swaledale (Gunnerside) along the valley where we passed some walkers in fine speedy style, and then had the indignity of them walking past us while we fixed a puncture. “Hair and tortoise” comments were heard from them as they smugly sauntered past. All manner of threats were then heard from us by way of nasty physical and verbal revenge after they’d got out of ear shot – but we didn’t lower ourselves in the end.
Beautiful Swaledale bridleway by the river and then… a bastard long climb of 1000ft or so up to Apedale. We were all utterly wasted, especially our Jo, but heroics won through and she got top the top. Then there was an exiting downhill … another big climb. Ben F and Jo were right out at their limit by this point, but Kendal Mint Cake this time was our saviour – that and some Eccles cakes.
We arrived in lovely Reeth about 6 pm, almost minus Ben S who was So close to hitting a BMW on the final narrow road descent into the village – down which we were all really motoring it has to be said.
Oh, the food... Lovely but done and dusted in about 15 minutes. Extra potatoes demanded by all. It should be noted that for the morning John has ordered a half arsed breakfast. While the rest of the boys go for the full English J opts for an, ahem, bacon fucking sandwich. Mr B&B, it should be said, was not impressed by this – insulted, even.
Technical report: Ben F’s rear hub fixed by myself: bearings replaced. His rear brake is still rubbing a bit though.
Maps of next couple of days being scrutinised. Tomorrow looks like a relative rest day – handy as we just HAVE to get to Osmotherly for a 4pm kick off for some England game or other. The day after in the N.Yorks Moors however looks like an utter twat.
9:50 Black Bull Pub. Still.
The darts in the pub are broken but we have showed Swaledale how to play pool. Sort of. Germany have just dumped Poland out of the World Cup. Pool table and juke box to ourselves and “Perfect Day” plays on the jukey.
DAY 6
Thursday Osmotherley. Pub 4:30 PM.
England’s second World Cup finals match is due to start in half an hour.
Bit of a rest day today as it was mainly roadie-ing across the flat bit between the Pennines and the North Yorks Moors. Osmotherley is not far from the A19, nestled just under the west side of the latter set of hills.
We arrived about an hour ago and almost made it here without much incident. But, there’s a very shallow (and mossy) ford on the road about half a mile from the village and Ben S managed to off going across it and hit the road in the water very hard indeed. No real harm done luckily – just a few bruises and a hold in the back of his shorts. But it was a painful one.
Oh, and we also had a puncture-fest a few miles back after having done a bit of ‘extra’ bridle path across the edge of a field, which resulted in everyone bar John getting at least one puncture. The annoying thing was we’d done the field and all sat down in the sun for a break and discovered a couple of flats when we went to get back on the bikes. Then everyone checked their tyres to find all manner of enormous thorns in them. So, team puncture fixing ensued and we almost got run down by a miserable post van driver. Twice.
We did do some off roading this morning, out of Swaledale and round the side of a valley down into Richmond. A rare pit stop in civilisation enabled the use of cash points, Greggs and a grocers. It should be noted the Jo is done in after the excesses of yesterday’s gradients – she missed out the off road bit this morning and took the road option into Richmond, heading straight for a tea shop. She was most pleased that it was an easy day, but is threatening to dip out again tomorrow over some of the tops. We hope she manages to keep to The Route [She did].
Our mantra: The Route is the Way, and the Way is the Route.
We have an influx of intruders on the tour this evening: Jenny and Ed are coming up from Leeds for the evening, and these two it seems are seeing Ben and Jo respectively. Which is nice.
Osmotherley is another lovely village. Reeth was beautiful too – real picture postcard locations. We have seen a lot of these lovely little places on this trip.
Weather today: Very hot: a lot of sun. Good job we weren’t in the hills really.
6:55 and England have just won 2-0. They were not entirely convincing it has to be said.
Coast to Coast (Part 3)
DAY SEVEN
Friday. Greenhow B&B Glasedale, North Yorks (and later in the Glasedale pub).
A BIG day for the tour in the hills today, and all of it in the North Yorkshire Moors. This is not a place that we were really familiar with – until today. Personally I really, really enjoyed it out there today. There were loads of fabulous trails: some very hard ups, but all rideable, and the downhills were just amazing on the tracks across the tops (riggs) of the moors. Miles and miles and miles of it. Brilliant stuff. I managed to nail the toughest climb of the day, which I was chuffed about, but then fell off over the bars on a fairly technical descent. No real harm done (cuts and scrapes) but I do have a worryingly sore wrist.
Then I also became “Cock of the Day” with a comedy (show) off after a kids’ skid stop right near the end. I got stuck in my spds and tipped off sideways right in front of everyone. Cock.
Breakfast marks for Osmotherly B&B: Points lost for hard bacon and crap sausage. But, decent eggs and fried potatoes. All in all a six. Maybe 5.5.
[Trailspeak: During the duration of the trip a group vocabulary evolved out of the expletives uttered at the top of the brutal climbs. We amused each other by seeing who could come out with the most outrageously foul description to go with the outrageous effort we had put into getting up these monster hills. All this was done extremely loudly, in the great wide open, way out of earshot of anyone, for a whole week. So, you can imagine the level things dropped to towards the end. It had been pretty low at the start mind…]
The use of the ‘c’ word has become standard practice (after Ben S’s wonderful story relayed to us on Loughrigg Terrace of a friend of his who would publicly complain about he lack of “c**ting bacon” etc in ASDA) and is now commonly used in it’s adjective form before some of the more usual four letter words. For instance: “c**ting walkers”.
“Cockweasle” was another Ben S classic – initially used to decribe the bike shop people in Ambleside and their attitude towards Ben F.
Jo (the Queen of foul language) today came out with “c**ting knob cheese” at the top of one particularly difficult ascent, and there was even discussion of a “c**ting scale” (up to 10) for things which just went way over the top.
The trail language is choice. But very funny.
Jo is going to produce and market MINGE cloths. The name came first and we were then tasked with coming up with the acronym and so the Multi Integrated Natural Grease Elimination System was born. Squares of cotton for wiping things, basically.Genius idea and a great name. She’ll make millions.
A big day for punctures. We started at he B&B with three. John had a couple; the Bens both had two and I finished with one. Consequently there was a seriously high faff quotient to the day’s events.
We started at 10:20 and finished at 6:30. 35 miles with a lot of that off road. It was a hard one. Great though.
Jo (we have decided) needs some non-creamy honorary balls. The lady is a star, and was upset about not being able to be part of the arse larding ritual which occurs each day, often more than once. But she has taken a picture of us all in arse larding action. For her, err, collection.
The swapping of bike shoes so Ben S, John and myself could ride each others bikes for trial purposes has been described as “very gay”. Bollocks. How else do we try each others bikes. Bib shorts are admittedly very gay. The swapping of bike shoes is not.
Glasedale is a strangely shaped village. It’s set on a very steep hill and our B&B is right at the top (which was handy, as that’s the way we came in and we spotted the place almost straight away), and this pub is about 2 miles down the road. We don’t want to walk 2 miles back up the bloody great hill so the B&B people are coming down to pick us up at 10, “for a small contribution” – whatever that may be. 50p we reckon.
We have just been served up THE most excellent meals of the tour so far. Hands down the best food we’ve had all week. Really great home cooked stuff: my steak pie was just delicious and there was tons of it – and a pile of chips as well. And veg. The menu is unreal – what a place to eat. The food has been officially quoted by the tour as being “good shit”.
However, Ben STILL has not found a pub which serves any lamb. Lamb shank was actually offered up last night (and most of us ordered it!) but it turned out to be off the menu and we just had to settle for less. His torture is magnified by the fact that there are lambs everywhere in the fields and Ben may go and catch one to eat raw at some point soon.
Weather today: Cloudy and warm. No sun which was perfect. Also perfect was the fact that there was absolutely no wind at all on the tops of the moors which was a bit unreal to be honest. It did try to rain for half an hour or so late afternoon but it never quite got in precipitation gear – just a few drops - and we remained rain-free.
We passed by “Great Fryup” today. A place which in any other travelling situation has to be worthy of a detour to go visit.
DAY EIGHT
Saturday. Boggle Hole Youth Hostel, Robin Hoods Bay
Another pretty big day out for our last one. Lots of great trails again over more, err, moors. We started off with a monster of a road climb out of Grosmont – where there is a steam railway and it all looks very quaintly Yorkshire touristy.
Just previous to this village we’d bumped into this quite odd bloke who actually swore more than we did. He also had a real plumb in his mouth. His accent was still there but somewhat watered down and we deduced he was a proper upper class type who’d moved to the sticks (and probably bought the sticks).
Anyway, he was cycling along with two young lads when we initially passed him and they then caught us up as we were doing a map check. He was maybe in his mid thirties and nattered on about his road cycling and stuff, and then invited us to cross the road and check out the local BMX track, which just happened to be there. Pretty cool it was too and there was a lap or two completed by the tour members. Our bloke’s two mates were young lads (about 10 years old at a guess) and it looked like the kind of situation where this bloke would call round at these kids’ houses and see if they wanted to come out and play on their bikes.
We left him effing and blinding merrily away while we cracked on, and up a 1 in 3 real monster fucker (and many further expletives) rated road climb out of said railway town. But, this was a cheap way to gain serious height and get back up onto the moors. Then, funnily enough, there was a series of continual ups and downs to do – for most of the day. No change there then. I kept expecting the view to suddenly open up and reveal the coast, but there always seemed to be another moor between us and our destination.
[Ben S offed twice in the closing stages. The first one was when his front wheel was grasped by a pool of the stickiest mud ever, and he went straight over his bars. No major harm done there really. He saved his second and most serious off of the day until the absolute last bit of technical downhill. We’d had a long desecnt on an excellent chalky track which was full of deeply rutted but now dried up water channels. Mostly there was a line but sometimes drop offs were encountered and jumps were in order to get over some obstacle or other. That kind of thing. It was technical, fast, fun and dusty. Ben was at the front, unfortunately missed the very last jump and hit the dirt hard. Luckily he was protected from serious damage by his hip… Ouch.]
Eventually we were found to be climbing the very last ascent up to a mast and and to our well deserved viewpoint over Robin Hood’s Bay. And there it was – the other coast. Our destination. And after a sit and gawp at the scenery (and some shit) we were able to roll triumphantly down the old railway track right into town…. Except we missed a turning and ended up traipsing through some bloke’s field of a back garden carrying the bikes back up a steep hill, then following a footpath for a while until we found the correct track.
And THEN we were indeed able to roll triumphantly through the village past the hordes of tourists; straight out onto the beach, out across the sand (the tide was ouit) and dip wheels in the water. The Bens and John valiantly stripped off, donned swim shorts and dipped themselves into the cold North Sea. I waded a bit and Jo bravely dipped her toes in.
Pebbles from St Bees were duly dispatched in time honoured coast to coast fashion into said sea by those who had carried them across (Jo and myself that would be) .. and that was it. Job done. We had completed the Coast to Coast by mountain bike. The trek was over.
Err, not quite. There was the getting to the Boggle Hole Youth Hostel to do, but that could wait until after a couple of pints at the Wainwright’s pub on the harbour and some marvellous fish and chips. [Note should be made here that we have no end of trip team photo as the only chap to whom we gave a camera to get it, outside the pub- beers in hand, fucked it up and failed to take our picture. Twice. The twat.] We then had a rather fun traverse of the beach for a mile or so in the sand and through the odd stream to get to the youth hostel.
Boggle Hole Youth Hostel. Lovely position almost on the beach, in a beautiful part of the world. It’s an oasis of comfort. Or, it should be… they’ve put us in some side shack with an internal temperature today of about 50 degrees. There was much consternation within the team but at least Jo managed to get herself out of the boys’ dorm and into a girls’ one. Likely a lot less smelly and let’s hope the weirdo woman from Windermere with the suitcase is not in there with her. We are not really happy with this place.
Now we get ready to go out, back to the village, for some beers and hopefully some more food. Hungry again.
[That was it for the diary. That night was spent in three pubs amongst the it has to be said rather odd mix of folk who frequent Robin Hood’s Bay of a Saturday evening. Lots of walkers having finished their own coast to coast , but then there were the gypsy types for instance in one place who had two small yappy crap dogs which were encouraged to lick beer out of .. actually ‘share’ would be a better term for this… yes, the dogs shared beer glasses with their owners. Gross.
Ben rolled some serious fat ones on the balcony overlooking the sea outside one pub and we generally drank the evening away. We did manage to get some food in before they stopped serving it.
There was a mix of paths of return to the Youth Hostel with some of us braving the pitch dark and the path along the top (and dropping our phones under the wooden steps) whilst others braved the pitch dark and the water and returned along the beach. It should be noted that there was some shameful fridge raiding done by certain members of the team after we returned from the pub. How many packets of mini Jaffa cakes did those boys eat?
Christian’s car had been delivered to the youth hostel no problem and the keys left for us. Trouble is with that place though is that the car park is half a mile up the single track road which connects the hostel to civilisation, Our bags were dropped at said car park the evening before and we had to go up and wait for them..They are delivered by Packhorse to a local taxi firm who then charge for this service and then also charge to drop the bags off. Nice work if you can get it. We had to haul the bags down to the hostel and of course back up the fucking hill again the next morning, along with the bikes and full on hangovers, and no breakfast.
All this hauling of stuff, along with the awful accommodation (although it has to be said I did sleep well that night) did not endear Boggle Hole to the tour at all. Next time it’s a B&B in the village…
We eventually set off for home mid morning, stopping only for a final team meal on the A64: McDonalds. And guess what – it rained most of the way back. Ha-ha - could not have been more perfect timing.]
Friday. Greenhow B&B Glasedale, North Yorks (and later in the Glasedale pub).
A BIG day for the tour in the hills today, and all of it in the North Yorkshire Moors. This is not a place that we were really familiar with – until today. Personally I really, really enjoyed it out there today. There were loads of fabulous trails: some very hard ups, but all rideable, and the downhills were just amazing on the tracks across the tops (riggs) of the moors. Miles and miles and miles of it. Brilliant stuff. I managed to nail the toughest climb of the day, which I was chuffed about, but then fell off over the bars on a fairly technical descent. No real harm done (cuts and scrapes) but I do have a worryingly sore wrist.
Then I also became “Cock of the Day” with a comedy (show) off after a kids’ skid stop right near the end. I got stuck in my spds and tipped off sideways right in front of everyone. Cock.
Breakfast marks for Osmotherly B&B: Points lost for hard bacon and crap sausage. But, decent eggs and fried potatoes. All in all a six. Maybe 5.5.
[Trailspeak: During the duration of the trip a group vocabulary evolved out of the expletives uttered at the top of the brutal climbs. We amused each other by seeing who could come out with the most outrageously foul description to go with the outrageous effort we had put into getting up these monster hills. All this was done extremely loudly, in the great wide open, way out of earshot of anyone, for a whole week. So, you can imagine the level things dropped to towards the end. It had been pretty low at the start mind…]
The use of the ‘c’ word has become standard practice (after Ben S’s wonderful story relayed to us on Loughrigg Terrace of a friend of his who would publicly complain about he lack of “c**ting bacon” etc in ASDA) and is now commonly used in it’s adjective form before some of the more usual four letter words. For instance: “c**ting walkers”.
“Cockweasle” was another Ben S classic – initially used to decribe the bike shop people in Ambleside and their attitude towards Ben F.
Jo (the Queen of foul language) today came out with “c**ting knob cheese” at the top of one particularly difficult ascent, and there was even discussion of a “c**ting scale” (up to 10) for things which just went way over the top.
The trail language is choice. But very funny.
Jo is going to produce and market MINGE cloths. The name came first and we were then tasked with coming up with the acronym and so the Multi Integrated Natural Grease Elimination System was born. Squares of cotton for wiping things, basically.Genius idea and a great name. She’ll make millions.
A big day for punctures. We started at he B&B with three. John had a couple; the Bens both had two and I finished with one. Consequently there was a seriously high faff quotient to the day’s events.
We started at 10:20 and finished at 6:30. 35 miles with a lot of that off road. It was a hard one. Great though.
Jo (we have decided) needs some non-creamy honorary balls. The lady is a star, and was upset about not being able to be part of the arse larding ritual which occurs each day, often more than once. But she has taken a picture of us all in arse larding action. For her, err, collection.
The swapping of bike shoes so Ben S, John and myself could ride each others bikes for trial purposes has been described as “very gay”. Bollocks. How else do we try each others bikes. Bib shorts are admittedly very gay. The swapping of bike shoes is not.
Glasedale is a strangely shaped village. It’s set on a very steep hill and our B&B is right at the top (which was handy, as that’s the way we came in and we spotted the place almost straight away), and this pub is about 2 miles down the road. We don’t want to walk 2 miles back up the bloody great hill so the B&B people are coming down to pick us up at 10, “for a small contribution” – whatever that may be. 50p we reckon.
We have just been served up THE most excellent meals of the tour so far. Hands down the best food we’ve had all week. Really great home cooked stuff: my steak pie was just delicious and there was tons of it – and a pile of chips as well. And veg. The menu is unreal – what a place to eat. The food has been officially quoted by the tour as being “good shit”.
However, Ben STILL has not found a pub which serves any lamb. Lamb shank was actually offered up last night (and most of us ordered it!) but it turned out to be off the menu and we just had to settle for less. His torture is magnified by the fact that there are lambs everywhere in the fields and Ben may go and catch one to eat raw at some point soon.
Weather today: Cloudy and warm. No sun which was perfect. Also perfect was the fact that there was absolutely no wind at all on the tops of the moors which was a bit unreal to be honest. It did try to rain for half an hour or so late afternoon but it never quite got in precipitation gear – just a few drops - and we remained rain-free.
We passed by “Great Fryup” today. A place which in any other travelling situation has to be worthy of a detour to go visit.
DAY EIGHT
Saturday. Boggle Hole Youth Hostel, Robin Hoods Bay
Another pretty big day out for our last one. Lots of great trails again over more, err, moors. We started off with a monster of a road climb out of Grosmont – where there is a steam railway and it all looks very quaintly Yorkshire touristy.
Just previous to this village we’d bumped into this quite odd bloke who actually swore more than we did. He also had a real plumb in his mouth. His accent was still there but somewhat watered down and we deduced he was a proper upper class type who’d moved to the sticks (and probably bought the sticks).
Anyway, he was cycling along with two young lads when we initially passed him and they then caught us up as we were doing a map check. He was maybe in his mid thirties and nattered on about his road cycling and stuff, and then invited us to cross the road and check out the local BMX track, which just happened to be there. Pretty cool it was too and there was a lap or two completed by the tour members. Our bloke’s two mates were young lads (about 10 years old at a guess) and it looked like the kind of situation where this bloke would call round at these kids’ houses and see if they wanted to come out and play on their bikes.
We left him effing and blinding merrily away while we cracked on, and up a 1 in 3 real monster fucker (and many further expletives) rated road climb out of said railway town. But, this was a cheap way to gain serious height and get back up onto the moors. Then, funnily enough, there was a series of continual ups and downs to do – for most of the day. No change there then. I kept expecting the view to suddenly open up and reveal the coast, but there always seemed to be another moor between us and our destination.
[Ben S offed twice in the closing stages. The first one was when his front wheel was grasped by a pool of the stickiest mud ever, and he went straight over his bars. No major harm done there really. He saved his second and most serious off of the day until the absolute last bit of technical downhill. We’d had a long desecnt on an excellent chalky track which was full of deeply rutted but now dried up water channels. Mostly there was a line but sometimes drop offs were encountered and jumps were in order to get over some obstacle or other. That kind of thing. It was technical, fast, fun and dusty. Ben was at the front, unfortunately missed the very last jump and hit the dirt hard. Luckily he was protected from serious damage by his hip… Ouch.]
Eventually we were found to be climbing the very last ascent up to a mast and and to our well deserved viewpoint over Robin Hood’s Bay. And there it was – the other coast. Our destination. And after a sit and gawp at the scenery (and some shit) we were able to roll triumphantly down the old railway track right into town…. Except we missed a turning and ended up traipsing through some bloke’s field of a back garden carrying the bikes back up a steep hill, then following a footpath for a while until we found the correct track.
And THEN we were indeed able to roll triumphantly through the village past the hordes of tourists; straight out onto the beach, out across the sand (the tide was ouit) and dip wheels in the water. The Bens and John valiantly stripped off, donned swim shorts and dipped themselves into the cold North Sea. I waded a bit and Jo bravely dipped her toes in.
Pebbles from St Bees were duly dispatched in time honoured coast to coast fashion into said sea by those who had carried them across (Jo and myself that would be) .. and that was it. Job done. We had completed the Coast to Coast by mountain bike. The trek was over.
Err, not quite. There was the getting to the Boggle Hole Youth Hostel to do, but that could wait until after a couple of pints at the Wainwright’s pub on the harbour and some marvellous fish and chips. [Note should be made here that we have no end of trip team photo as the only chap to whom we gave a camera to get it, outside the pub- beers in hand, fucked it up and failed to take our picture. Twice. The twat.] We then had a rather fun traverse of the beach for a mile or so in the sand and through the odd stream to get to the youth hostel.
Boggle Hole Youth Hostel. Lovely position almost on the beach, in a beautiful part of the world. It’s an oasis of comfort. Or, it should be… they’ve put us in some side shack with an internal temperature today of about 50 degrees. There was much consternation within the team but at least Jo managed to get herself out of the boys’ dorm and into a girls’ one. Likely a lot less smelly and let’s hope the weirdo woman from Windermere with the suitcase is not in there with her. We are not really happy with this place.
Now we get ready to go out, back to the village, for some beers and hopefully some more food. Hungry again.
[That was it for the diary. That night was spent in three pubs amongst the it has to be said rather odd mix of folk who frequent Robin Hood’s Bay of a Saturday evening. Lots of walkers having finished their own coast to coast , but then there were the gypsy types for instance in one place who had two small yappy crap dogs which were encouraged to lick beer out of .. actually ‘share’ would be a better term for this… yes, the dogs shared beer glasses with their owners. Gross.
Ben rolled some serious fat ones on the balcony overlooking the sea outside one pub and we generally drank the evening away. We did manage to get some food in before they stopped serving it.
There was a mix of paths of return to the Youth Hostel with some of us braving the pitch dark and the path along the top (and dropping our phones under the wooden steps) whilst others braved the pitch dark and the water and returned along the beach. It should be noted that there was some shameful fridge raiding done by certain members of the team after we returned from the pub. How many packets of mini Jaffa cakes did those boys eat?
Christian’s car had been delivered to the youth hostel no problem and the keys left for us. Trouble is with that place though is that the car park is half a mile up the single track road which connects the hostel to civilisation, Our bags were dropped at said car park the evening before and we had to go up and wait for them..They are delivered by Packhorse to a local taxi firm who then charge for this service and then also charge to drop the bags off. Nice work if you can get it. We had to haul the bags down to the hostel and of course back up the fucking hill again the next morning, along with the bikes and full on hangovers, and no breakfast.
All this hauling of stuff, along with the awful accommodation (although it has to be said I did sleep well that night) did not endear Boggle Hole to the tour at all. Next time it’s a B&B in the village…
We eventually set off for home mid morning, stopping only for a final team meal on the A64: McDonalds. And guess what – it rained most of the way back. Ha-ha - could not have been more perfect timing.]
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Another right good do
Ok so none of you have ever heard of The Tragically Hip. Well, in a way that's great as when they do come over and play I get to see them in a small venue and witness a fantastic band play live at very close quarters.
The gig last Friday was amazing. It's the fourth time I've seen them in the Shepherd's Bush Empire as it's generally the only English venue they play when they come over to Europe.
These occasions happen about every three years so manage to really create a tangible fervour of expectation in the crowd. The Hip's stellar live reputation goes before them and they seem to be a band who really mean a great deal to their fans - one of these outfits who have a real die hard following and a massive amount of respect from people who have in many cases been fans for 15 years or more. And fortunately the respect goes both ways as the band do have a very real relationship with their fans, and I guess this is why they make the effort to get over here and play live every couple of years - something which is very unusual for a band who really do not sell many records outside of Canada.
My now 'usual' fellow Hip watchers Sam and Scottie were there; Rachael came over from Bristol and also ex workmate and recent Hip convert Nick, who drove us down the M1 for the show. We all got stuck in with the crowd downstairs and it was especially good to spend about half an hour front and centre singing (shouting!) along with Scottie.
The band really were on form and we got the best part of two hours' worth of Hipness. Lots of old, new and brand new including 3 tracks from their forthcoming album which is due out in October. Singer Gord Downie was his usual manic self. Whether he's singing, dancing, fighting with his microphone, ranting or just generally making faces and throwing shapes he is the absolute focus of the live show while the rest of the band just get on with the business of playing the songs. Downie was just soaked in sweat and exhausted by the end - much like his audience.
Great to see video cameras up by the sound desk, and it turns out that there's group of Canadian fans following these European dates and filming them all for unofficial distribution, sanctioned by the band. So we'll get some great live bootleg DVDs at some point: something I REALLY like to see :-)
So, all in all another fabulous evening's entertainment from our Canadian friends, and I spent the following day in Bristol with Rachael, which is a whole other story...
The gig last Friday was amazing. It's the fourth time I've seen them in the Shepherd's Bush Empire as it's generally the only English venue they play when they come over to Europe.
These occasions happen about every three years so manage to really create a tangible fervour of expectation in the crowd. The Hip's stellar live reputation goes before them and they seem to be a band who really mean a great deal to their fans - one of these outfits who have a real die hard following and a massive amount of respect from people who have in many cases been fans for 15 years or more. And fortunately the respect goes both ways as the band do have a very real relationship with their fans, and I guess this is why they make the effort to get over here and play live every couple of years - something which is very unusual for a band who really do not sell many records outside of Canada.
My now 'usual' fellow Hip watchers Sam and Scottie were there; Rachael came over from Bristol and also ex workmate and recent Hip convert Nick, who drove us down the M1 for the show. We all got stuck in with the crowd downstairs and it was especially good to spend about half an hour front and centre singing (shouting!) along with Scottie.
The band really were on form and we got the best part of two hours' worth of Hipness. Lots of old, new and brand new including 3 tracks from their forthcoming album which is due out in October. Singer Gord Downie was his usual manic self. Whether he's singing, dancing, fighting with his microphone, ranting or just generally making faces and throwing shapes he is the absolute focus of the live show while the rest of the band just get on with the business of playing the songs. Downie was just soaked in sweat and exhausted by the end - much like his audience.
Great to see video cameras up by the sound desk, and it turns out that there's group of Canadian fans following these European dates and filming them all for unofficial distribution, sanctioned by the band. So we'll get some great live bootleg DVDs at some point: something I REALLY like to see :-)
So, all in all another fabulous evening's entertainment from our Canadian friends, and I spent the following day in Bristol with Rachael, which is a whole other story...
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
A right good do
I had a last minute ticket offer (from Rachael - thanks SO much ) to see The Who in Hyde Park on Sunday. Always one of those bands who I felt I should see at least once: legendary stuff and all that, so I lashed it down on the train Sunday morning to London.
It's great to see that over the last few years Pete Towshend and Roger Daltrey seem to have made friends again, revived their band and found a love of playing those songs once more.
And what songs! Spine tingling stuff to hear stuff like Can't Explain, Who Are You, Baba O'Reilly, Behind Blue Eyes and Won't Get Fooled Again. The newer material was excellent too and Townshend's solo acoustic rendition of Drowned was, for me, stunning.
A great band with Zak Starkey giving it loads of Keith Moon behind the drums and Pino Palladino ably filling the equally giant shoes of John Entwhistle.
Lots of video on screens behind them throughout with the band paying their own resepcts to their long history and deceased colleagues.
Daltrey's kept himself and his voice in great shape and Pete Townshend obviously still enjoys being a very noisy arm windmilling guitar monster, although his days of wanton equipment trashing are thankfully behind him.
They may no longer be the angry young men of the 60s and 70s but I reckon they are a better live spectacle as content, energetic 'old' men simply enjoying what they do; respecting themselves, their history and their amazing catalogue of material, thus making The Who live an absolute joy to behold as a spectator.
Fantastic.
Great weather too: a beautiful hot summer's day and lovely warm evening. And great to be part of such a huge, well behaved crowd.
All in all right good do.
It's great to see that over the last few years Pete Towshend and Roger Daltrey seem to have made friends again, revived their band and found a love of playing those songs once more.
And what songs! Spine tingling stuff to hear stuff like Can't Explain, Who Are You, Baba O'Reilly, Behind Blue Eyes and Won't Get Fooled Again. The newer material was excellent too and Townshend's solo acoustic rendition of Drowned was, for me, stunning.
A great band with Zak Starkey giving it loads of Keith Moon behind the drums and Pino Palladino ably filling the equally giant shoes of John Entwhistle.
Lots of video on screens behind them throughout with the band paying their own resepcts to their long history and deceased colleagues.
Daltrey's kept himself and his voice in great shape and Pete Townshend obviously still enjoys being a very noisy arm windmilling guitar monster, although his days of wanton equipment trashing are thankfully behind him.
They may no longer be the angry young men of the 60s and 70s but I reckon they are a better live spectacle as content, energetic 'old' men simply enjoying what they do; respecting themselves, their history and their amazing catalogue of material, thus making The Who live an absolute joy to behold as a spectator.
Fantastic.
Great weather too: a beautiful hot summer's day and lovely warm evening. And great to be part of such a huge, well behaved crowd.
All in all right good do.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Scotland Part 3
DAY EIGHT
12:05 PM Thurs 25th
AROS visitor centre, Portree, Skye.
Andy
Just a note to say that outside the windows here right now it’s hailstoning - big ones. We’ve ridden 25 miles or so in a mixed bag of sunshine and heavy rain showers – the frequency and fieceness of which have gradually increased as we have ridden along the coast road from staffin. We opted for the north (east?) coast road as it’s quieter and the views over to torridon etc plus those of the Trotternish (Storr etc) here on Skye itself are most impressive. The Black Cuillin themselves have not long come into proper view and loom menacingly now in the near distance. The big tops of it’s north end: Gillean, Bastier etc tower above the rest of the island over there and there’s a fair amount of snow still on them. They do live up to their BLACK title very much from here.
Anyway – I digress - it’s not been a bad day so far. Indeed the early traverse of the Trotternish from Uig to get over to Staffin really was wonderful, and we were pushed along uphill by a stiff tail wind. The drop down to Staffin was steep (1:7) and exhilarating, and the road along the coast has been undulatiing and pleasant, spoilt only by rain showers as we eventually approached Portree.
Rich has ordered food and is now off in the shop looking for souvenirs - in particular one of those little things you turn over in your hand and it goes “moo”.
Last night was quite good fun in the (3 Star) Uig Youth Hostel with it’s hippy lady warden. First order of the evening was that I raced on my bike to the shop which was a bastard 2 miles down the hill at the ferry pier…
Rich
.. in search of provision, and we ate a hearty meal made up of bangers, mash and beans which andy then went and spoiled by putting cheese on and coleslaw with (he should never open a restaurant).
We spent yesterday evening in the YHA chatting with folks: 2 cyclists from of all places, Calverley; an Aussie couple and two young midwives from Croyden. The latter two pairings were on road trips and came out to Skye on a bit of a whim. Fair enough.
The riding today has been most scenic… except when the hail came down of course. We are now lounging replete and slightly steamy: not an unpleasant experience for us, but I can’t speak for our fellow diners. But they all came here by car so they don’t count.
Andy
Cheese on baked beans is genius. And coleslaw is a nutritious addition to any meal.
I’ve just bought a couple more of the long postcards – good ‘arty’ ones to put in frames at home. Trouble is they are too big to go in the bar bag so I am going to have to diamantle one of my panniers to get them to where they are safe from getting folded and/or wet.
5:10 Youth Hostel, Broadford. Skye
Well, after the Portree stop the weather was fine and sunny all the way here so we made good time with the wind behind us virtually all the way.
Personally I was most distressed to find myself racing past the Sligachan Hotel without at least stopping to pay my respects! Just goes to underline that a biking holiday is a biking holiday and the whole point of it is to be on the road. But still, to pass by such an iconic place with only a swift gaze about at the ridiculous mountain scenery and a quiet salute is a bit off!
I did notice a bot of a wobble in Rich’s back wheel today and thought nothing much of it as I presumed that he would have noticed anything awry when he was braking. But he didn’t – and we spotted the reason for the wobble when we were unloading the bikes in the shed here – he had about 6 very loose spokes! Sorted now though, and just in time by the looks of things.
We had considered going on to the next Hostel at Kyleakin – another 10 miles down to the Kyle of Lochalsh – but we took one look at this place and opted to stop here. It’s very nice. Great spot on the side of the loch looking over at Applecross etc, and anyway apparently the Hostel at Kyleakin is a noisy backpackers hangout with a non-existent curfew. AND there’s pub quiz in one of the local pubs here tonight organised by one of the wardens at theis hostel. Cool.
DAY NINE
Glencarron Hotel 1:35 PM
En route back to Torridon
Andy
It’s Drowned Rats day today – a LOT of rain so far and we are about half way on a big day with a fair few climbs still to do. A sense of humour failure (our first one) was not far away from both of us earlier on in the rain. We are cold and wet.
On the plus side the scenery is as ever wondrous and this café is very good. Top drawer lentil soup and warming sweet hot chocolate. Yum.
Oh, and we won the quiz night last night accompanied by two lady Scottish coppers!
Torridon Youth Hostel
Later that day
Rich
Yeah, that was weird. Andy had stopped on the way to the pub quiz to throw “skimmers” into the sea (quite amusing if you are 12, that is) and these two ladies from the hostel were going our way, one swinging a wine bottle… They were a good laugh: Kirtsie and Leslie (a 2nd Dan black belt at karate) and did not take and shit from anyone, including the locals which was pretty useful when we won the quiz! We then proceeded to spend the (£20!) prize money at the bar…
We woke up with hangovers and rain, neither of which looked set to go away in a hurry so we set off anyhow. After an easy start [up until just after we got across the Skye bridge] we hit some bad weather. Things were not helped when I was temporarily blinded by road salt pouring off my head and into my eyes. Although I was in serious danger of looking like a middle-aged crisis ridden Harley Davidson fanatic I nevertheless accepted Andy’s kind offer of his bandana (next stop – an inappropriate tattoo…?).
After our tea and soup stop the weather cleared and it all became a lot more pleasant, although some big hills inexplicably sprang up in front of us. I got my ice-cream (eventually) in Lochcarron, and we greedily munched our Cornettos in the mizzle while the midges, in turn, greedily munched us.
Andy
I must just say one thing here – skimming stones is much more than “quite amusing” when you are 12 – it’s an art. One which should be practiced and honed at any given opportunity, and which Rich will never appreciate as, lets be honest, he throws like a girl.
Quite amusing that Rich also ended up wearing the bandana after he’d been taking the piss out of me all week for the Buff wearing. Still, it kept the salt out of his eyes which was most excellent.
Today has been hard graft - a LOT of hills on every stage, and in particular two or three nasty little climbs as we felt were were on the very last home stretch bit. Some glorious scenery though, as ever. Loch Carron I would wager is amazing in half decent conditions and the run down (some excellent new black top) into Glen Torridon really was beautiful. And we even had the sun out for a while there.
We prepared a “skyscraper of food” each on the tiny little hostel plates. You’d think they’d realise that people who come here have big appetites…
One thing I have noticed in this hostel is the prevelance of the wearing of socks with sandals and this is most distressing.
We bought some cornflakes: excellent. The omellete, bacon and beans routine will finally be broken!
We were pondering the fate of the “Old Lady” we met in Ullapool while we were cycling along in the shit weather today – how would she be coping in such adverse conditions? Rich reckons she’ll she’ll be on Orkney fuelled by a Finger of Fudge and a cherry
tomato.
The two Calverley guys are here – the did the Applecross circuit today on top of coming back from Skye and it half killed them. There’s cycling and enjoying it (which I reckon is what Rich and I have been doing) – knowing your limits and not doing stuff just because it’s there – and then there’s being plain stupid.
Rich
Agreed again. I don’t do this just to tell tall stories in the hostels in the evenings to try to impress total strangers. Jeez – get a life.
[And that was about it. Plans to go and do the Applecroft circuit by bike (or by car) were shelved as the weather was lousy and there wasn’t really much point withiout the views. So, we left a day early. Actually due to the shortened Outer Hebrides episode we were two days earlier than planned as our original intention was to drive back down on the Bank Holiday Monday. But it would be good to be back home with a day to spare and not having to go straight to work the next day etc. We had a bit of a lie in the next (Saturday) morning, eventually packed the car, said goodbye to the top warden chappie and set off on the long drive home. We did a pit stop in the Cairngorms at the ski place who’s name escapes me now as we were going that way and neither of had been there before. Looks a top town and we dined in a café above a climbing shop which did the most excellent food. We got talking to a couple of blokes, University lecturers, who were heading up to Assynt on a geology field trip, which was most pleasant.
It was here that we had our one and only technical of the trip – and it involved Rich’s car. It had been smelling of diesel a bit and when we returned to it in the climbing shop car park to find it sat in it’s own colourful pool of fuel. The leak was soon found - it was pissing diesel from a split rubber seal thingy. We fixed it using the glue from a puncture repair kit and sealed it good and proper with a zip tie. A truly marvellous bodge job.
Once diesel stench free we drove south, and we drove south some more. And some more until we reached England. Then some more south; east a bit and eventually arrived in Calverley on Saturday evening. Rich stopped over and he headed back to Reading on the Sunday.]
[A side story of note from the final day: On arrival at the hostel we encountered an example of the phenomenon that is the strange lone male cyclist. This particular one was called John and we initially met him just as we rolled down the valley towards the hostel. (We had seen him as he left Broadford that morning while we were faffing with the bikes in the shed.) Immediate conversation revealed that his 60+ miles that day was ‘disappointing’ for him as he usually averages about 90, or 100 preferably. This did look initially most implausable as this guy was riding an ancient Raleigh Randonneur tourer with trainers, jogging pants, no helmet and a seat adjusted to what looked to be exactly the wrong height for optimum pedalling power. The only thing that marked him out as an any way serious tourer was a pair of smart Ortlieb panniers. We noticed he was in our dorm that night too and it seemed only polite to offer him a seat with us while we were eating. Hmmm. He had a LOT of cycling tales to tell – tours in Africa and North West USA plus him owning a house in Africa somewhere and offering it up as accommodation for cycle tourists… etc etc. All very interesting, and to fair he seemed a nice bloke, but Christ he didn’t half go on. I think Rich at some point escaped to do the dishes and I ran away to the quiet room and read a book or something. By the time he found us again we’d been chatting to the Calverley lads for a while so we were able to bid our goodnights to them all just as John was starting his round of tales again!
We did our late start and caught up with John on the road as he’s headed for Inverness as well that day. Christ he’d really coverered a lot of miles by the time we saw him, and he’s probably still out there, cycling round somewhere – same as “Old lady”. There’s a lot of them out there folks so treat them with care should you pass them on the roads.]
TOUR STATS
430 odd miles in car each way (Calverley to Torridon); 315 of which is in Scotland.
294 recorded on bike computer (it cut out in heavy rain) + 25 (Harris) + 60 (last day)
Approx 375 miles cycled in total. Max single day: 93 miles.
Recorded average = 13.1 mph.
Recorded max speed = 42.3 mph (I think this was descending into Ullapool)
Touring satisfaction quotient: 100%
12:05 PM Thurs 25th
AROS visitor centre, Portree, Skye.
Andy
Just a note to say that outside the windows here right now it’s hailstoning - big ones. We’ve ridden 25 miles or so in a mixed bag of sunshine and heavy rain showers – the frequency and fieceness of which have gradually increased as we have ridden along the coast road from staffin. We opted for the north (east?) coast road as it’s quieter and the views over to torridon etc plus those of the Trotternish (Storr etc) here on Skye itself are most impressive. The Black Cuillin themselves have not long come into proper view and loom menacingly now in the near distance. The big tops of it’s north end: Gillean, Bastier etc tower above the rest of the island over there and there’s a fair amount of snow still on them. They do live up to their BLACK title very much from here.
Anyway – I digress - it’s not been a bad day so far. Indeed the early traverse of the Trotternish from Uig to get over to Staffin really was wonderful, and we were pushed along uphill by a stiff tail wind. The drop down to Staffin was steep (1:7) and exhilarating, and the road along the coast has been undulatiing and pleasant, spoilt only by rain showers as we eventually approached Portree.
Rich has ordered food and is now off in the shop looking for souvenirs - in particular one of those little things you turn over in your hand and it goes “moo”.
Last night was quite good fun in the (3 Star) Uig Youth Hostel with it’s hippy lady warden. First order of the evening was that I raced on my bike to the shop which was a bastard 2 miles down the hill at the ferry pier…
Rich
.. in search of provision, and we ate a hearty meal made up of bangers, mash and beans which andy then went and spoiled by putting cheese on and coleslaw with (he should never open a restaurant).
We spent yesterday evening in the YHA chatting with folks: 2 cyclists from of all places, Calverley; an Aussie couple and two young midwives from Croyden. The latter two pairings were on road trips and came out to Skye on a bit of a whim. Fair enough.
The riding today has been most scenic… except when the hail came down of course. We are now lounging replete and slightly steamy: not an unpleasant experience for us, but I can’t speak for our fellow diners. But they all came here by car so they don’t count.
Andy
Cheese on baked beans is genius. And coleslaw is a nutritious addition to any meal.
I’ve just bought a couple more of the long postcards – good ‘arty’ ones to put in frames at home. Trouble is they are too big to go in the bar bag so I am going to have to diamantle one of my panniers to get them to where they are safe from getting folded and/or wet.
5:10 Youth Hostel, Broadford. Skye
Well, after the Portree stop the weather was fine and sunny all the way here so we made good time with the wind behind us virtually all the way.
Personally I was most distressed to find myself racing past the Sligachan Hotel without at least stopping to pay my respects! Just goes to underline that a biking holiday is a biking holiday and the whole point of it is to be on the road. But still, to pass by such an iconic place with only a swift gaze about at the ridiculous mountain scenery and a quiet salute is a bit off!
I did notice a bot of a wobble in Rich’s back wheel today and thought nothing much of it as I presumed that he would have noticed anything awry when he was braking. But he didn’t – and we spotted the reason for the wobble when we were unloading the bikes in the shed here – he had about 6 very loose spokes! Sorted now though, and just in time by the looks of things.
We had considered going on to the next Hostel at Kyleakin – another 10 miles down to the Kyle of Lochalsh – but we took one look at this place and opted to stop here. It’s very nice. Great spot on the side of the loch looking over at Applecross etc, and anyway apparently the Hostel at Kyleakin is a noisy backpackers hangout with a non-existent curfew. AND there’s pub quiz in one of the local pubs here tonight organised by one of the wardens at theis hostel. Cool.
DAY NINE
Glencarron Hotel 1:35 PM
En route back to Torridon
Andy
It’s Drowned Rats day today – a LOT of rain so far and we are about half way on a big day with a fair few climbs still to do. A sense of humour failure (our first one) was not far away from both of us earlier on in the rain. We are cold and wet.
On the plus side the scenery is as ever wondrous and this café is very good. Top drawer lentil soup and warming sweet hot chocolate. Yum.
Oh, and we won the quiz night last night accompanied by two lady Scottish coppers!
Torridon Youth Hostel
Later that day
Rich
Yeah, that was weird. Andy had stopped on the way to the pub quiz to throw “skimmers” into the sea (quite amusing if you are 12, that is) and these two ladies from the hostel were going our way, one swinging a wine bottle… They were a good laugh: Kirtsie and Leslie (a 2nd Dan black belt at karate) and did not take and shit from anyone, including the locals which was pretty useful when we won the quiz! We then proceeded to spend the (£20!) prize money at the bar…
We woke up with hangovers and rain, neither of which looked set to go away in a hurry so we set off anyhow. After an easy start [up until just after we got across the Skye bridge] we hit some bad weather. Things were not helped when I was temporarily blinded by road salt pouring off my head and into my eyes. Although I was in serious danger of looking like a middle-aged crisis ridden Harley Davidson fanatic I nevertheless accepted Andy’s kind offer of his bandana (next stop – an inappropriate tattoo…?).
After our tea and soup stop the weather cleared and it all became a lot more pleasant, although some big hills inexplicably sprang up in front of us. I got my ice-cream (eventually) in Lochcarron, and we greedily munched our Cornettos in the mizzle while the midges, in turn, greedily munched us.
Andy
I must just say one thing here – skimming stones is much more than “quite amusing” when you are 12 – it’s an art. One which should be practiced and honed at any given opportunity, and which Rich will never appreciate as, lets be honest, he throws like a girl.
Quite amusing that Rich also ended up wearing the bandana after he’d been taking the piss out of me all week for the Buff wearing. Still, it kept the salt out of his eyes which was most excellent.
Today has been hard graft - a LOT of hills on every stage, and in particular two or three nasty little climbs as we felt were were on the very last home stretch bit. Some glorious scenery though, as ever. Loch Carron I would wager is amazing in half decent conditions and the run down (some excellent new black top) into Glen Torridon really was beautiful. And we even had the sun out for a while there.
We prepared a “skyscraper of food” each on the tiny little hostel plates. You’d think they’d realise that people who come here have big appetites…
One thing I have noticed in this hostel is the prevelance of the wearing of socks with sandals and this is most distressing.
We bought some cornflakes: excellent. The omellete, bacon and beans routine will finally be broken!
We were pondering the fate of the “Old Lady” we met in Ullapool while we were cycling along in the shit weather today – how would she be coping in such adverse conditions? Rich reckons she’ll she’ll be on Orkney fuelled by a Finger of Fudge and a cherry
tomato.
The two Calverley guys are here – the did the Applecross circuit today on top of coming back from Skye and it half killed them. There’s cycling and enjoying it (which I reckon is what Rich and I have been doing) – knowing your limits and not doing stuff just because it’s there – and then there’s being plain stupid.
Rich
Agreed again. I don’t do this just to tell tall stories in the hostels in the evenings to try to impress total strangers. Jeez – get a life.
[And that was about it. Plans to go and do the Applecroft circuit by bike (or by car) were shelved as the weather was lousy and there wasn’t really much point withiout the views. So, we left a day early. Actually due to the shortened Outer Hebrides episode we were two days earlier than planned as our original intention was to drive back down on the Bank Holiday Monday. But it would be good to be back home with a day to spare and not having to go straight to work the next day etc. We had a bit of a lie in the next (Saturday) morning, eventually packed the car, said goodbye to the top warden chappie and set off on the long drive home. We did a pit stop in the Cairngorms at the ski place who’s name escapes me now as we were going that way and neither of had been there before. Looks a top town and we dined in a café above a climbing shop which did the most excellent food. We got talking to a couple of blokes, University lecturers, who were heading up to Assynt on a geology field trip, which was most pleasant.
It was here that we had our one and only technical of the trip – and it involved Rich’s car. It had been smelling of diesel a bit and when we returned to it in the climbing shop car park to find it sat in it’s own colourful pool of fuel. The leak was soon found - it was pissing diesel from a split rubber seal thingy. We fixed it using the glue from a puncture repair kit and sealed it good and proper with a zip tie. A truly marvellous bodge job.
Once diesel stench free we drove south, and we drove south some more. And some more until we reached England. Then some more south; east a bit and eventually arrived in Calverley on Saturday evening. Rich stopped over and he headed back to Reading on the Sunday.]
[A side story of note from the final day: On arrival at the hostel we encountered an example of the phenomenon that is the strange lone male cyclist. This particular one was called John and we initially met him just as we rolled down the valley towards the hostel. (We had seen him as he left Broadford that morning while we were faffing with the bikes in the shed.) Immediate conversation revealed that his 60+ miles that day was ‘disappointing’ for him as he usually averages about 90, or 100 preferably. This did look initially most implausable as this guy was riding an ancient Raleigh Randonneur tourer with trainers, jogging pants, no helmet and a seat adjusted to what looked to be exactly the wrong height for optimum pedalling power. The only thing that marked him out as an any way serious tourer was a pair of smart Ortlieb panniers. We noticed he was in our dorm that night too and it seemed only polite to offer him a seat with us while we were eating. Hmmm. He had a LOT of cycling tales to tell – tours in Africa and North West USA plus him owning a house in Africa somewhere and offering it up as accommodation for cycle tourists… etc etc. All very interesting, and to fair he seemed a nice bloke, but Christ he didn’t half go on. I think Rich at some point escaped to do the dishes and I ran away to the quiet room and read a book or something. By the time he found us again we’d been chatting to the Calverley lads for a while so we were able to bid our goodnights to them all just as John was starting his round of tales again!
We did our late start and caught up with John on the road as he’s headed for Inverness as well that day. Christ he’d really coverered a lot of miles by the time we saw him, and he’s probably still out there, cycling round somewhere – same as “Old lady”. There’s a lot of them out there folks so treat them with care should you pass them on the roads.]
TOUR STATS
430 odd miles in car each way (Calverley to Torridon); 315 of which is in Scotland.
294 recorded on bike computer (it cut out in heavy rain) + 25 (Harris) + 60 (last day)
Approx 375 miles cycled in total. Max single day: 93 miles.
Recorded average = 13.1 mph.
Recorded max speed = 42.3 mph (I think this was descending into Ullapool)
Touring satisfaction quotient: 100%
Scotland Part 2
DAY FOUR
Monday 12th June 3:30PM
Ullapool – The Return – Sat outside Youth Hostel.
Andy
Firstly, mention must be made of a lady we have just encountered. She was the first cycle tourist we have chatted to (except actually for the grumpy Belgians here the other night – but they don’t count). First impression was her bike – REALLY laden up – and we both thought “How is that little old lady managing to get round here on that thing?” Well, in conversation it turns out that she’s cycled here from fucking Carlisle and is “on her way round”, as in right round the bloody coast! AND she’s camping. Christ. Then she’s off to Norway on the ferry (from Newcastle) and plans to “do a bit” over there before heading down through Scandanavia. All on her bike. Fair play – that is THE thing to do on your retirement, but fucking hell lady we now feel a bit inadequate on our mere ten day tour.
Rich
Not ‘arf mate. We feel dead wimpy. But we told her of our 40 mph downhills, which she was a bit scared of, so perhaps she wasn’t that hard after all.
Up this morning and made what we hoped would be a monster protein – calorific breakfast: fried corned beef. Unfortunately it really wasn’t too pleasant (and Andy couldn’t quite stomach all of his) [it was foul] but it did the job as fuel.
Said goodbye to Dave and Caroline, and the students (who, given that they were up until 2am with their fire on the beach, were up promptly) and headed for the more main route, easterly, past Loch Assynt, to pick up the A road going south (A837). Good progress, fantsatic views of Suilven and the other not-quite-Munros and a couple of stops for a castle (Andy just LOVES castles) and a tea-shop where we camped out until the hail had gone past.
Andy
(The castle was pants.)
We are now being buzzed by the RAF and their pesky jet fighters. This somehow spoils the seaside ambience if you ask me.
Considering how ‘cold’ the weather is, once again I am being burned by the sun here. Just had a text from Jo saying that the weather is cack in Leeds. Good. It’s top up here.
Yep – the cycle today was pretty hard one again. The return down the main road to Ullapool made us realise just how much graft we put in yesterday before we set off on the single track road to nowhere down the loch side. It was 10 miles and on it today we had at least three 40 mph descents, long ones, up which we’d toiled yesterday on the way north. No wonder we were knackered after a mere 30 miles to Achmelvic.
We toyed briefly with the idea of moving our YH booking over to Stornoway tonight and getting the 5:30 ferry across. But our boy here tells us that there’s no SYHA place in Stornoway (we’d have to find an independent one) so we have opted to stop and chill in Ullapool. After all this is a holiday!
Rich
And it’s sunny, so I am gonna need an ice cream.
6:10 PM
Thoroughly cleaned and showered in the Youth Hostel the intrepid duo march off to the touristy shops and indulge in a postcard buying frenzy. Oh, yes. We are so hard. We had a rescheduling meeting and have reduced our last stop at Torridon down to a single night (Sunday) as this will give us another day on the outer islands – we were a bit oushed for time otherwise. Also we are now booked into Uig and Broadford on Skye, so we are pretty much fully planned. The Gatliff ‘simple’ hostels on Lewis, Harris and Uist don’t take bookings.
The weather forecast it has to be said is lousy, but it has been thus all the way so far, and (touch wood) we seem to have been OK. At least the wind is Westerly which is fine for us as we will be blown back across Skye!
Rich has just been on the t’internet at 50p for 10 minutes which is a tad costly. I’ve written a few postcards.
The plan is to go for some more award winning fish and chips tonight. Yum. And a beer. Or two. In the meantime we will retire once again to the comfy chairs.
Rich has just informed me that our gorgeous Scandanavia girls have arrived. About time too.
DAY FIVE
Monday 10:25 AM
Ferry Ullapool to Stornaway
Andy
On board SS… ferry, which is just about to disembark from Ullapool. Now, this DOES feel like a proper advanture all of a sudden.
Yesterday evening we hit the chippy once again. It is actually properly award winning. Oh yes. Radio 4 voted it ‘Britains Best Take Away’ in 2005. And to be fair the (cooked to order) fish and chips are very, very good.
Having taken said fish and chips back to the hostel we dined with two German girls to whom we’d been chatting earlier. Rich picked a fine Merlot from CostCutter to go with the food. Deserts were Muller Fruit Corners – we eat in style!
[A note here on the German girls. Two youngsters, one 19 and one 25, just off on a jolly on buses around Scotland staying at hostels. We met a lot of folk doing this – just out for an adventure in a ‘far way’ place. Pairs of girls in particular, having a great, easy, safe holiday. This goes to show the excellence of the SYHA system.]
After dinner we roamed round all the pubs looking for one which served proper beer. After rejecting three (The Arch - dead), The Seaforth and The Ceilidh Pub (full of old people) we arrived back at the FBI next to the hostel and had one there. [This pub it should be noted had a bunch of Yorkshire men and women serving behind the bar.] Again, the smoking ban in pubs should be loudly applauded here. I cannot wait for this rule to be law in England.
OK, we are off. 2hrs 45 mins to Stornoway and the forecast is for a ‘comfortable’ crossing. The weather is, as ever for a morning, dull and drizzly, but hopefully will sort itself out in the afternoon like it’s been doing each day so far.
In Scotland you continuously feel as if you are exisiting inside a postcard view. For instance last night the sunset in the harbour produced some really beautiful light conditions, and there was also an amazingly bright little rainbow which appeared in the middle of the harbour at one point.
Back from our beer we DID end up chatting to a pair of blonde Swedish girls. See – I told you there would be some.
We both slept well once again.
This morning we have been to the aid of a fellow biker chap who was in our dorm and who was having a wheel/tyre type issue. Turns out he’d been sold an unsuitable rim and then on top of that a crap tyre (his original tyre was fine). No tyres would fit on the rim unless he managed to get about 80 psi into it, which he couldn’t with his rubbish pump. Rich’s excellent mini track pump did the job no problem. The guy is still stuck though as he needs a new pump or preferably another, more suitable, rim. Ho hum.
Omlette, bacon and toast for breakfast once again and the boat tickets were obtained (£30 for an island “Hopper” package thing which was a bargain for our 3 boats). Bags packed, and here we are on the ferry heading out of port and into The Minch [the channel between the mainland and the Outer Hebrides]. There’s lots of pretty islands dotted all around [the Summer Isles] and the weather ahead looks like it consists mostly of blue sky.
DAY SIX
Tuesday 7:05pm
Kershader Community Hostel, South Lochs, Lewis.
Rich
We are in a strange place – not what we thought it would be and this is not where we were meant to stop...
For some reason we were the absolute last to leave the ferry (priority not given to cycles, then) and I noticed only one foreign vehicle on the car deck. Straight after hitting the off ramp it absolutely pelted with rain – NOT a nice welcome!! Just as we were getting lost in Stornaway and Land Rover pulled up alongside us and it was Andy’s mate Kev, who’s wife is from Lewis and they have a house on the (rather remote) west coast.
We went for shelter and lunch in a café and when it didn’t look like the weather was going to break, decided to head off regardless. The plan was to do Callanish. Unfortunately, when we missed a turn just out of town (I thought I saw it but it wasn’t signposted anyway). As we were down the road and the weather was still dismal the thought of going west and then having an almighty headwind later on the return was a bit too much to take, so we pressed on south.
There were breaks in the weather but it ws slow going and the open moorland offered little relief. The oddest thing has to be the ‘villages’. Sometimes you’ll get an impressive array of build up: “40” speed limit signs; countdown markers; names in English and Gaelic and for what? One house if you are lucky. It sums up one of Andy’s favourite phrases about some of the places we have passed through: “Is that it?”.
Andy
This area is deslolate. Not in the impressive fashion though – more in the crap kind. Just endless featurless open moorland – a whole lot of fuck all. Why the hell anyone would choose to live here I really do not know. I guess in nice weather – some sunshine and a little less of the cross-winds and freezing rain – the cycle south may have been quite pleasant through this alien landscape, but as it was it was just grim. I found myself really wanting to be cycling through the familiarity of mountain scenery once again: big hills and everything. The exposure and unfamiliarity of it all was rather unsettling.
Anyhow we eventually found our turning off the main road (the only road!) south to find this odd little place about 5 miles down a single track road. We’d been thinking traditional Black house with a thatched roof… and we are in an old school building. Well, not that old – something from the 60’s with classic Scottish white rendering etc. No bloody heating either: we cannot get it to work. At least the tumble dryer seems to be going for free (Rich: Hu-fucking-rah).
Out two fellow guests (note: only two as no one else is daft enough to want to seek this place out) are Nicole: a German nurse who speaks really wonderful English and who is bussing it round the islands; and Mike, a felllow bike tourer from Darlington. He is the most loaded up biker we have yet met: 4 panniers, back pack and a bum bag. Tent, walking gear and everything on board, and he’s on his own. Crikey. Both these guys seem decent people to be sharing with.
Ooh look – it’s peeing down again outside and five minutes ago it was blazing sunshine. Welcome to Lewis indeed.
Tomorrow we will head further south and see how far we can get. Bernaray would be the target but we can bail out once again (to another YH) a bit further north if needs be.
The happening night life of this place consists of the four of us sitting round eating polo mints and Rich’s packet of dried fruit. Rock and roll.
Rich
Another “funny” moment on the road was when we were pounding along against the sideways rain and looked up to see two roofers hard at work on a chimney. We thought they were nutters .. but consider this: at least they weren’t on holiday.
We also had a minor (but nevertheless significant) mechanical: my horn broke. So at the moment I cannot scare the sheep whitless or signal the arrival at our destination in the traditional Eatough/Golborne tour fashion.
[The horn was fixed a little later that evening with the aid of Mike and his handy roll of electrical insulating tape. We were saved – thanks mate. But further on the DIY front we never did manage to get the heating going.]
Andy
Damn – I have just realised the we deliberately resheduled our YHs on Skye and Torridon so we could spend more time on these lovely islands. That means we have two more nights out here before we can head back to the ralative sanctuary (sanity?) of Skye.
Actually, I’m sure we’ll get to like these islands – at some point. The other two guys here have been singing the praises of Harris and Uist so we shall see.
9.00 PM
We’ve all been sat here for a couple of hours reading and stuff and ONE car has gone past. Ooh – the traffic!
DAY SEVEN
Weds, lunchtime.
Tarbet, Harris, Outer Hebrides. In the Fruit Tree tea house, early afternoon.
Andy
“Fuck the Stones.”
We have decided to bail off these bloody islands as it’s just too harsh to be biking out here.
This morning saw us head southwards from Kershader with our man Mike for the 5 mile return to the main road. He headed north...
2:45 PM
... at that point two blokes sat down with us at our table (the place was busy) and we chatted with them over a pleasant lunch (including gallons of tea). They were David and his dad Fred. Fred had cycle toured round Scotland in the early 60s. David lives on south Uist and is doing Christian charity work with alcoholic folk on the island. Most interesting to chat to a ‘local’. He and his wife also lived in Cardiff at the same time we did – in Cathays just around the corner from the Crwys Road Co-op!
Back to our bike day…
We are bailing as the biking is just… unpleasant. The wind is pretty ferocious and it’s just really hard work cycling. This may sound a tad wimpy but we have both decided that cycling for the sake of it is not what we are here for, especially in ridiculous conditions. We could have plodded on down to Bernaray but that’s on the exposed west and by all accounts things are even more grim down there. [It should be noted that the wind had changed from easterly the day before to an equally gale force westerly.] The forecast is better for tomorrow (Thursday) but David reckoned the weekend was not looking good at all. So, we will nip over to Uig this afternoon (the ferry from here is at 4pm) to the YH there, and then across Skye tomorrow, hopefully in decent conditions, with a tail wind. And, I should add, with “God’s speed” (cheers, David) - whatever that is in miles and hour.
Meanwhile we have ‘done’ Tarbet. Boy is it a happening place. I did buy a Harris tweed pouch thing as a souvernir in a craft/toy shop. (Note that Harris tweed is pound for pound more expensive than diamonds.) We also visited the one newsagents/grocer in town and the bustling tourist information center where Rich picked up a most interesting leaflet: “Cycle The Hebrides”. He is deeply engrossed in this right now so perhaps he can enlighten us as to exactly where it was we went wrong?
Rich
Yeah, well ‘Cycling the Hebrides’ is done carefully… there seem to be a few basic rules of thumb:
1. NEVER, EVER cycle from North to South (as we were doing).
2. NEVER cycle on the A859 (as we were doing).
3. Put your bike on a bus the instant the terrain looks lousy.
4. Take ‘picnics’ everywhere (or you will starve).
It’s quite telling that the “Cycle the Hebrides” leaflet only has one picture of anyone doing any actual cycling, and the people involved appear to be smiling somewhat ruefully though gritted teeth.
So, I’m with Andy – let’s get back towards the mainland which, for cycling, is much more pleasant as it is shielded from the North Atlantic by … The Outer Hebrides.
Andy
4:15
Over the sea to Skye. On the ferry HMS… whatever. Rich says that we now have the perfect view of the Outer Hebrides ie. from behind some double glazing. Of course now it all does look rather ruggedly inviting, but we know the truth so he has a point. Looking out in front of this tub there’s the very impressive view across the top of Skye with the Trotternish hills looming majestically, and also our first glimpse of the Cuillin way off in the distance. All look reasonably cloud-free from here, and let’s hope they stay that way.
Actually looking off the starboard side there does still seem to be some big black clouds over Harris.
Monday 12th June 3:30PM
Ullapool – The Return – Sat outside Youth Hostel.
Andy
Firstly, mention must be made of a lady we have just encountered. She was the first cycle tourist we have chatted to (except actually for the grumpy Belgians here the other night – but they don’t count). First impression was her bike – REALLY laden up – and we both thought “How is that little old lady managing to get round here on that thing?” Well, in conversation it turns out that she’s cycled here from fucking Carlisle and is “on her way round”, as in right round the bloody coast! AND she’s camping. Christ. Then she’s off to Norway on the ferry (from Newcastle) and plans to “do a bit” over there before heading down through Scandanavia. All on her bike. Fair play – that is THE thing to do on your retirement, but fucking hell lady we now feel a bit inadequate on our mere ten day tour.
Rich
Not ‘arf mate. We feel dead wimpy. But we told her of our 40 mph downhills, which she was a bit scared of, so perhaps she wasn’t that hard after all.
Up this morning and made what we hoped would be a monster protein – calorific breakfast: fried corned beef. Unfortunately it really wasn’t too pleasant (and Andy couldn’t quite stomach all of his) [it was foul] but it did the job as fuel.
Said goodbye to Dave and Caroline, and the students (who, given that they were up until 2am with their fire on the beach, were up promptly) and headed for the more main route, easterly, past Loch Assynt, to pick up the A road going south (A837). Good progress, fantsatic views of Suilven and the other not-quite-Munros and a couple of stops for a castle (Andy just LOVES castles) and a tea-shop where we camped out until the hail had gone past.
Andy
(The castle was pants.)
We are now being buzzed by the RAF and their pesky jet fighters. This somehow spoils the seaside ambience if you ask me.
Considering how ‘cold’ the weather is, once again I am being burned by the sun here. Just had a text from Jo saying that the weather is cack in Leeds. Good. It’s top up here.
Yep – the cycle today was pretty hard one again. The return down the main road to Ullapool made us realise just how much graft we put in yesterday before we set off on the single track road to nowhere down the loch side. It was 10 miles and on it today we had at least three 40 mph descents, long ones, up which we’d toiled yesterday on the way north. No wonder we were knackered after a mere 30 miles to Achmelvic.
We toyed briefly with the idea of moving our YH booking over to Stornoway tonight and getting the 5:30 ferry across. But our boy here tells us that there’s no SYHA place in Stornoway (we’d have to find an independent one) so we have opted to stop and chill in Ullapool. After all this is a holiday!
Rich
And it’s sunny, so I am gonna need an ice cream.
6:10 PM
Thoroughly cleaned and showered in the Youth Hostel the intrepid duo march off to the touristy shops and indulge in a postcard buying frenzy. Oh, yes. We are so hard. We had a rescheduling meeting and have reduced our last stop at Torridon down to a single night (Sunday) as this will give us another day on the outer islands – we were a bit oushed for time otherwise. Also we are now booked into Uig and Broadford on Skye, so we are pretty much fully planned. The Gatliff ‘simple’ hostels on Lewis, Harris and Uist don’t take bookings.
The weather forecast it has to be said is lousy, but it has been thus all the way so far, and (touch wood) we seem to have been OK. At least the wind is Westerly which is fine for us as we will be blown back across Skye!
Rich has just been on the t’internet at 50p for 10 minutes which is a tad costly. I’ve written a few postcards.
The plan is to go for some more award winning fish and chips tonight. Yum. And a beer. Or two. In the meantime we will retire once again to the comfy chairs.
Rich has just informed me that our gorgeous Scandanavia girls have arrived. About time too.
DAY FIVE
Monday 10:25 AM
Ferry Ullapool to Stornaway
Andy
On board SS… ferry, which is just about to disembark from Ullapool. Now, this DOES feel like a proper advanture all of a sudden.
Yesterday evening we hit the chippy once again. It is actually properly award winning. Oh yes. Radio 4 voted it ‘Britains Best Take Away’ in 2005. And to be fair the (cooked to order) fish and chips are very, very good.
Having taken said fish and chips back to the hostel we dined with two German girls to whom we’d been chatting earlier. Rich picked a fine Merlot from CostCutter to go with the food. Deserts were Muller Fruit Corners – we eat in style!
[A note here on the German girls. Two youngsters, one 19 and one 25, just off on a jolly on buses around Scotland staying at hostels. We met a lot of folk doing this – just out for an adventure in a ‘far way’ place. Pairs of girls in particular, having a great, easy, safe holiday. This goes to show the excellence of the SYHA system.]
After dinner we roamed round all the pubs looking for one which served proper beer. After rejecting three (The Arch - dead), The Seaforth and The Ceilidh Pub (full of old people) we arrived back at the FBI next to the hostel and had one there. [This pub it should be noted had a bunch of Yorkshire men and women serving behind the bar.] Again, the smoking ban in pubs should be loudly applauded here. I cannot wait for this rule to be law in England.
OK, we are off. 2hrs 45 mins to Stornoway and the forecast is for a ‘comfortable’ crossing. The weather is, as ever for a morning, dull and drizzly, but hopefully will sort itself out in the afternoon like it’s been doing each day so far.
In Scotland you continuously feel as if you are exisiting inside a postcard view. For instance last night the sunset in the harbour produced some really beautiful light conditions, and there was also an amazingly bright little rainbow which appeared in the middle of the harbour at one point.
Back from our beer we DID end up chatting to a pair of blonde Swedish girls. See – I told you there would be some.
We both slept well once again.
This morning we have been to the aid of a fellow biker chap who was in our dorm and who was having a wheel/tyre type issue. Turns out he’d been sold an unsuitable rim and then on top of that a crap tyre (his original tyre was fine). No tyres would fit on the rim unless he managed to get about 80 psi into it, which he couldn’t with his rubbish pump. Rich’s excellent mini track pump did the job no problem. The guy is still stuck though as he needs a new pump or preferably another, more suitable, rim. Ho hum.
Omlette, bacon and toast for breakfast once again and the boat tickets were obtained (£30 for an island “Hopper” package thing which was a bargain for our 3 boats). Bags packed, and here we are on the ferry heading out of port and into The Minch [the channel between the mainland and the Outer Hebrides]. There’s lots of pretty islands dotted all around [the Summer Isles] and the weather ahead looks like it consists mostly of blue sky.
DAY SIX
Tuesday 7:05pm
Kershader Community Hostel, South Lochs, Lewis.
Rich
We are in a strange place – not what we thought it would be and this is not where we were meant to stop...
For some reason we were the absolute last to leave the ferry (priority not given to cycles, then) and I noticed only one foreign vehicle on the car deck. Straight after hitting the off ramp it absolutely pelted with rain – NOT a nice welcome!! Just as we were getting lost in Stornaway and Land Rover pulled up alongside us and it was Andy’s mate Kev, who’s wife is from Lewis and they have a house on the (rather remote) west coast.
We went for shelter and lunch in a café and when it didn’t look like the weather was going to break, decided to head off regardless. The plan was to do Callanish. Unfortunately, when we missed a turn just out of town (I thought I saw it but it wasn’t signposted anyway). As we were down the road and the weather was still dismal the thought of going west and then having an almighty headwind later on the return was a bit too much to take, so we pressed on south.
There were breaks in the weather but it ws slow going and the open moorland offered little relief. The oddest thing has to be the ‘villages’. Sometimes you’ll get an impressive array of build up: “40” speed limit signs; countdown markers; names in English and Gaelic and for what? One house if you are lucky. It sums up one of Andy’s favourite phrases about some of the places we have passed through: “Is that it?”.
Andy
This area is deslolate. Not in the impressive fashion though – more in the crap kind. Just endless featurless open moorland – a whole lot of fuck all. Why the hell anyone would choose to live here I really do not know. I guess in nice weather – some sunshine and a little less of the cross-winds and freezing rain – the cycle south may have been quite pleasant through this alien landscape, but as it was it was just grim. I found myself really wanting to be cycling through the familiarity of mountain scenery once again: big hills and everything. The exposure and unfamiliarity of it all was rather unsettling.
Anyhow we eventually found our turning off the main road (the only road!) south to find this odd little place about 5 miles down a single track road. We’d been thinking traditional Black house with a thatched roof… and we are in an old school building. Well, not that old – something from the 60’s with classic Scottish white rendering etc. No bloody heating either: we cannot get it to work. At least the tumble dryer seems to be going for free (Rich: Hu-fucking-rah).
Out two fellow guests (note: only two as no one else is daft enough to want to seek this place out) are Nicole: a German nurse who speaks really wonderful English and who is bussing it round the islands; and Mike, a felllow bike tourer from Darlington. He is the most loaded up biker we have yet met: 4 panniers, back pack and a bum bag. Tent, walking gear and everything on board, and he’s on his own. Crikey. Both these guys seem decent people to be sharing with.
Ooh look – it’s peeing down again outside and five minutes ago it was blazing sunshine. Welcome to Lewis indeed.
Tomorrow we will head further south and see how far we can get. Bernaray would be the target but we can bail out once again (to another YH) a bit further north if needs be.
The happening night life of this place consists of the four of us sitting round eating polo mints and Rich’s packet of dried fruit. Rock and roll.
Rich
Another “funny” moment on the road was when we were pounding along against the sideways rain and looked up to see two roofers hard at work on a chimney. We thought they were nutters .. but consider this: at least they weren’t on holiday.
We also had a minor (but nevertheless significant) mechanical: my horn broke. So at the moment I cannot scare the sheep whitless or signal the arrival at our destination in the traditional Eatough/Golborne tour fashion.
[The horn was fixed a little later that evening with the aid of Mike and his handy roll of electrical insulating tape. We were saved – thanks mate. But further on the DIY front we never did manage to get the heating going.]
Andy
Damn – I have just realised the we deliberately resheduled our YHs on Skye and Torridon so we could spend more time on these lovely islands. That means we have two more nights out here before we can head back to the ralative sanctuary (sanity?) of Skye.
Actually, I’m sure we’ll get to like these islands – at some point. The other two guys here have been singing the praises of Harris and Uist so we shall see.
9.00 PM
We’ve all been sat here for a couple of hours reading and stuff and ONE car has gone past. Ooh – the traffic!
DAY SEVEN
Weds, lunchtime.
Tarbet, Harris, Outer Hebrides. In the Fruit Tree tea house, early afternoon.
Andy
“Fuck the Stones.”
We have decided to bail off these bloody islands as it’s just too harsh to be biking out here.
This morning saw us head southwards from Kershader with our man Mike for the 5 mile return to the main road. He headed north...
2:45 PM
... at that point two blokes sat down with us at our table (the place was busy) and we chatted with them over a pleasant lunch (including gallons of tea). They were David and his dad Fred. Fred had cycle toured round Scotland in the early 60s. David lives on south Uist and is doing Christian charity work with alcoholic folk on the island. Most interesting to chat to a ‘local’. He and his wife also lived in Cardiff at the same time we did – in Cathays just around the corner from the Crwys Road Co-op!
Back to our bike day…
We are bailing as the biking is just… unpleasant. The wind is pretty ferocious and it’s just really hard work cycling. This may sound a tad wimpy but we have both decided that cycling for the sake of it is not what we are here for, especially in ridiculous conditions. We could have plodded on down to Bernaray but that’s on the exposed west and by all accounts things are even more grim down there. [It should be noted that the wind had changed from easterly the day before to an equally gale force westerly.] The forecast is better for tomorrow (Thursday) but David reckoned the weekend was not looking good at all. So, we will nip over to Uig this afternoon (the ferry from here is at 4pm) to the YH there, and then across Skye tomorrow, hopefully in decent conditions, with a tail wind. And, I should add, with “God’s speed” (cheers, David) - whatever that is in miles and hour.
Meanwhile we have ‘done’ Tarbet. Boy is it a happening place. I did buy a Harris tweed pouch thing as a souvernir in a craft/toy shop. (Note that Harris tweed is pound for pound more expensive than diamonds.) We also visited the one newsagents/grocer in town and the bustling tourist information center where Rich picked up a most interesting leaflet: “Cycle The Hebrides”. He is deeply engrossed in this right now so perhaps he can enlighten us as to exactly where it was we went wrong?
Rich
Yeah, well ‘Cycling the Hebrides’ is done carefully… there seem to be a few basic rules of thumb:
1. NEVER, EVER cycle from North to South (as we were doing).
2. NEVER cycle on the A859 (as we were doing).
3. Put your bike on a bus the instant the terrain looks lousy.
4. Take ‘picnics’ everywhere (or you will starve).
It’s quite telling that the “Cycle the Hebrides” leaflet only has one picture of anyone doing any actual cycling, and the people involved appear to be smiling somewhat ruefully though gritted teeth.
So, I’m with Andy – let’s get back towards the mainland which, for cycling, is much more pleasant as it is shielded from the North Atlantic by … The Outer Hebrides.
Andy
4:15
Over the sea to Skye. On the ferry HMS… whatever. Rich says that we now have the perfect view of the Outer Hebrides ie. from behind some double glazing. Of course now it all does look rather ruggedly inviting, but we know the truth so he has a point. Looking out in front of this tub there’s the very impressive view across the top of Skye with the Trotternish hills looming majestically, and also our first glimpse of the Cuillin way off in the distance. All look reasonably cloud-free from here, and let’s hope they stay that way.
Actually looking off the starboard side there does still seem to be some big black clouds over Harris.
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.]
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.]
Monday, June 19, 2006
Seven days of biking
"Coast to Coast". Three words which do little to convey the sheer EFFORT we had to put into our week long jolly across the country by mountain bike. Beforehand I had thought "how hard can a few days of mountain biking be?" I mean, days in the hills is something I am used to so this should be an easy, fun week with some mates, right? Ok, Fun it was - but the route ("The Way is The Route and The Route is The Way...") was a monster and was probably the least direct piece of cross country navigation I have ever seen!
But I guess we got intimately acquainted with all the best bits of the areas we visited, and there is some amazing biking to be found around the following:
The South Lakes (Ennerdale, (Black Sail Pass) Wasdale, Eskdale, Langdales, Windermere, Dunnerdale, Walna Scar, Conniston, Mosedale and a few more I've missed out; The Pennines (via Tan Hill); The Dales (round Swaledale) and seemingly all of the North Yorkshire Moors.
The weather was just about perfect. A little drizzle twice and too hot at times, but ridiculously good really. We managed a proper swim in the sea at St Bees head before setting off and a 'dip' in the North Sea at the end it was that good.
We had one serious accident on day one resulting in a badly sprained ankle and an early lift home for one of the guys, plus a serious bike mechanical which needed a day out at a bike shop for someone else. There were a few minor 'offs' along the way and several of the more painful variety in the last couple of days. Not too bad considering how technical some of the terrain was.
It's odd to travel like that in your own 'bubble' across country and not see many people at all all day. For instance I'll have to watch my language though as we developed a quite extraordinary array of new expletives which were generally coined at the top of the huge climbs we seemed to do each day. Each brutal effort forced us into yet unchartered swearing territory and had us in fits of laughter as someone came out with a phrase even more appalling than we had previously thought possible to describe the effort they had put into it. But you had to be there, and we really had to watch our mouths when we got to 'civilisation'.
We stopped mainly at B&Bs with a few youth Hostels chucked in. It has to be said that the English Youth Hostels are not a patch on their Scottish counterparts. Windermere and Boggle Hole are partcularly horrible, but top marks to the amazing one at Kirby Stephen (a converted church with a lovely warden - Clare) which sadly is due to close later this year. We devoured lots of fried breakfasts, lots of pub meals, and of course lots of flapjack.
I have 'earned' a rather patchy biker sun tan now with the shorts, socks and glove lines and this, along with a startling collection of cuts bruises and scabs, is not the ideal summer look! Still, I have plenty of time to patch it up, and it's a small price to pay for an extraordinary week of adventure.
So, it's now back to what passes for normality these days. Ho hum.
But I guess we got intimately acquainted with all the best bits of the areas we visited, and there is some amazing biking to be found around the following:
The South Lakes (Ennerdale, (Black Sail Pass) Wasdale, Eskdale, Langdales, Windermere, Dunnerdale, Walna Scar, Conniston, Mosedale and a few more I've missed out; The Pennines (via Tan Hill); The Dales (round Swaledale) and seemingly all of the North Yorkshire Moors.
The weather was just about perfect. A little drizzle twice and too hot at times, but ridiculously good really. We managed a proper swim in the sea at St Bees head before setting off and a 'dip' in the North Sea at the end it was that good.
We had one serious accident on day one resulting in a badly sprained ankle and an early lift home for one of the guys, plus a serious bike mechanical which needed a day out at a bike shop for someone else. There were a few minor 'offs' along the way and several of the more painful variety in the last couple of days. Not too bad considering how technical some of the terrain was.
It's odd to travel like that in your own 'bubble' across country and not see many people at all all day. For instance I'll have to watch my language though as we developed a quite extraordinary array of new expletives which were generally coined at the top of the huge climbs we seemed to do each day. Each brutal effort forced us into yet unchartered swearing territory and had us in fits of laughter as someone came out with a phrase even more appalling than we had previously thought possible to describe the effort they had put into it. But you had to be there, and we really had to watch our mouths when we got to 'civilisation'.
We stopped mainly at B&Bs with a few youth Hostels chucked in. It has to be said that the English Youth Hostels are not a patch on their Scottish counterparts. Windermere and Boggle Hole are partcularly horrible, but top marks to the amazing one at Kirby Stephen (a converted church with a lovely warden - Clare) which sadly is due to close later this year. We devoured lots of fried breakfasts, lots of pub meals, and of course lots of flapjack.
I have 'earned' a rather patchy biker sun tan now with the shorts, socks and glove lines and this, along with a startling collection of cuts bruises and scabs, is not the ideal summer look! Still, I have plenty of time to patch it up, and it's a small price to pay for an extraordinary week of adventure.
So, it's now back to what passes for normality these days. Ho hum.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
The joy of front crawl
Well, I feel I've finally cracked front crawl. I started up the swimming about 18 months ago, not being able to do a length of it without a breather, and although I've been able to do the (triathlon) required 1500m (60 lengths) for a while now it's never really... flowed. It's never seemed quite right, and has nearly always been really hard work. However, in the last couple of weeks it's all just clicked - the rotation; the stretching out; the pointy thumb first hand insertion thing above your head; the pull down in the right line; the push back; the breathing to both sides; the kicking from the hips... and all the rest of it.
I really never used to enjoy swimming but I have to say that getting to grips with the sheer technicality of front crawl has seen me go from initial frustration (and exhaustion) to fascination (as I got fitter) and more recently real satisfaction as it's all come together.
I actually like swimming now. I never thought I'd hear myself say that.
I really never used to enjoy swimming but I have to say that getting to grips with the sheer technicality of front crawl has seen me go from initial frustration (and exhaustion) to fascination (as I got fitter) and more recently real satisfaction as it's all come together.
I actually like swimming now. I never thought I'd hear myself say that.
Friday, June 02, 2006
The Cuillin
Some of you may recognise this view. It was a real wrench to just bike past Sligachan as it's such an iconic place and usually the end of a long journey. Not this time though.
Wester Ross
Ooh - the traffic! Rich toils in the heat, again in Wester Ross with Skye in the backgound.
Gruinard Bay
Me on me bike approaching the lovely Griunard bay in Wester Ross. Suilven in the backgound on the left.
North West Coast escapades
Back to reality after the tour of Scotland. It really was excellent and we covered about 400 miles in 7 days of biking. There (as ever) was a tour diary kept by the pair of us, and it's being typed up as we speak so I'll likely publish it in installments on here.
Suffice to say that North West Scotland is stunningly beautiful and markedly hilly! The weather in the main was remarkably good - even better when we were getting reports of it being wet and miserable in Yorkshire :-)
Our only real conditions problem was on the Outer Hebrides with two days of biking down to Harris from Stornoway, through vicious cross winds and freezing rain. Needless to say we bailed off onto lovely Skye, and all was well once again.
We stopped in a string of Scottish Youth Hostels are these are highly recommended.
... and so onto the next tour starting very soon :-)
Suffice to say that North West Scotland is stunningly beautiful and markedly hilly! The weather in the main was remarkably good - even better when we were getting reports of it being wet and miserable in Yorkshire :-)
Our only real conditions problem was on the Outer Hebrides with two days of biking down to Harris from Stornoway, through vicious cross winds and freezing rain. Needless to say we bailed off onto lovely Skye, and all was well once again.
We stopped in a string of Scottish Youth Hostels are these are highly recommended.
... and so onto the next tour starting very soon :-)
Monday, May 08, 2006
The Mary Townley Loop. And stuff.
So this lady Mary Townley was a horse riding type who decided it was a good thing to create the Pennine Bridleway. What a top idea me girl. The first part to open was subsequently named after her and is a 47 mile circular off road extravaganza running through West Yorkshire (Hebden Bridge area) and over into Lancashire (down through Rossendale and Waterfoot). So, you get to look down onto Calderdale, Burnley, Rawtenstall, Manchester, Halifax and a hell of a lot of stunning open moorland while riding on excellent tracks.
Of course it's perfect for mountain biking and it is a marvellous day out if you have the legs to go up and down a great deal on yer bike for 8 hours or so.
The forecast for yesterday was grim it had to be said but we went for it anyhow and amazingly it stayed dry pretty much all round - I think we had a 20 minute spell of rain, but not a real soaking. No wind, and the cloud cover kept the temperature down to pleasantly cool. Perfect really.
The Blue Klein days may well be numbered: I think my bike is past it's best as I had more technicals: two stops for a broken chain this time, leaving me in the end, after chucking two sets of broken links away, with it too short to get into big ring. At least it got me round though. I could just buy a new chain of course but then the route talk was of which bike I should be buying next... A Scott Scale 30 (yes, a hardtail - none of this poncy rear suspension for me) is looking good it has to be said and I think I'll need to get it before the Coast to Coast week long off road extravaganza next month. Hehe - "Need to". In as much as I WANT a new bike now - the seed of a shiny new machine has been firmly planted. I can't afford one of course but, what the hell, life's too short.
Hey - I have two serious bike tours coming up in the next six weeks. How cool is that? The Scotland road one with Rich kicks off from Torridon a week on Friday, and the CtoC effort starts from St Bees Head in Cumbria on June 11th. This is the day after England's first World Cup game and we'll all be up there watching that the previous afternoon, so will no doubt start as we mean to go on - with hangovers.
Training is still going well for the Tri (end of July). The running is ticking over at about 20 mile a week and the swimming is Ok, but now needs kicking up a gear or two so I can do the necessary 1500m in really good order. I've now joined the Leeds Bradford Triathlon club and will be able to make use of their swim coaching (Friday nights) and also do some open water training which will be interesting - wet suit and all.
This looks interesting: www.wensleydaletriathlon.co.uk
Why is it that Yorkshire events have to be harder and further than those everywhere else?
Of course it's perfect for mountain biking and it is a marvellous day out if you have the legs to go up and down a great deal on yer bike for 8 hours or so.
The forecast for yesterday was grim it had to be said but we went for it anyhow and amazingly it stayed dry pretty much all round - I think we had a 20 minute spell of rain, but not a real soaking. No wind, and the cloud cover kept the temperature down to pleasantly cool. Perfect really.
The Blue Klein days may well be numbered: I think my bike is past it's best as I had more technicals: two stops for a broken chain this time, leaving me in the end, after chucking two sets of broken links away, with it too short to get into big ring. At least it got me round though. I could just buy a new chain of course but then the route talk was of which bike I should be buying next... A Scott Scale 30 (yes, a hardtail - none of this poncy rear suspension for me) is looking good it has to be said and I think I'll need to get it before the Coast to Coast week long off road extravaganza next month. Hehe - "Need to". In as much as I WANT a new bike now - the seed of a shiny new machine has been firmly planted. I can't afford one of course but, what the hell, life's too short.
Hey - I have two serious bike tours coming up in the next six weeks. How cool is that? The Scotland road one with Rich kicks off from Torridon a week on Friday, and the CtoC effort starts from St Bees Head in Cumbria on June 11th. This is the day after England's first World Cup game and we'll all be up there watching that the previous afternoon, so will no doubt start as we mean to go on - with hangovers.
Training is still going well for the Tri (end of July). The running is ticking over at about 20 mile a week and the swimming is Ok, but now needs kicking up a gear or two so I can do the necessary 1500m in really good order. I've now joined the Leeds Bradford Triathlon club and will be able to make use of their swim coaching (Friday nights) and also do some open water training which will be interesting - wet suit and all.
This looks interesting: www.wensleydaletriathlon.co.uk
Why is it that Yorkshire events have to be harder and further than those everywhere else?
Monday, April 24, 2006
The ten to two club
That was that then. A weekend mountain biking in the Peak District followed by a week being Dad - looking after the kids while Liz was off on a jolly.
The Peak District is great for cycling and yet shamefully ignored by myself. It's only 90 minutes by car and there's some great routes, all of which are very hilly and contain much technical stuff: marvellous.
Rich Eatough came up to meet me and Jo J from the North Leeds biking crew 'gatecrashed' in on the Saturday night for the Sunday ride. The drinking was all her fault I'm sure.
It was the first camping of the year as well which was fun, and the weekend also included my first hangover for what I've calulated as 6 years. On white blinking wine too - something we thought was 'safe' to drink at will. Mind you given that three of us downed a 3 litre box plus another bottle at the tents and then more in the pub afterwards - what did we expect? Duh.
But (as we are so dedicated) we got out as promised on Sunday albeit on a foreshortened excursion after having spent most of the morning asleep and then in a cafe trying to get ride of the nausea. Yep - we all suffering from Richter scale hangovers and we eventually made a start on the bikes "at the crack of ten to two". We valiantly managed some cruel climbs at the start and kept going. Our pay off was the wondrous complete traverse of Rushup Edge, in glorious sunshine and with the wind behind us. Fabulous. Mountain biking rocks.
The kids were as ever brilliant for the week. It's an odd place inside the bubble of being a full time parent. Just concentrating wholly on keeping the kids entertained and nothing else being a priority. Good fun really. We all enjoyed ourselves anyway. It was a week of parks and more parks; plane and train museums in York and the Play Barn (inevitably). Also we did an excellent visit to Five Locks Rise near Bingley and the kids were fascinated by the locks on the canal watching boats go through.
So, back to it. The summer's here though, eh?
The Peak District is great for cycling and yet shamefully ignored by myself. It's only 90 minutes by car and there's some great routes, all of which are very hilly and contain much technical stuff: marvellous.
Rich Eatough came up to meet me and Jo J from the North Leeds biking crew 'gatecrashed' in on the Saturday night for the Sunday ride. The drinking was all her fault I'm sure.
It was the first camping of the year as well which was fun, and the weekend also included my first hangover for what I've calulated as 6 years. On white blinking wine too - something we thought was 'safe' to drink at will. Mind you given that three of us downed a 3 litre box plus another bottle at the tents and then more in the pub afterwards - what did we expect? Duh.
But (as we are so dedicated) we got out as promised on Sunday albeit on a foreshortened excursion after having spent most of the morning asleep and then in a cafe trying to get ride of the nausea. Yep - we all suffering from Richter scale hangovers and we eventually made a start on the bikes "at the crack of ten to two". We valiantly managed some cruel climbs at the start and kept going. Our pay off was the wondrous complete traverse of Rushup Edge, in glorious sunshine and with the wind behind us. Fabulous. Mountain biking rocks.
The kids were as ever brilliant for the week. It's an odd place inside the bubble of being a full time parent. Just concentrating wholly on keeping the kids entertained and nothing else being a priority. Good fun really. We all enjoyed ourselves anyway. It was a week of parks and more parks; plane and train museums in York and the Play Barn (inevitably). Also we did an excellent visit to Five Locks Rise near Bingley and the kids were fascinated by the locks on the canal watching boats go through.
So, back to it. The summer's here though, eh?
Monday, April 10, 2006
Permanent dickhead
Yeah, so there's me whining about a bit of hearing loss when I have a daughter who is permanently damaged in a way that most people can't even imagine. Way to go Andy.
It's strange though with Holly, as she's "just Holly" to me. I'm used to her disability, and we all just get on with it. But if I think what it must be like for her to just not be able to do things - not to be able to make her limbs work and her hands open and close properly. Imagine not being able to scratch an itch - any itch... and to not be able to speak and tell people what you want, what you think, or just tell them anything. It's frightening. But, she deals with it -heroically is probably the best word I can think of.
Anyway - I got to take her swimming at the weekend for the first time in ages (with help from friend Jo, who looked after Jamie in the baths). There are many things which just make Holly very happy and swimming is one of them - she's just off kicking and generally giving it some stick with a huge grin on her face. No doubt if she could she'd be jumping in the deep end of the big pool by now - probably off the diving boards. Jamie on the other hand is a wimp and even with armbands on clings to whoever is with him like a limpet. Jo did manage to get him to do a little bit of floating on his own though which was impressive all round.
I have the kids for 6 days after Easter while Liz is off biking round the Lakes or something. What am I going to do with the pair of them for 6 days? I'm sure I'll think of something ...
It's strange though with Holly, as she's "just Holly" to me. I'm used to her disability, and we all just get on with it. But if I think what it must be like for her to just not be able to do things - not to be able to make her limbs work and her hands open and close properly. Imagine not being able to scratch an itch - any itch... and to not be able to speak and tell people what you want, what you think, or just tell them anything. It's frightening. But, she deals with it -heroically is probably the best word I can think of.
Anyway - I got to take her swimming at the weekend for the first time in ages (with help from friend Jo, who looked after Jamie in the baths). There are many things which just make Holly very happy and swimming is one of them - she's just off kicking and generally giving it some stick with a huge grin on her face. No doubt if she could she'd be jumping in the deep end of the big pool by now - probably off the diving boards. Jamie on the other hand is a wimp and even with armbands on clings to whoever is with him like a limpet. Jo did manage to get him to do a little bit of floating on his own though which was impressive all round.
I have the kids for 6 days after Easter while Liz is off biking round the Lakes or something. What am I going to do with the pair of them for 6 days? I'm sure I'll think of something ...
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Permanent Damage
Have been having some problems with my left ear of late - it feels like it's got water in it. You know that annoying thing when you have to jump up and down a bit after you've been swimming? Yes, well it's like that all the time.
The GP (a couple of months ago) had said it was likely water in my middle ear from an infection after a bug and would go away. Well it didn't do so I engaged my private healthcare option and saw a specialist this week (at a most plush BUPA hospital in Roundhay).
Bad news. Could be that I just have a knackered ear - it may be an inner ear issue which they cannot do much about. My hearing test showed my ears were far from perfect (loss a certain frequencies) and when I mentioned a history of playing the drums there was a knowing look from the doctor fella.
The upshot is that I can likely blame a combination of those noisy cymbals for frequency destruction, and my dad for my inheritance of crap hearing. I will be having an MRI scan on the really duff one this week just to make sure.
It's a bit alarming though to find out that a bit of me may be permanently damaged.
Eh?
The GP (a couple of months ago) had said it was likely water in my middle ear from an infection after a bug and would go away. Well it didn't do so I engaged my private healthcare option and saw a specialist this week (at a most plush BUPA hospital in Roundhay).
Bad news. Could be that I just have a knackered ear - it may be an inner ear issue which they cannot do much about. My hearing test showed my ears were far from perfect (loss a certain frequencies) and when I mentioned a history of playing the drums there was a knowing look from the doctor fella.
The upshot is that I can likely blame a combination of those noisy cymbals for frequency destruction, and my dad for my inheritance of crap hearing. I will be having an MRI scan on the really duff one this week just to make sure.
It's a bit alarming though to find out that a bit of me may be permanently damaged.
Eh?
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