17 July

Wind a lot less today, but still against me.  Much easier cycling, though in a lighter breeze.  The first ten miles was uphill across some stunning countryside to a pub called The Crask Inn, which is literally in the middle of nowhere. It must be at least ten miles from the nearest house!  Didn’t look like anyone was home when I passed.  Once at the top, it was downhill for almost thirty miles into Lairg, then Bonar Bridge and from there along B roads to DIngwall.

Then a hitch.

Well, not so much of a hitch as a small disaster.  

My SatNav ran out of battery.  I’d plugged it in to charge overnight but for some reason that hadn’t worked.  It just went dead, with me in the middle of Scotland in a place called Evanton, which with about thirty houses probably qualifies as a major connobation. 

Things started to slide a bit from there, really. My route, planned with the help of a book called ‘The End to End Cycle Route’ by Nick Mitchell, takes me carefully along minor roads, which is great in terms of safety, but a bit of a problem if you lose your map.

‘I know’, I thought, ‘I’ll sellotape my iphone to the handlebars and use the map on that’.  Two problems with this idea, first, with no signal, there is no map, and second, you can’t see the screen outside.  Still, by this time, I was in Dingwall, which has a Co Op so I stopped for directions.  The nice chap asked where I was going, and resisting saying ‘to hell in a handcart’ I told him I was on the way to Inverness but didn’t know how to get there.  He gave me some pointers to get me back on track and off I went.

Things went okay then, until I came to the A9.   I remembered the route took me along a minor road at this point which runs alongside this dual carriageway into Inverness.  Still with no map, I thought ‘how lucky am I’ to see a cycle route signposted to Inverness.  I’ll follow this, I thought and off I went.   As the traffic noise from the A9 faded into the distance, I was oblivious. I was nearly there, wind behind, traveling effortlessly to my destination.  

Then I thought, ‘hang on’.  Wind behind.  It’s coming from the west today.  If the wind is behind, I’m traveling towards Norway.  Sure enough, after another mile or so I came around a corner to be faced with the magnificent views across the North Sea.  Inverness was somewhere over my right shoulder, fading in the distance.  I retraced my steps back along the road and after five or six miles, came across a tiny blue sign, pointing the way for cyclists to Inverness.  I went past, to check if there was one when coming from the other direction.  There wasn’t. 

Still, I was only six miles from Inverness by this stage, so home and hosed, really.

Not.

I eventually came to the Inverness bridge, which I knew had a cycle path alongside it. But today it was closed for repair.  Good news, though, there was a diversion, under the bridge (which is about 200ft in the air) which meant a hairy descent then a crippling 1:4 climb to the other side of the carriageway. Then across the bridge with very frightening crosswinds and into Inverness. 

At this point, things started to go wrong. I arrived in Inverness at 4:30.  I arrived a the campervan at 6:15.  It’s six miles.    Putting it simply, I got lost.  In my attempt to avoid the major roads, I ended up traveling down every minor road in Inverness.   After an hour, I met a very nice lady in a Park (don’t ask how I got there) who directed me and finally I arrived at the campsite.

What should have been 80 miles was closer to 100.

Still, no midges.

And my backside’s not sore.