The Not-So-NC500 - DAY 1

WORD OF THE DAY

Dreich (adjective) (Scottish) (especially of weather) dreary; bleak. Dreich topped a poll last year to find the ‘most iconic’ Scots word, beating off contenders including ‘glaikit’, ‘scunnered’ and ‘shoogle’.

INVERNESS > LOCHARRON
Emma's Strava Effort

Low on sleep and with Hamish suffering from a mild hangover (pesky train beers, plus the weakest stomach I’ve ever seen), we packed up (courtesy of the Caledonian Sleeper) our Tropicana Smooth Orange Juice and Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffin (not exactly a perfect breakfast for seeing us through the 65-odd miles ahead) and disembarked at Inverness onto Scottish Soil. 

My main priority – always – is food, food, food. So, we headed straight to M&S for a spot of additional brekky and to fill up our pockets for the day ahead. And then we were off!

As mentioned in the previous post, I had never undertaken a cycling trip like this before. In fact, I’d rarely even been on a bike for two consecutive days. Hamish, on the other hand, is a bit of a legend (in my eyes, anyway!). In 2019, he headed off on a 1,000km ride (minus the camping) over seven days from Amsterdam to Copenhagen. He didn’t quite make it all the way, but that’s a story for another day… It won’t surprise you, then, that on leaving Inverness, setting out on what would be just a few miles shy of my longest ever ride to date, with a stinking headwind that looked set to fight us for the duration of the day, Hamish set down a sedate pace. As for me, I was absolutely buzzing to be on the open road. The scenery was already idyllic, with quiet roads framed by plush green scenery. For the first ten miles or so, I sped off, looking over my shoulder in mild annoyance at how slowly Hamish was going. The adrenaline “rush” was comically short-lived; I soon settled down and tucked myself behind Hamish’s wheel to shelter from the constant and demoralising presence of that irksome north-easterly. 

Now, everyone knows that Scotland has a lot of “weather”: it’s wet and it’s windy. It didn’t take long to discover the dramatic impact that wind strength and direction can have on your enjoyment of a ride – and on your progress. It really makes the difference between labouring for every milestone and gliding along feeling as if you no longer have a chain, or indeed anything, tethering you and your bike to terra firma. 

After leaving Inverness just after 9am, the sparseness of northern Scotland we’d been told about revealed itself even on Day 1. As we battled the elements (you guessed it, in addition to the incessant wind, the heavens opened about 20 miles in and showed no sign of letting up), we didn’t come across a café until 2.55pm, which was due to shut at three. The Midge Bite Café in Achnasheen, an oasis. Due to Covid restrictions, we weren’t able to go inside so we huddled outside staunchly protecting our sandwiches from being picked up by a sudden gust and swept back towards Inverness. 

Refuelled and in marginally better spirits, we mounted our bikes and trudged towards our destination for the evening. The roads throughout the latter part of the day skirted vast (or so I thought at the time – in truth, I was only scratching the surface) lochs. I would soon grow used to the constant presence of never-ending expanses of water flanking me. But I couldn’t stop to take too many photos - not that you could see much through the thick rain and low hanging clouds. We were aware that the only shop in town shut at 5pm. When I glanced down at my watch and saw it tick past four, with more than 10 miles to go, I began to panic. If we didn’t make the shop on time, all we would have to eat until morning would be a squished and sweaty banana and a mini Mars Bar. So, despite tired legs and the wind pushing against us, with every turn of the pedal we cranked up the pace. 

Finally! We reached Lochcarron and headed straight to the soon-to-close Spar, which proudly advertised that it had won ‘Village Shop of The Year’ …numerous times! And can I tell you, there was nothing this little shop didn’t stock. As Hamish tapped his feet outside, I paced the aisles, hungry and spoilt for choice – a bad combination. Eventually I packed away a dinner of canned Bombay potatoes, canned chickpea curry and rice #lush – plus plenty of snacks, obviously – and off we went to find a place to camp. Easy peasy…

Wrong. This was our first experience wild camping and we really didn’t know where to look. After scouting numerous unsuitable places, 45 minutes later I caved and asked a local where would be best. She pointed us just 200m on to Strome Castle, about 3.6 miles from Lochcarron. The spot was utterly breath-taking – the ruins of a castle tucked away in a quiet little hamlet, looking out across Loch Carron towards Stromeferry. On closer inspection the plot of land was home to a small herd of sheep which seemed to roam freely and had pooed on every square inch of ground. But at that stage in the day, we really didn’t care. (I’m no stranger to sheep poop, having a small flock back home and if you’re going to camp surrounded by animal faeces, it’s really the lesser of many evils) We kicked aside the larger lumps and erected the tent below a large wall for protection from the wind and rain. The view was cracking, and we felt very pleased with ourselves as we retreated into the tent, and out of the wind and rain for the first time that day.

As we hunkered down in our cosy abode, Hamish told me that as he’d been waiting “for ages” outside the shop (I’m sure it wasn’t that long…) a man walking a dog had approached him, eyeing up our bikes and asking where we were heading the next day. Hamish told him we planned a ride over the daunting Bealach na Bà pass, which he told Hamish was his local Strava segment (I wasn’t there, but I like to imagine his chest puffing out as he relayed this nugget of information). This renowned curvy single-track mountain road located in the Applecross peninsula boasts the greatest ascent of any road in the UK and is famous for being one of the most scenic routes in the world. If I sound like a guide book at this point, it’s because we had done a lot of research on this particular stretch, and were equal parts excited and nervous about the mammoth undertaking. The main snippets of information relayed to me through Hamish were: “not in this weather”, “I’d wait a few days”, “respect the mountain”, “respect the weather”. As visibility had been pretty limited even in the lower sections of today’s ride and the weather looked set to get worse – we made the tough decision to re-route and miss out this famed stretch of road, the Scottish cycling mecca. The decision was heavily influenced by my limited cycling experience and lack of confidence at times; I’m still trying to combat this. I cried a little (I mean I was v tired) but it felt like the right decision for us and for the trip and we vowed to come back another time (maybe without so many bags on the bikes) to take it on. In the end, we slept like babies, ready to attack the day tomorrow, albeit now a diversion of the NC500 route.

Thanks for coming exploring with me!
Have you got time for a little more? Click here for The Not-So-NC500 - Day 2

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