Miles today: 135
Miles so far: 1171
u-turns today: 4 ... at least (which on a road with virtually no options is quite impressive!)
arrival time: 5.30!
number of cafes passed before we stopped for our first coffee: I counted 4 - needless to say I was not leading!
So, on with the day ... The Bealach na Ba - a pass of almost mystical significance - equal parts of excitement and dread. The pass that Eric and I had bailed on last September as it is was throwing it down with rain. And this morning? Yep, drizzle in the air and what looked like some nice wet roads. But the weather and biking gods are with us at the moment and drizzle stopped, the cloud lifted and the roads dried. We just had to take our time over our full Scottish - until all the other bikers had long since left the car park, the only petrol station had no queue and the only competition for last to leave was the Mod chapter of Vespas! We did eventually leave before them but embarrassingly they caught us up on the other side of the pass - mainly because we kept stopping to drink in the awesome scenery! Full disclosure - the picture above is taken from the other side. We forgot to take a picture of the frankly slightly more frightening sign on the way up that warned inexperienced drivers to turn back! So not us then - we surged on!
Earlier, on leaving the Kyle Hotel, we managed to break our own u-turn record by having to make our first within 30 seconds. One way streets tend to do that to you. We followed that by running a red light through road works (we were actually waived through by the contractors, but why spoil a good story). And then, and this is possibly the hardest thing to believe, Rob took us past 4 (yes, 4!) coffee shops before stopping at the bottom of the aforementioned Bealach na Ba. OK fair enough it was an excellent coffee shop and a sugar intake was necessary before the big event - cake all round.
Then ... of course the pass was magnificent but nothing like as hard as it is reputed to be. Might have been a little different in the wet but today it was a pleasure. A few hairpins and the photo above attempts to show the road snaking down the hill below the bikes - this is what we have just come up. I imagine any self respecting Italian or Swiss biker would think this a stroll in the park compared to some of the alpine stuff with hairpin after hairpin up to two or threee thousand metres. We reached the giddy heights of 2053 feet. But the views on the way up, the way down and on the top were just magnificent.
As, to be honest, they have been all day! We have meandered our way around the Applecross peninsula for about 130 miles or so to end up only about 40 miles from where we started as the crow flies. Slow because we have been in no hurry, but also because we have stopped so often for views, pictures and to simply enjoy this wonderful country. And the sun came out again! As I say the weather gods are with us at the moment.
Having completed the Pass of the Cattle a short visit to the Applecross Inn was required - sadly it was shut, which seemed a bit bonkers in the middle of the revised tourist season. As was the local cafe - do they something we don’t know? But I insisted on a photo of the place I last visited about 40 years ago and all I can remember about that trip is that I lost a whisky drinking completion and fell off the barstool. A memory I have carried for a long time and and ambition to return via the Pass on a motorbike now fulfilled.
A stop in Gairloch provided a top box sticker and silly selfie opportunity and we were then held up briefly on a single track road with all the scooter nuts (and a good few bikes, trucks and assorted farm machinery) while the local council resurfaced a bit of the road in the middle of the afternoon with no preparation or management! Had we not been able to squeeze through a gap on bikes we might still be there.
Finally we have bagged another fabulous hotel. Right on the end of Little Loch Broom, with views down the loch to the sea in the distance. And we just might be in a for a fabulous sunset to boot.
Our well deserved pint at the end of another fabulous day. Right outside the hotel. Eric and I are drinking cider, not wee wee.
And here a couple of eejets with bikes and some magnificent scenery.
And last but not least ... parked up for the night. Doesn’t get much better than this.
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