Hebridean Long Distance Cycling Route

Day One... Inverness to Garve to Ullapool

It was at 11:30 that the holiday really started, as I unloaded my bike from the train at Garve. I propped my bike against the footbridge while I sorted out the panniers, stuffed my paper away and put the Goretex handy - the rain clouds were threatening over the hills to the north. Then it was through the little wooden gate, across a patch of waste ground, onto the road and away towards Ullapool...

Fiddling...

The first few miles were erratic as I discovered first one thing, then another that needed adjusting or altering. The saddle went up, and then down again, as I fiddled around trying to get everything just right. The GPS came out and was tucked into the map case on the front pannier to give me the satisfaction of seeing my progress in numbers.

But steadily I settled down into a routine. The rain clouds which had looked so ominous as I left the train were not as threatening as all that, and the sun came through to make the day warm and pleasant. The road ran through the bottom of a wide valley, wooded hills rising up on either side and larger mountains visible ahead. Typically Scottish, the wide, straight, fast road I was on was accompanied by the overgrown single track remains of its ancestor, now on one side, now the other, a reminder that this part of Scotland was once even more remote than it is today. Today, though, the traffic was light, and although the intermittent rush of a car beside me was not ideal, the landscape more than made up for it.

The road gently climbed and the scenery became wilder. A river was flowing back the way I'd come, now wide, gurgling over pebbles between peaty banks, now narrow, throwing itself over rocks and down waterfalls which the road leapt over on high bridges. Eventually I came to the river's source, a reservoir filling the broad lower slopes of the rounded wild hills at the head of the valley. I stopped for lunch here, basking in the warm sunshine while I ate the familiar holiday diet of oatcakes and cheese.

It was only when I felt the first spots of rain on my hands that I opened my eyes and looked around from the warm heather bed that I'd relaxed on after lunch. The clouds had gathered at the pass ahead and it was clear that I was not going to altogether escape the rain today. I stuffed the remnants of lunch back in the panniers and set off again, the cycling easier now I was almost at the highest point on my route. The hills on either side turned pale as the rain swept down and I donned Gore-Tex and cycled on. They were only showers, and in between the sun was remarkably warm.

It was on the way down from the summit that I learned how puny my efforts at cycling where in comparison to those of gravity! I'd felt quite chuffed managing 11 or even 12 mph on flat sections of the road, but now, when I stopped pedalling altogether, the numbers on the GPS rose steadily until at 30mph I chickened out and put the brakes on - the bare numbers don't convey the exhilarating hiss of the road under the tyres, the wind roaring in my ears and the flashing of the trees past on either side!

At last I was down at the bottom of the valley and was pedalling the last half dozen miles along the shore of Loch Broom to Ullapool. The shores were wild, the occasional white croft standing out against the rocky moors behind. But eventually, on its own little peninsula, Ullapool itself appeared and I rode in to find the Youth Hostel - and something to drink - thirsty work this cycling!