Today was a good day. I enjoy it when things happen that you could never have predicted, and that only occurred through a series of coincidences. That is how today unfolded. But not at first. I awoke to a dry morning; but the clouds were practically touching the surface of Loch Carron. No point in […]
Author: ridealltheosmaps
I didn’t want to get up this morning. I suspect yesterday’s combination of rain and whisky had something to do with it, plus staying up late to watch the cricket highlights. I just about made it out of my room for the 10am checkout. It is pretty strictly applied in a youth hostel. They start […]
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Map 23 – North Skye
The trouble with living in such a wonderfully green country is that, inevitably, it rains sometimes. Especially on the western side of Britain where the Atlantic Ocean meets land, often in the shape of mountains. Here, it rains quite a lot. All year round. Places like the Isle of Skye are known for it. So […]
I didn’t really cycle that far today. For one thing, the ferry to South Uist didn’t arrive in Lochboisdale until about 1.30pm. It takes three and a half hours to get there from Mallaig, although that is very much an improvement on times gone by. It used to run out of Oban, which was a […]
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Back to the Uists
The trouble with completing a coast-to-coast trip is that I have to get all the way back to the western most point of the next one to start again. Sometimes that can be almost as hard work as cycling through the maps in sequence. Scotland continues to make life far from simple. Today I got […]
If you have ever been to Copenhagen, you have probably been underwhelmed by their famous Little Mermaid statue. If you haven’t, it’s a wonderful city; but the mermaid is not the highlight. Conversely, you might reasonably take the view that a very similar statue on the rocky shore of a small coastal village in Easter […]
You can’t beat a good view, and you would have to work very hard to beat the view that my new friends Geoff and Marianne have from their cosy cottage. It sits above the harbour in Cove, on the west side of Loch Ewe in an extremity of Wester Ross. I first saw it when […]
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Stuck in Map 18
Sometimes even the best laid plans will come unstuck! I was up at the crack of dawn and arrived at Lochmaddy pier about 6.30am on a pleasant morning, only to be told that the boat would not be sailing. Oh no! Returning to my bnb I spent an hour working out that I was basically […]
Today I cycled almost every road in North Uist. Not literally every mile; but pretty close. Especially those parts that fall within the boundaries of OS map 18. Which is to say most of it. There’s a little bit that falls off the bottom, but that is going to be done next week anyway. In […]
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Back to Skye
Somehow it’s already a week into June, and my first enforced trip home is over. I spent 2 days getting there after my trip to St Kilda, and it has taken another 2 days to make the very long journey back to OS map 18, where I left off at the end of May. I […]