Ride all the OS mapsI started the day still feeling very full from last night’s delicious venison casserole. Despite this, there was the not-so-small matter of a 3 course breakfast to contend with, which I had ordered the night before. So I had absolutely no reason to worry about running out of energy as I set off for the […]
The line across the top of Scotland continues from where I reached last night in Balnakeil, in a roughly west-east direction. It follows the only road of note, the mostly single track A 838, all the way to my night’s accommodation back at the Strathy Inn. It was a ride of some 53 miles of […]
I did an amazing thing this evening. Between the hours of 8pm and 10pm, I cycled the A894 and the A838 from the small village of Scourie, at the western tip of OS map 9 Cape Wrath, to Durness, at the top of Scotland. It wasn’t an especially amazing cycling feat in itself. It took […]
The long distance adventure cyclist has many decisions to make. Today brought that into sharp focus as the weather continued to play a leading part in our trip. We awoke to a dry morning that held the promise of better things to come; but still no let up in the wind, which was blowing strongly […]
Today was my first truly “non-map” day, but it was a day to remember nonetheless. The morning got off to a beautiful sunny start. Our first stop, 15 mins to the west by van, was the stunning Farr Bay. On my end-to-end in June 2008 we stayed at the inn here and walked alone on […]
The car ferry to the Scottish mainland leaves at 11.30am about half a mile from where we stayed in St Margaret’s Hope, so it was a relatively easy start to the day. I had scrambled eggs with salmon for breakfast and I think they gave me almost the whole fish! The smooth crossing took an […]
We didn’t really want to leave our lovely home for the last 2 nights; and our excellent airbnb hosts Hilary and Edward at their charming farm “Heima” (which we highly recommend); but after breakfast on a beautiful day it was time to head south towards the final map of the Northern Isles section of my […]
I learned quite a few things today and one of them is that the old name for Orkney Mainland is Pomona. You don’t see it on an OS Landranger map; but you do see it on older hand-drawn ones. It is also the name of a pub and a cafe in Kirkwall. Pomona was the […]
Westray seems to find ways of keeping hold of you. Jo, a 20 year resident of Orkney (but originally from Hampshire), and her Orcadian husband, were setting up a pop-up craft shop in the front room of the small hotel and told us about their previous trip out to Westray, when the weather was so […]
We took the ferry 90 minutes north out of Kirkwall to OS map 5 Orkney Northern Isles and the island of Westray, home to 600 people and many sheep and cows. On the way we met Colin, one if its residents, a quietly spoken retired businessman from Aberdeenshire who built his own home next to […]