The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

[dellzeqq]

This is a journey created by propitious and unforeseen circumstance.

One can travel to Scotland in an aeroplane, in a car or coach, by railway train, and, doubtless by steam packet. One can ride there by bicycle, and this I have done four or five times; there is no better way. However, if one's intention is to tour Scotland, or a part of Scotland in a leisurely fashion, then the bicycle ride is too arduous and time-consuming. One is thrown back on transport.

Aeroplanes are detestable. Cars more so. Steam packets are hard to find. Railway trains are comfortable, and ones bicycle can be placed in the guards van. That said, the journey to and from Scotland, or, at least, to and from those parts most suited to touring by bicycle, can take the best part of a day, and that is a day's wages lost or a day's holiday forfeited. Those with limited time will travel by the night train, and those with the means to do so will take a sleeper compartment.

I'll digress slightly (but not for the last time) to remark on the decline of the sleeper train in Europe. Germany has done away with them. The French will close all but three services this year. I am booked on the Thello from Milan to Paris this June, but the extraordinary cost of this journey (and their blank refusal to convey bicycles) renders the closing of the service a matter of indifference to me.

We in Great Britain are blessed with the Caledonian Sleeper, but the benefit of the Sleeper has, until lately, been available to those with the freedom and the resources to book tickets less than twelve weeks in advance - which is to say those who have accommodation arranged in advance, such as Parliamentarians or those with second homes in London or Scotland. Holidaymakers would have to wait until their chosen date became free, scramble for a ticket and then hope that the rest of their stay could be arranged in haste - not a simple matter between April and September.

This unsatisfactory state of affairs has ended - and this ending is the propitious circumstance I refer to. Serco, a company renowned for getting things wrong, have taken on the running of the Caledonian Sleeper and got one thing right - one can now book twelve months in advance, at a lower cost than if one were to book on the day. And, if one is travelling in company, the cost of a Two Together Railcard can be recouped (should it not have been recouped already) by booking two tickets at a further reduction of one third of the price. That said, the Sleeper is not cheap, but for about sixty pounds per person one can travel overnight to Scotland and then travel overight back to London for the same amount, saving the two days that would be lost otherwise, and enjoying the luxury of starting one's holiday fresh in Glasgow or Inverness or wherever.

We arranged the Tour thus. We would leave Euston at midnight on Thursday, arrive in Glasgow at breakfast time, take the slow train (there is no fast alternative) to Oban for lunch and then embark on a ferry to Castlebay on the island of Barra, arriving in time for dinner on Friday evening. We would then cycle to the north of Barra on Saturday, take a small ferry to Eriskay, and then ride across to and through South Uist, Benbecula and North Uist, finishing the day on Berneray. We would take the Sunday morning ferry from Berneray to Harris, and then ride across Harris and Lewis to Stornoway, spending Sunday night in Stornoway, before taking the Monday morning ferry to Ullapool, riding to Inverness, there to join the Sleeper, arriving in Euston at breakfast time on Tuesday morning.

That was the arrangement. As arrangements go it was not an unalloyed success, but, as the posts following this will, I hope, demonstrate, it was not a complete disaster.........

 

[rugby bloke]

Looking forward to further postings.

 

[raleighnut]

^^^^^^+1

 

[dellzeqq]

I'm going to make a point that will pain those who believe that the natural grandeur of the Western Isles and the Highlands is so very great that to live there is to be as close to Heaven as one can be on this Earth. The fact is that life in the Western Isles and the Highlands is unbearable. The evidence, which is irrefutable, can be found in the Ur-index of human desires - land prices. For all the wonder of sky, sea and sand a building plot will set you back about ten thousand quid at most. The population is old, and getting older - the young take the boat to the bright lights of Glasgow or London. For every five occupied houses there is another one that is derelict, with roofs fallen in and windows decayed in to blank holes.

The reasons are simple, but profound. The first is that human society is lacking - the population spread across settlements founded on crofting and fishing is not sufficiently concentrated to produce a culture. To see the sadness that is manifest in Stornoway is to marvel at the stunning success of the late Peter Maxwell Davies and others in Kirkwall and Stromness who strove to burnish civic society. Individuals, those who take the greatest satisfaction from nature, can take find their way, but for most of us, at least those of us who rely on society, the Western Isles are a desert.

The second is the winters, which are long, wet and dark. Few people would choose to endure days of six and a half hours, with near relentless winds and rain on twenty days a month from October to January.

The third reason is the summers, or, to be precise, the midge season. I'll return to this at a later point, but, put simply, life outside the house at the very time of year when one would seek to make the most of the wonders on all sides is excruciating.

All of which directs the visitor to one conclusion. Go in May and at no other time of year. So, dear reader, if this account leads you to rush to the Caledonian Sleeper website (and I concede that the enthusiasm engendered by this post might be limited in scope and intensity), there to buy tickets in the hope of attaining some cycling nirvana, the twelve month booking period allowed by the Sleeper's new owners is ideal for the purpose.

 

[snorri]

IThe fact is that life in the Western Isles and the Highlands is unbearable.

Unbearable indeed, were it not for the knowledge that the facility provided by the Caledonian Sleeper can whisk us away for brief relief from the sheer drudgery of life to a world of unimaginable experiences of delight.
However, after a few days in the southern latitudes we trudge back (penniless) to Euston station safe in the knowledge that life in the Highlands and Islands isn't so bad after all.

 

[dellzeqq]

Our first stop was the oh-so glamourous Tulse Hill Station. Having allowed the statutory 24 minutes we made it in ten, awaited the Thameslink which, contrary to company policy arrived on time, and jumped on with bikes and luggage.

I'll say a little bit about luggage, but nothing that will be news to those who read about our journey from Irun to Gerona. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote (about writing) that style should be avoided (although he allowed that Carlyle employed style to advantage). So it is with luggage. A bar bag to hold tools and maps (of which more later), or, if you prefer, cosmetics, and a saddlebag of the aero variety to hold changes of clothes will be sufficient. Mudguards are an anathema. The weight of bikes with luggage did not exceed twenty three kilos. For the two of us.

Our bar bags came from Decathlon and had neat elasticated straps to take the maps of the day on top. The saddlebags were made by Apidura and are pretty much waterproof, although we do put our clothes in plastic bags within the outer bag. We had small but powerful lights front and back which would have proved useful in fog.

The Thameslink took us to Saint Pancras and a lift took us to the street. We rode to Euston along the main drag under a million lights, walked in to the station at eleven o'clock and straight down to Platform 1 where a team of stewards helped us hang our bikes up (using spare socks to deaden the junction between hook and wheel rim) and we went to the cabin which had two bunks and a small washbasin covered with a lifting shelf.

There is a bar on the Sleeper, and the offer of a half bottle of Chablis for eight quid was too good to miss. We settled down, the train pulled out, the first stop allowed us to spend time in Watford without setting foot in Hertfordshire and then the sixteen car train pulled by a Class 90 (incongruously decked out in Genessee and Wyoming paint) and the last remaining Class 87 loco (the rest having been shunted off to Bulgaria) strode across Southern England, the Midlands and the Northwest with the long-legged ease that modern locomotives will never attain.

Somewhere or other the train divided and the Glasgow portion, having reversed polarity, arrived at Glasgow Central on time. We'd been brought coffee and bacon butties by the steward, and hit the street feeling pretty darn good about life. The ride to Queen Street Station is barely a ride at all, but we did pass by the only branch of Greggs that regularly sports a fifty yard queue, which is something to behold, unlike Queen Street which is undergoing a refit of the higher level which hides the sweet glory that is the station roof from view. We made our way to the low level station, known to those who work there as The Dungeon.

The railway staff were out and about in numbers and our one bicycle reservation was checked and approved in triplicate. The other bicycle was taken apart and popped in to a bicycle bag made of ripstop nylon by the tailor on Streatham Hill, and adapted to precisely the dimensions approved by Scotrail. Cyclists without reservations were turned away.

The 8.21 to Oban is as lovely a railway journey as one could wish for. It lacks the grandeur of the West Highland line and the drama of the Great Western at Dawlish, but the views over the Clyde, Loch Long and Loch Lomond are the stuff of dreams populated by Landseer paintings, retrievers and the soft touch of tweed on flesh. We re-assembled the bike at Oban, posted the bike bag back to London, purchased our Caledonian Macbrayne Island Hopscotch tickets, sat down to lunch and then queued with be-luggaged cyclists at the dockside to await the ferry.

The ferry is a far cry from the vessels I saw on my first cycle tour of the Western Isles. In 1981 sheep were herded on to nets, then swung up by crane, legs sticking through the mesh at odd angles, and deposited in the hold. Nowadays huge ro-ro jobbies slide in to place courtesy of bow steerers and every kind of vehicle from bicycles to articulated trucks go down a ramp in to the vehicle deck. Passengers go to a 'lounge' and observe the passing scenery, which is, by any measure, magnificent. The hills that press in to the side of the firth are rounded at the head and serrated along the side, dipping steeply in to the water. A hundred islets ask one if there is an ounce of Robinson Crusoe within (there isn't) and the absence of trees seems to enlarge the sky, whatever the weather. I appreciate that there is a wealth of pain in the history of the Highlands, and that pain is still written on the landscape, but to the untutored eye the beauty is unassailable.

 

[dellzeqq]

One forgets that the Western Isles are a long way out to sea. The ferry journey is almost ninety miles (although the first thirty five are between headlands and islands) and takes almost five hours - longer than the Newhaven to Dieppe crossing. I'd say that there was a ninety minute period during which we saw not one speck of land, and, surprisingly few birds. The boat thrummed along on a flat sea and we dozed.

From a way off Barra looked deserted. Small specks of white turned out to be single storey houses along the east side, but Castlebay and its medieval castle were hidden until we rounded a corner. The houses stand a little apart from each other in the manner of settlements in Caithness, and in contrast to the closeknit villages of southern England. A few public buildings stood out from the (not very large) crowd and we spotted the Craigend Hotel without difficulty. A few turns of the pedals took us to the reception and.......being told that the bike storage was, in fact, outside under a stair. Now, this, taken with my forgetting to bring a loft was just a tad disconcerting, but I reasoned that bike theft wasn't top of the crime pops in Barra, and if one were ever to leave the Colnago outside this was the place to do it.

I write the next paragraph not in the vein of a critic, but to make sure that anybody planning a holiday in the Hebrides takes these things in to account. At a hundred and twenty quid the Craigend is flat out pricey. One can't say 'over-priced' because there are people (like us) who will pay the money, but the room wasn't pretty and the sandwiches with a pint of beer and a glass of wine for another twenty four pounds were no great bargain. It's like this....the Hebrides are expensive. We might easily have saved money by staying at a hostel or a bunkhouse, but, if this isn't for you, then your holiday is going to cost.

Then again, there's the view from the window........(to be added)

We slept well, and got up at a quarter past five, showered, went downstairs, fixed ourselves some cereal and got on the bikes at five to six, aiming for the seven o'clock ferry to Eriskay. The first little bit out of town is uphill to about three hundred feet above sea level. It's a great view, but tough on cold legs. Then again, the descent is chilly, so we put the first two miles down to experience and warmed ourselves getting through the twenty mile an hour northerly that would stay with us the entire day.

The roads in the Western Isles are almost all single lane with passing places. Courtesy comes as standard - drivers would pull over when there was ample room to edge past. We pootled along beside the sea, the road dodging outcrops of rock as we dodged sheep who were, apparently, unaware of the rools which unequivocally state that we get the tarmac and they get the mint sauce. However spare the landscape, the houses, or the land around them, were not woven in to it in the picturesque manner of English exurbia. People don't trouble overmuch with gardening, and stuff - cars, old crinkly tin, lumps of wood and lengths of fence are strewn about. At this time of year there's not a lot of colour other than the green of the grass and the grey of the rock, but swathes of what looked like iris promise much for the next few weeks.

The Barra to Eriskay ferry is a forty minute trip to the southern end of an archipelago joined by causeways. We went over to the 'mainland' of South Uist and there, turned right on to the A-road that would be our home for the rest of the day. To the left, white sand and beaches. To the right, peat and hills. Ahead....fiftyfive miles of open road. We were. as they say, on our way.....

 

[dellzeqq]

This little trip served three purposes. The first was my was going back to roads I traversed decades ago. The second was that we were going to visit places of great beauty. The last was that we were loosening up for our forthcoming ride from London to Pisa.

In this last respect the headwind was a godsend. At some point on the journey to Italy we will face a headwind and we're going to need a routine. What we did was this - I went in front, keeping my speed down, sitting upright with my hands on top of the bars, making the biggest hole in the air I could, and Susie got as close to my rear end as was safe and bearable. We probably looked a little daft, but it worked. Trundling along, shifting down at the first hint of a grade, we made slow but steady progress.

Well...there's steady and there's steady. There wasn't much one could do about cattle grids constructed from rectangular hollow sections spaced so far apart that a twentyniner with 44mm tyres would be imperilled, let alone 23mm shod 700s. So, we stopped every couple of miles, I opened a creaky gate, Susie rolled through, I secured the gate, and on we went. To be honest with you, it got just a little tedious.

We hauled up to a Co-op. Now, this is not a small thing! The Co-op has made a big difference to the Southern Isles, offering groceries at mainland prices and, astonishingly, opening on Sundays. And...Sundays was, apparently, their busiest day. We bought comestibles, knowing fine well, that we'd not find a grocery store open on Harris or Lewis the following day.

We took a late breakfast at a hotel. I'll not name it, as the breakfast was expensive and the local sausage had the appearance and consistency of the stuff used to surface playgrounds. Suffice to say that if a small child were to fall on the sausage, he or she would bounce straight upright. I'll skim over elevenses which consisted of two slices of shop cake, tea for two and rolled in at thirteen quid. Again....if you're thinking of riding in our wheeltracks, plan ahead!

All the while the beaches were becoming whiter and the seas ever bluer. The gentle sound of the surf broke through from time to time, although the greater volume we heard was birdsong, including, to my surprise, cuckoos and skylarks. The hours rolled by, we turned northeast toward Lochmaddy, and then northwest and north on to Berneray. Settlements were fewer and further inbetween and traffic pretty much died out. We rolled in to Berneray in time for afternoon tea at the Lobster Pot http://www.isleofberneray.com/post-office-shop--cafe.html, which was (!) delightful and not exorbitant, although Susie persuaded me to buy one of the photographs on the wall, which the proprietor of the Tea Room was happy to ship to Streatham Hill.

We repaired to our B+B, justly named Sealview. It was just great. Welcoming, with the lovely view over the sea, almost exactly the same as the one in Ms. Carr's photograph. We went to sleep early, looking forward to another ferry ride in the morning and a new day on a new island.

 

[dellzeqq]

We rose early, ate a wonderful breakfast of porridge followed by poached eggs on toast, mounted up and went south in search of the ferry. I'd seen two CalMac jetties and aimed for the one with the ferry in it - which sounds daft until you consider that in a flat land and seascape the ferry is the biggest thing around. A cheery engineer came up on deck and pointed out the other jetty, telling us that they'd be round in a few minutes.

And so we made our way to Harris, the boat threading its way between tiny islands to arrive at Leverburgh about half past nine. We were in company with another couple, a few years older than us, touring on small wheeled bikes. The woman struck up a conversation with us on the subject of luggage (see above), and we set out our stall. She was, put simply, pissed off that her bike and gear combined to something over 30kg, and I suspect that she put this to the man after she's spoken to us because when we left the ferry more or less together he looked pretty grumpy.

The wind had shifted to the northwest, which is to say from the side rather than from ahead. We skimmed out of the port, turned left and then turned right on to an unmarked 'C' road that ran through a wilderness of rock and dark water. The Northern Isles, black in tooth and claw.....

When I was a kid in London two animals achieved fame. Men of a certain age will need no reminding of Pickles, the dog that found the World Cup. But, before Pickles attained immortality, we had Goldie the golden eagle. Here's a brief rundown.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldie_(eagle)

Goldie caught the imagination, so much so that children staked out the local parks with the thought that he might fly their way and devour a dog or two. I had my Observer Book of Birds (as did my future father-in-law, whose copy sits on our bookshelf to this day) and marvelled at the size of golden eagles, and the shape of their wings which were so very different from the tapered or triangular wings of thrushes, blackbirds and sparrows in London's gardens and parks. There seemed, to my taxonomically-inclined child's mind, to be a hierarchy of British birds and the Golden Eagle was the Top Bird, made even more Top by being so remote. To a boy who had travelled (when alone) no further than Heathrow airport on a Red Rover bus ticket, a boy who had spent years laid low by Stills Disease, the northern wilds of Scotland might as well have been keeping company with Henry Fawcett.

However much we cursed the cattle grids and their stiff locks, one cattle grid repaid every ounce of annoyance. We'd stopped, and were taking a sip of water. I think Susie was putting another layer on (which would make three, it being May). I looked up, and said, before my mind had registered the fact 'It's an eagle'. Then, after some reflection, and having looked carefully at the wing shape - the size being a matter of conjecture as the bird was so far above us - I said again 'It's an eagle'. I'll confess that my voice was kind of unmanly - pretty much a squeak. The great bird slowly flapped those wings twice - almost as if it wanted to show us how they worked - and glided out of sight. My head was ringing. You'll think this sounds far-fetched, but, in some way I thought I'd done right by the earlier me, the small boy that went through the Observer Book of Birds page by page, knowing some, wondering about others and believing that birds like the Golden Eagle were beyond knowing. And....in reaching back to the days of school caps and grey shorts I knew that if I didn't make sure that young Aderayo (my grandson) went on adventures, then nobody else would. That's a promise and you read it here....

The road to Tarbert is like no other I've ever cycled on. It is a sheep trail, laid, at great expense, with tarmac. There is little by way hills, but even less by way of flat. One can go up and down and down and up, and left and right, and right and left all in a quarter of a mile. Imagine a fairground ride made random and strung out over fifteen miles or so. Then add in hundreds, nay, thousands of small lakes, some no bigger than ponds, in which the water is devoid of reflection and appears to have no outlet from the impermeable hold of the rock beneath and around. Cycling was slow work, but you wouldn't want to ride a motorbike on it, and we saw less than ten cars along the entire length - but a hundred times that many sheep, some of them with no clear idea of who, in this world, gets to spread the mint sauce. We behaved with impeccable politeness, reckoning that those curly horns would do our Fancy Dan spokes no good at all.

At Tarbert we had lunch, and it was a decent lunch at that - so big up the Harris Hotel, and their cheery welcome. And thus, refreshed, we went from Harris to Lewis, which is, to my way of thinking, the one island, but, officially, they are two.

Lewis is dreary. There was a good climb of about six hundred feet to warm us up, but, after the descent we slogged along a two lane road that wound through dull looking villages all the way to Stornoway, which is a dull town in which we made our way to a dull hotel that agreed, reluctantly, to put the heating on and served dinner which was splendid (Susie's lamb) and just plain rank (my pork belly). We did see children playing in the park, which is an improvement of thirty years ago, when the swings would have been chained on the Sabbath, but you have to say that Stornoway is everything that Kirkwall has made sure it isn't.

Two days done, then. Here are the routes....
https://www.plotaroute.com/route/201170
https://www.plotaroute.com/route/201172

and the next days
https://www.plotaroute.com/route/201578

 

[Fab Foodie]

Brilliant stuff and perfect timing as I'm planning to go to the OH in the summer for some R&R and visiting an old friend ....

 

[fimm]

Oh that's very funny, I have just this second posted a link to this thread in your thread, FF!

 

[dellzeqq]

The CalMac website asks travellers to be on board the Stornoway to Ullapool ferry ten minutes before sailing. We arrived at the dockside with half an hour to spare and were told we were too late. Enter the Persuader. Anybody who has seen Susie fix the unsuspecting with her Persuading Powers ('can we bring our bikes in to your pub? There's only thirteen of them and they won't be in the way. Thankyou') would not have been surprised by the queue jumping to the ticket desk for boarding cards, the escort to the locked door that opened sesame-stylee and the red carpet hurriedly laid under our wheels (I made that bit up). On board we took our seats in the lounge and watched Stornoway disappear as the ferry turned on a sixpence and headed over the open sea toward the mainland.

Ullapool is just about the goodlookingest town you can imagine. Scrumptious even. And so small that within ten minutes we were on the open road, which, in this case is the A835, passing a sign declaring it to be maintained by BEAR Scotland, a sign to which we paid little attention.

We went east with the water to our right, hills to our left and the wind behind us. It was a beautiful morning, the sun lighting patches of snow on the tops. After fifteen miles the road climbed about nine hundred feet and we settled in to a groove. Actually several grooves, and, then again, some pits. Not to mention lumps, crevices and general tarmac crappiness in the land that gave tarmac to the world. Consider this - riding a road bike on a slight downhill with a following wind should give one about 18mph for pretty much for free. At times we were doing seven miles an hour and in losing all feeling in our hands. We'll call it unBEARable.

We stopped for coffee in an (unheated) roadside inn and made our way past Garve, ignoring the lure of smooth railway lines. Sit bones aching, teeth rattling, we found the A832 and turned off, and made our way by back roads and cycle paths to and over the Kessock Bridge and in to Inverness with lots of time to kill before boarding the Sleeper for Euston. We bought a bike lock and headed for an Italian restaurant and slowly made our way through the menu.

I'd got the route wrong. It would have been far better to take the previous afternoon's ferry from Tarbert to Uig, cycle across Skye and then go by train from Mallaig to board the Sleeper at Fort William. As I said after the fourth recce of the Fridays Tour de Normandie, we ride these roads so that you don't have to.

That said, Inverness is looking up. They've spruced up the riverside, tidied the town centre and made some sense of the traffic. The bar in the sleeper sold us a half bottle of white and we were out like lights in our berth by about nine thirty, waking up well in time for the quarter to eight arrival in to Euston. The six miles across London to home did feel a bit eerie, but, hey, all homecomings from far-flung places are like that.

Would I recommend the Outer Hebrides as a touring destination? Not really. If you want to see the best of Scotland stick to the eastern side. Perth to Inverness on the 'old A9' is the stuff of dreams and the road north to John O'Groats is sublime. And....no (or few) midges. If you want the strangeness of islands, then tack the Orkneys on to the end of your ride. That said.....we were lucky with the weather (headwind notwithstanding) and saw some wonderful land and seascapes, and our mini-adventure was made truly memorable by an encounter with one of nature's great marvels. You'll struggle to find the same elsewhere.

 

[Globalti]

I read this with interest, having just returned from a one-week tour of the Sound of Jura in a 6 metre yacht. At the start I met @Yellow Saddle in Lochgilphead and he kindly drove me to meet my ship in Crinan. We had a mixture of sublime sunshine and blue skies and some pretty nasty weather on the long, exposed crossing to Islay, where we walked from Port Ellen to the Laphroaig distillery. As I've said to YS, it's an itch I've always wanted to scratch but I don't think small boat touring is for me!

 

[rualexander]

Would I recommend the Outer Hebrides as a touring destination? Not really. If you want to see the best of Scotland stick to the eastern side.

Unusual opinion, most people love the hebrides and the west coast.

 

[snorri]

Thanks dellzeqq, an enjoyable read, you packed a lot in to a long weekend.