A lovely quiet Sunday at the cottage we are staying in on the shores of Loch Duich (near Kyle of Lochalsh). Got back from Sunday lunch in Plockton, where it was a ridiculous 23 degrees C.
Waited for it to cool down a bit before heading out for a little late afternoon ride. The bike needed a bit of fettling first, as it had been developing quite a chain rattle while I was on the Hebrides.
After giving it a good clean and lube I headed off up the steep driveway up to the main A87 "Road to the Isles". Directly opposite the driveway, there is a little road rising steeply through the ferns and heather up the side of what is basically a fjord. Funny how starting a ride with a climb always seems more tiring, and this was no exception. 1.8 miles of relentlessly steep climbing got me to my first viewpoint - and what a view. First, though, I came across this sign,put up by some local joker: (one to make
@victor to feel included):
(reads "Kangaroos for 14km")
I didn't actually get to see any of the advertised kangaroos, despite my remarkable luck with wildlife spotting so far on this holiday. (Did see loads of dolphins from the ferry the other day, and this ride started with two golden eagles flying over my head though).You do sometimes come across free-range piglets in the road up here, though, as so few people ever seem to drive up here. This was the view along Loch Duich from above:
The road then dips down for a while, with a lovely road surface and this glorious sweeping bend with amazing views all the way:
Definitely pays to look where you are going, not go where you are looking. The next viewpoint, between a gap in the trees, has a great view of Eileann Donan Castle (the one they stick on the lids of biscuit tins and on shortbread packets). Unfortunately my camera shot was straight into a low sun, so not one of my best pictures.
Glided down into Dornie and hung a right, following a little lane all the way to Bundarroch on the South side of Loch Long, before turning tail and passing Eileann Donan Castle and our cottage in Inverinate along the main A87 as I was having too much fun to stop just yet. It was here that today's "moment" ocurred, as a car started to overtake me just as an oncoming car was passing in the opposite direction.The oncoming driver didn't like it, and hooted loudly just as he was level with me. I don't think anyone came remotely close to colliding with anyone else, but there's something about someone blasting a horn loudly right in your ear that risks turning your shorts a couple of shades darker. Panic over, though ... nobody got hurt.
Just before the very end of Loch Duich there is a stone causeway cutting the corner of the loch at Morvich, in the shadow of the Five Sisters of Kintail (Sorry
@stephec, they are mountains, not anything that would interest you). I remembered my dad stopping for petrol near here, back in the pre-causeway days of the very early 1970s, when you used to have to drive another 3 or 4 miles around the end of the loch on your way up the West Coast. On that occasion we were on our way to a rain-drenched family holiday in Gairloch and Dad nearly ran out of petrol in what seemed to me like the back of beyond. I remember a ginger haired guy in a boiler suit stepping out to serve him, and saying something sounding to me like "
hoots mon, there's a moose loose aboot the hoose" (or I may perhaps be confusing the incident with an episode of the Russ Abbott show). What is amazing, is that the ancient Shell petrol pump is still there like some kind of museum piece, even though the road has long since stopped being part of the West coast route, and the garage itself is long gone.
Headed back uphill through Inverinate, then back down the steep driveway to the cottage, where the gravel part at the bottom stopped me without needing the brakes..... I may have some raking to do before the owner sees the state of the drive though. Another 17.7 miles today.
Cheers,
Donger.
