#cycling blog
As we sailed to Ullapool across a lake-smooth Minch, it became clear that autumn had started without us. The road to Inverness – a stretch of the NC500 packed with camper vans – wound through tall trees that were already golden brown. The strong winds that would have shoved and shaken us on the Hebrides were softened to the rustle of a branch. I have really, really missed trees. We stopped at Corrieshalloch Gorge and walked the wobbly suspension bridge, with the bizarre perspective of seeing a waterfall from directly above. The whole woodland glowed.
In Inverness we visited Leakey’s Bookshop, a crazy emporium where tall bookshelves teetered perilously close to the woodburner. Then we tried a deep-fried Mars bar at the chippie that claimed to have invented them. We ordered and the kid behind the counter said: “Salt and vinegar?” M and I looked at each other – when in Rome, do as the Romans do, I guess? – and then the kid said “oops, I didn’t mean to say that,” and we sighed with relief. Though who knows, maybe it would have been an improvement.
The start of the Great Glen Way to Fort William was a beautiful road, threading through the woods. Loch Ness sparkled grey between the trees. We set up camp on its pebbly shore, and rain began to drum on the tent. It poured all night and much of the next day: driech weather (the only Gaelic word I’ve learned).
We picked up General Wade’s Military Road, the ‘first straight road in the Highlands’, which shot up a ridiculous hill. Modern builders had put a bend in it so the gradient wasn’t quite so severe, but you could see the old road merrily ploughing straight on. We laboured to the top in driving rain and then a voice shouted over the wind: “Would you like tea or coffee?"
Standing in the doorway of a camper van was our saviour, Doug, on holiday with wife Sam and daughter Shona. They brewed us a coffee and said they were on their way to Skye to swim in the Fairy Pools, which sounded extremely cold. We wished each other happy adventuring and zoomed downhill to Fort Augustus to drip-dry in a pub. We tried to time our exit to dodge the next shower but it started up again. "Ahh, if it’s not shite now it’ll be shite later,” the barman said cheerfully.
Towpaths, forest tracks and old railways took us from the foot of Loch Ness, along the shore of Loch Oich, and onto Loch Lochy. Tiny whitewashed lock-keepers’ cottages peppered the canals linking them. We camped under the boughs of an old oak on another section of General Wade’s road, down on the lakeshore. The 18th century road was overgrown by grass and bushes but it was absolutely solid: we couldn’t stick the tent pegs in more than an inch, and had to weigh the tent down with stones. Then came a bizarre noise like the rumble of thunder and a military jet came tearing up the loch, so low we could have repaid the day’s favour and offered coffee to the pilot.
The woodland was dripping wet in the morning and I stuck my foot into my trainer and encountered an enormous black slug curled up in the toe. It was an inauspicious start to a rather miserable day on my part, and I was very grateful to get to Fort William. The weather finally lifted and we were bathed in golden evening sunlight. Ben Nevis rose above with snow right at the top. The soft light faded out and we could hear stags bellowing mournfully to each other in the trees.
The weather app said it was 1C when we woke up, the skies crystal clear. We caught the Corran ferry and then picked up Route 78, the Caledonian Way cycle path, all the way back to Oban. We span along the remains of another old railway line with frost in the verges where the sun hadn’t yet reached, and then a beautiful woodland path. We stopped for a sunny pub garden pint with a view of Castle Stalker, and then returned to Oban’s ferry terminal for the next round of island-hopping.
Read the next Island Hopping blog: Way out West
The final push to Lewis began with a ridiculous climb into an alien landscape of vast, smooth bare mountains and slate-grey lochs. Yellow snow poles flanked the road, bent in wild directions by the ferocious wind. We came through a small pine forest – virtually the first trees we’ve seen on the Outer Hebrides – and ate square sausage sandwiches in their shelter. Half the square sausage had ended up splattered over M’s trousers as we cooked on a wobbly boulder the night before, and he smelled like a fry-up.
The clusters of homes became hamlets, then sizeable villages, and finally the sprawling edges of Stornoway: the biggest town we’ve seen for weeks. It had an Argos! We nipped to MacLeod & MacLeod butchers for some of their famous black pudding, and then took the long road across the barren moors, towards Lewis’ most northerly point. The wind pushed us along to the Butt of Lewis lighthouse. We cooked the black pudding to celebrate making it to the official end of the Hebridean Way, and kept M’s trousers well out of reach this time.
Going back against the wind was a horrible slog. Squally showers kept dousing us, but when they stopped there would be a fantastic rainbow somewhere in the stormy sky. We passed shops with sets of rusty trolleys in their tiny car parks, and a man refuelling his tractor at the single petrol pump. Turning off towards Shawbost, we leaned even more deeply into the wind. High hills rose on the horizon, blocking the view of the sea. We passed an enormous whalebone arch and then, exhausted, pulled up at our AirBnB on a working croft.
Siaron and Keith, who out were feeding the chickens in their tornado-proof run, looked after us like we were family. They put M’s trousers in the wash and made up the most comfortable bed ever. I was fast asleep by 8.30pm. We had breakfast together, listening to their stories of transporting their entire smallholding – including sheep, horses, dogs and a single goose – over on the Stornoway ferry. To be a proper islander you had to last three winters, Siaron had been told. It was barely autumn and I was ready to call it a day.
We set off into the howling wind once again, cycling through a landscape steeped in history. We saw the reconstructed Norse Mill and Kiln, reminders that Viking raiders settled on Lewis and stayed for 350 years, and then found the Neolithic Callanish Stones. They are 500 years older than Stonehenge, with a circle of stones surrounding a chambered tomb and then four avenues branching off in the shape of a crucifix. Until the 1850s they were covered in five feet of peat, but they now stand tall and proud up on their bluff.
Our last stop was Bernera, a tiny island with a bridge over the Atlantic to get there. Cycling up a hill with a rocky cliff-face beside us, I heard a squeaky cry and then a golden eagle flew over me about ten metres away – absolutely massive, with fierce yellow talons. M was waiting at the top of the climb, looking in the other direction. “Eagle! Eagle!” I shrieked from down the road. He turned just in time to see it settle on a ledge a few metres from him. It was magical to see it so close up, and we spotted it, or another, a few more times as we creaked to Bostagh Beach.
After both getting off to push our bikes up one of the steepest roads I’ve ever seen, we reached Bostagh. By a picnic bench, in a little sheltered dip, was the most perfect tent-sized patch of flat grass. The tide was in and only a sliver of the white-sand beach was visible, with a tide bell mounted on a seaweed-covered rock. Beyond was the turquoise sea. Nothing but ocean until Canada, its rocky shores hidden away by the curve of the Earth, which my Taid taught me when I was little. Rain blew across. When it stopped, the end of the rainbow came down right outside our little tent.
Read the next Island Hopping blog: Autumn in the Highlands
Harris is one of the best places in Scotland to see golden eagles, and I was on high alert, yelling “EAGLE!” and pointing wildly into the sky several times a day, often at a seagull. M is a very patient person. We saw only soaring buzzards and a helicopter on the spectacular coast road to Tarbert, though the helicopter kept landing on a fishing vessel and carrying a full barrel of something up into the hills, which was very exciting. Initially we thought we’d busted a drugs smuggling ring with a James Bond mountain lair, but we now think it was salmon restocking.
In Tarbert we picked up the binoculars we had each ordered in, plus some brake parts for M’s bike that had got corroded from all the bracing sea air. We refuelled with an enormous burger each near the Harris Gin distillery, and then set off on the road to Scalpay (a bonus extra island). The road swept down across a bog and then up and over the headland above Tarbert. We crossed the tall concrete bridge onto Scalpay and could see Skye’s Cuillin Ridge once again.
Just before the village was a sign declaring HOME BAKING, and in an honesty box were piles of delicious things. The baker herself, cheerful Riona, was just emptying the box for the evening but let us buy some millionaire shortbread. We were cheerfully describing the measly dinner we were about to make ourselves (“couscous again!”) when she went inside to get us some fresh eggs, refusing payment but requesting the pink egg carton back in the morning.
We went on to Eilean Glas Lighthouse, down a gravel track that bounced through the boggy ground. The red-and-white striped top showed over the last hill and then we could see the lighthouse in all its glory, with some old cottages for the keepers at its base and a fantastic rusty foghorn sticking out into the Minch. Just before it was a bothy, and lo and behold the door was unlocked. It was very basic, with just a wooden floor and a picnic bench – no electricity or running water – but it was shelter. We cooked up the eggs as the sky turned pink and the lighthouse began to flash its gentle warning into the darkening sea.
We retraced our steps in the morning and were just rising out of the bog when I saw the eagle – which was actually an eagle this time. It was a white-tailed eagle being mobbed by a tiny speck of a crow. It flew fast and low on its barn door wings, then twisted away so we saw its distinct white bum. It flew miles off but we managed to keep it in our sights and watched it soar over the tops of the Harris hills.
We dragged ourselves back over them in turn, through a brutal headwind and an icy hailstorm, and then cycled along the longest 2km of gravel ever to the North Harris Eagle Observatory. It was hidden deep in the recess of a valley, beside a silvery slip of river. We’d not even got through the door when a golden eagle came shooting over the top of the valley wall and sailed on the thermals in the tawny glow of sundown. We saw it again a little later, dark against a darkening sky, and then it was gone to its eyrie and us to ours.
Read the next Island Hopping blog: To the end of the rainbow
