Day Three

The room at the Torridon Inn was exceptionally comfortable, and following a satisfying night's sleep, we woke to one of those extraordinary highland mornings which come after a black storm the night before; sunny, breezy but offering hope and light to the traveller.  Breakfast was superb.  The mushrooms were enormous and tasted like fillet steak, and the coffee was hot and strong.

We were filled, if not with optimism, with a renewed sense of energy and purpose, but knew that today presented a different challenge: hills, and loads of them.  Still, we look, in retrospect, pretty contented as we prepare for lift off:

Norman in front of the eighth wonder of the world - the Hanging Baskets of Torridon.  Utterly incongruous, like a Scot in the British Lions

An attempt to appear relaxed about the day ahead

As we left the car park, the weather had cleared, and while it would be stretching it to say that it was warm we were not unhappy about the start.  Unfortunately, we turned right and remembered what we had noted the night before: that our introduction to the day was a huge long climb.  Just the thing to get the lactic acid flowing round the legs, I suppose, but that kind of worthy thinking is as unwelcome as a long climb first thing in the morning.

Anyway, up we went, and for the next few miles were out of breath, partly due to the exertion required to get anywhere and partly due to the extraordinarily spectacular landscape we were experiencing.

Although we still had a headwind, the hills kept the worst of it off us.  We made it to Shieldaig within half an hour, about 7 miles, where it was calm.   It's a beautiful village, with a spectacular sea bay, into which has been dropped a forested island. This is an unusual feature in the west highlands, belonging more to the Swallows and Amazons school of locations.  (Haven't read Swallows and Amazons, by the way, but I understand that's a good literary allusion, and I like them).

Shieldaig

 

 

From there, the landscape changes again, and becomes less spectacular and more bleak.  The weather remained fine, with a hint of rain (that fine rain, soaks you right through) and we began to tackle the type of cycling we would face all day: going up without apparently going down much.  It was hill after hill, and it felt like we were climbing constantly, for hours, and without reward.  If that sounds like typical self-pitying cyclists, it's an accurate reflection of how we felt.

Here's an example of the kind of road we were on, taken from one spot looking in both directions.  Both of which show that whichever way we were to choose, we would be going up.  It's not logical.  After a while, it's not even sane.  But it's real.

And though sometimes it appeared like you were going down, the effort required simply to keep the wheels turning made it clear that either the wind was incredibly strong or that we were facing an optical illusion.

From here, it was a long haul to Lochcarron, with several further enormous climbs to defeat.  I remembered a lot of extended hills but thought they were on the other side of the loch, so I allowed myself to feel that perhaps we had got the tough phase out of the way before lunch.  We stopped for an excellent if slightly uncomfortable cuppa in a small cafe near Kishorn, before eventually reaching the top of the hill and flying down into Lochcarron.

My friend Tim spent a lot of time in Lochcarron when he was a boy engineer, fooling about with the water treatment facilities.  He went from there to a posting in Indonesia, and I'm not sure which he felt was more remote.  Apparently the reception on the telly was better near Djakarta.  It has a slightly odd feeling, Lochcarron.  It should be beautiful but it just has a slightly desolate, isolated, cut off air.  Maybe that was just because we had come at it from the back roads, which had made us feel desolate, isolated and cut off.  The word that comes to mind is anomie, which I remember from my jurisprudence lectures (and let me tell you, my jurisprudence lectures are lucky I remember anything from them, given the amount of time I spent asleep in them).

We decided to keep going until the turnoff towards Kyle, just before Strathcarron, at the head of the loch.  As we approached the village, we saw that there was a hotel and agreed that lunch would be due about now.  That small section of road was a tough gig, because the wind was coming right up the loch and gave us an ominous foretaste of what was to come.  On a bike, there's not much that puts you off your lunch more than an ominous foretaste of what's to come.

Lunch was a drab panini in a bar heavily populated by working men in excellent mood discussing, very disconcertingly, a friend of theirs called Murdo in loud but not disapproving tones.  I was pleased to hear it.  A Murdo never likes to hear a Murdo badmouthed, even if Murdo deserves it.  We Murdos have to display a degree of loyalty.  We're pretty much out on a limb in the 21st century and it doesn't do to side with the anti-Murdo brigade.

I should perhaps clarify that I don't think there's an organisation called the Anti-Murdo Brigade, convening marches and sit ins to fight the rise of those with excessively highland names.

I have done some research on the meaning of my name. Murdo Macleod.  From time to time people actually tell me I have a great name.  These people are never under 70.  Murdo means either Sailor, which is slightly plain, or Sea Warrior, which is frankly heroic; and Macleod, well, that's the subject of much debate.  Mac, obviously, means Son of... Leod, from whom the clan derive its name, was a chap who apparently divided opinion, if what I may have read once and lodged in my brain but can't now independently verify at all bears any relation to the truth.  It means that either my name is Sea Warrior, Son of the Silent Wolf (magnificent, majestic even, a heroic protagonist in a George R R Martin epic perhaps); or, sadly, Sailor Son of Ugly (which conjures up a picture more of, well, me).  My Dad was not pleased when we discovered we were sons of ugly, but John and I have since had to bear the fact that our sons are now sons of ugly too.  John named his company Silent Wolf after I told him that that was what our surname means.  Better than Ugly, I suppose, but he has no more right to it than Tony Cascarino had to an Irish cap, not to say 93.

Leaving Strathcarron, we quickly found, again, that the wind was frustrated by the enormous hills in front of us.  And then we realised that the morning was, in fact, the easy part.  I mean wow.  We both of us remembered two hills in particular, one open to the elements but a 1 in 7 in old money, and the other into a forest which just went on a long time, and on which I vividly recall being mocked by a caravanette full of pointing Italian children.

The first hill we met seemed terribly steep but it didn't look like it had 29 years ago.  Fair enough.  Neither did we.  Looking back on it, though, there's no doubt it was our old nemesis.  A panini is no match for a 1 in 7, let me tell you.

Norman disappearing into the trees.

Thankfully we made smooth progress but until mid way through the afternoon the climbing was just relentless.  It's not just the pain and the exhaustion that do you in.  It's the resentment of the jokers who designed the roads.  Because along the line of the loch, there's a railway line.  It's simply cruel to watch another form of transport, with much better engines than us, cruising along a flat track when we're on the rollercoaster next door.

We reached what we understood to be the top of the hill, and were beginning to cruise down it when we came across the turning at Achmore, towards Plockton.  The conversation here turned towards 1982.  My dad had recommended that we take this road because it was very attractive and also flatter.  You can tell he's never cycled anywhere.  As if you would put attractiveness ahead of flatness when commending a route.  Honestly.  But Norman had it in his head that going this way caused a certain amount of resentment all those years ago, because it was not in fact flatter.  It is, however, quieter, and very pretty, so we decided to go round that way to Kyle.

Weaving through the rhododendron bushes was an enormous pleasure, but the climbs just kept on coming, and frankly if it had been right or appropriate to resent my father for his promise made 29 years ago, we would have.

Still, we were about half way up the hill when a turning appeared, inviting us to Plockton.  Now, Plockton is a charming village, quirky and beautiful, but it was obvious to anyone with any map reading skills that if we were to head that way, it would add 4 and a half miles to the journey.  This was where we had our only disagreement of the whole trip.  Norman stared at the map for some time and reasoned that it was simply a loop and, tellingly, that we might get a cup of tea there.  I resisted, and in the end I think it was the right decision.

I'm sure there's a cup of tea there, and I'm not going back to Henry's Hovel

I'm not cycling 4 miles extra for a cup of tea.

It looked as if we were heading for a very ordinary break in Kyle when Norman spotted a small hotel in Erbusaig, about two miles out.  The sun had broken through and the time was right so in we wheeled and sat down in the sunlit garden.  Tea wasn't the stuff I was after, though, and so I ordered ginger beer.  I was tempted to refer to lashings but thought better of it.

Here's what arrived.

A brimming pint of ginger beer with stacks of ice, with fruit scones and all the fixings.  On an ordinary afternoon in Edinburgh I wouldn't dream of such a snack, but in that place, at that time, it was the perfect interlude.  While we sat there, I received several text messages telling me that England had taken 6 wickets in no time at all to win the Oval test match v India, and that Tendulkar had failed to reach his hundred.  A small celebration ensued, not for Tendulkar, who's pretty good, but for the overwhelming 4-0 victory over the summer.  Brilliant.

Leaving aside the Enid Blyton connotations of this interlude, there was something perfect about it.  Sometimes the best moments are the ones you don't anticipate, which slip up on you unnoticed.  This was one of those.  No rush, most of the journey done, warmth and refreshment readily to hand, good and contented lives to return to at the end of the journey and the best of company.

From there, it was a freewheel into Kyle, just about, and no thought of stopping other than to check, briefly, that the car was still there and hadn't been smashed up in our absence.  It was striking how long it felt since we'd left it, but it was no more than 52 hours.

And our next challenge was the Skye Bridge.  The designers of the Skye Bridge are many things: visionary, spectacularly gifted and able to take advantage of incredible natural advantages.  Cyclists, however, they clearly weren't.  It's unbelievably, unnecessarily steep.

There's no need for the bridge to be as precipitous as this.

Still, the views behind old Helmet Hair are pretty impressive...

Coming down the other side was pretty awful.  After a good sweep down the hill, there's a little dip and an upward slope to the roundabout, and if that's not enough, with the urgent changing of gears down and the undignified comedy pedalling, the impatient traffic behind really raises the hackles.

From there to Broadford into a strong headwind should have been hard going but it's a strangely fast surface, despite its pitted and grainy appearance, and although the last couple of miles were testing, it didn't take long to find the Lion House, our excellently named B & B.  That stretch was by some distance the dullest of a remarkably varied and fun day.  I had hoped that the Lion House would be greeted by two cheesy concrete lions at the gate posts, but sadly there were none.  It was later suggested by my cousin Norman in Harris (that's Norman Harris, not Norman Middlesbrough, who was with me)(and that's not mentioning Norman Stornoway or Norman Glasgow - I'm well stocked for cousins called Norman) that it might have been lion in Gaelic, which apparently means net.  Maybe, but I prefer the Lion House to refer to the kingly beast.

Comfortable and clean; welcoming hosts; excellent dining at the Claymore in soothing evening sunlight.

Two big days under the belt.  Harris to come tomorrow.

Ended the day well.