Days 13 and 14: Onich to Dingwall, and then to Altnaharra

Hello! We're in the middle of nowhere it seems...

We've just had some dinner, and are looking out over Loch Naver, thinking about going for a pint later in the Altnaharra Hotel - that's about all there is here. As there's a computer here, I thought I'd let you know how we've done since I last wrote on Wednesday.

We did indeed get back on the road yesterday, on Thursday, and in fact ended up doing 98 miles from Onich to Dingwall. The terrain wasn't too hard on us, as we cycled down past Loch Lochy and Loch Ness, but nevertheless a long way, and if Al's back wasn't up to riding, we would've found out fairly quickly. Despite some discomfort, he managed it, and he seems better than I'd feared.


I can't say I really enjoyed that day, with the disappointment of knowing we wouldn't have done the whole ride still hanging over us, but today has been a different story. The landscape changed entirely over the 59 miles it took us to cycle from Dingwall to here in Altnaharra, and some of the views were just incredible - the B road over Easter Ross from Alness, and then down to Bonar Bridge in particular, looking out over the Dornoch Firth. I'm treating this as three days cycling through countryside that's entirely new to me, and we just happen to end up in John O'Groats tomorrow.







The towering mountains we saw around Onich and Fort Augustus have now thinned out, and this far North feels quite different - you can see further, so the sense of scale that always impresses me in Scotland is now shown in a different way. It also seems so much more deserted, and some parts positively barren, with the weather changing rapidly - we rode our last five miles today in the start of what seemed like spitting rain, but just after we arrived at our B&B here, torrential rain was hammering down. I'm now looking out over the sun on the fields.


We're in much better spirits. I am glad we carried on, and I'm sure tomorrow will be special too - we head up to the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, so we'll see the sea again properly for the first time since Somerset, and follow the coast for nearly 40 miles.


My speedo's now reading 784 miles, so with the 75 we're due to do tomorrow, we'll have done over 850 miles - which I think is the distance it takes to go from Land's End to John O'Groats if you use the motorways. So that's sort of doing the whole thing...


Sunday evening we catch a sleeper from Inverness to London, and we have a while to wait in Inverness, so I hope I'll be able to tell you about how we got on in John O'Groats. Well, it'll keep us out of the pub for a bit, anyway... we only broke our two pint rule once over the ride, after all!


Thanks for all your comments, it's so nice to hear from you - look forward to speaking to you all properly. I'll tidy up this blog in the near future to give you a less rushed and more complete description once I'm back in Oxford, and add some photographs. For now I'll just post up some to keep you amused!