Bike trip starts tomorrow

[muz]

Well - that's me and my mate off on the bikes tomorrow - away up to the North and back over three nights. I've done most of the packing tonight (it's quite a challenge when you only have a couple of side panniers and a tank bag!) - but I reckon I'm just about ready to go.

Since my mate Graeme bought his GS1200 BMW (I've got my trusty Triumph Speed 4), he's got delusions of being Ewan MacGregor - so he's fitted us up with cameras, radios, and sound recorders - I reckon there might be a dvd in this at the end!

First stop tomorrow is Tain, 40 miles north of Inverness. I have no idea if I'll encounter free wi-fi at any of the places we're stopping - but you never know - I'd hate to sound patronising about these places, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and take my mini-laptop with me. So I'll try and post on here if I can if there's anything interesting to report!

Wish us luck!

[cal125]

Hey good luck with that, you'll be well through your trip by now but hope it's all going well!

I've just come back from four nights in Pitlochry where I managed to see a salmon leap at the famous fish ladder (a series of pools constructed to make the salmon's upstream journey to their spawning ground easier) just as most of the other tourists were looking the other way! They all turned around when they heard the almighty splash and I didn't have the heart to tell them what they'd missed. I managed to avoid the rain but let's just say I hope I'm as popular with prospective employers as I am with wasps. They're a nightmare

Hope you gave Inverness a wave for me

[muz]

No fat biker blokes - just the bikes, in the middle of nowhere, with Scotland's fantastic scenery.

[muz]

Good to hear from you there Cal - can't say we had a wasp problem, and we were well protected from midgies with all sorts of sprays etc - but we did see some amazing wild-life. At one point we had to stop the bikes on a single track road to let a family of ducks wander across the road - they didn't look phased by the bikes' engines at all either! - In Glencoe we saw some dragonflies which were about 5" long, and as the photos show, we encountered quite a few lizards too, as well as the usual deer, cows, and thousands of sheep! The Highlands is teaming with wildlife. (and if Barbara is reading this - a few squirrels too!)

I had a disaster with my own photos of this trip - all were lost along with my camera... but that's another (long) story ...

Luckily - my pal Graeme's were fine - they look a lot better than the stuff I had anyway - so here's some smaller versions. As you see, the star of those shots is the amazing Scottish scenery...













The elusive Smoo Cave...







THe Northern coast of Scotland







Lunar eclipse seen from Smoo at night!









We have lizards in scotland too.



The Clannaich Inn in Glencoe - a great place to stay - and superb breakfast!

[rotweiller]

Those pics are beautiful. Have really put me in the mood for a wee trip back to Glencoe, probably my favourite place in Scotland. The atmosphere is amazing. Makes the hair stand up on your neck.

[cal125]

***WOW*** those photos are sensational!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry to hear about your camera, Muz. What an amazing set of memories to have though.

OMG Smoo Cave! I've been there! Didn't see a lunar eclipse though and the weather was inclement (that's me being very carefully polite in anticipation of automatic censorship considering what the system did to my post in the TV Hell thread about an episode of Traffic Cops being set in the town locally known as Scunny! ). I took the Tim Dearman Coaches day trip from Inverness. To Smoo Cave, that is, not S%?£!horpe. Most people got off at the visitors' centre and I was the only one to stay on the bus all the way to Smoo Cave, purely because I hadn't been up there before. The driver explained that the pick-up point was a few hundred yards away near the exit; for those who haven't been, there is a car park from which the path winds down to the caves and once you've done the tour of the caves themselves there is another pathway winding its way up the other side of the inlet and the coach departs from just opposite there. So I had a wander down as far into the caves as I could get (the boat trip was cancelled at the time due to risk of subterranean flooding) and came back up the other pathway to get back on the coach. However there was another coach party already making their way around the caves; they having been down there already when my bus arrived and their own coach having remained in the entrance car park, it created an interesting scenario for the driver of the Tim Dearman's service as they came out of the exit at the same time as me so he dropped one person off at the caves and saw about 50 people come back out!

I really must see Glencoe. There is no railway so I have never managed to get to see it. I've heard so much about the atmosphere (and American tourists asking "Is there a McDonalds in Glencoe?" ) I have to go there.

Has anyone else been there?

I didn't see a single wasp in Inverness. It's the finest place on Earth. for that and soooooooooo many other reasons.

I'd definitely take that Tim Dearman's Coaches day trip to Durness again. The Kylesku Bridge is so spectacular. Sutherland is wild. Every time you think "wow, this is as isolated and remote as it gets", the bus takes a turn onto an even more narrow and mysterious looking road which makes the one you were on look like a motorway. Just pray you don't meet Jamiroquai on tour. (Jay Kay has been quoted as saying he loves getting onto those far out roads in Scotland that nobody's on and driving like a gosh darned maniac, though not in quite those terms as you can imagine; I have a good friend in the shire of Perth who has seen him doing precisely that and if he'll do that in the Central Belt imagine how invincible he'd consider himself to be on the truly isolated roads. It was on my mind at Kylesku and beyond.)

I really have to get to Glencoe.

I LOVE INVERNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[FireFox]

What a beautiful country we have and all within a bike ride, I mean only north of the border though.