Day 1
Inverness to Applecross
134km, 1,500m ascent
I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve been on a bike this year. So after such a long lay-off, what better idea than to cycle 500 miles around Northern Scotland over 7 days. Count me in!
My friend Simon suggested we do this route only a couple of weeks ago. And here we were, at 9.40 this morning, posing for photos in front of Inverness castle, ready for the off. And what a glorious day if was too, temperatures in the high teens, sunshine and, well, a head wind – but that may be a fair trade-off, especially as we anticipate having some good tailwinds over the coming days.
The legs felt OK for the first 60km or so, but I wasn’t surprised to feel some pain in my quads thereafter. I’m hoping that I’ll get stronger with every passing day. After a stop for lunch in Achnasheen, we continued into the head wind past Loch Carron, for a final coffee before we encountered the epic climb of the day, a 600m vertical ascent up the Bealach-na-ba (translated as ‘pass of the cattle’), which started at 115km into the day’s ride.
Simon went off like an Exocet missile, I followed his wheel for the first 200m of ascent, and then the gradient pitched up to a level where we were both finding it tough. We stopped for some photos at 300m ascent, but it was the next section that almost broke us. Gradient of up to 20% with lengthy sections of 13% was tough going, especially when we’re carrying our baggage with us. After re-grouping one final time, we crested the top of the climb, delighted but exhausted.
The descent to Applecross was fast & narrow & we were only too happy to pop into the Applecross Inn for a celebratory Guinness. Day 1 done. It was tough, but I’m thrilled to be back on the bike.
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