2024 Summer Tour - Day 6 (Armadale to Acharacle)

Day 6 Ferry from Armadale to Mallaig, cycling Mallaig to Acharacle (1st June)

Another relatively low mileage day, but one with substantial climbs. We headed for the Loch Shiel Hotel in Acharacle, where I'd booked us in for two nights. We had the best weather of the tour so far, but we did tangle with the planned route on the bike computer. I had planned to ride on the B road through Arisaig, but as it turned out the routing (and I can't recall whether I planned this on Komoot or Garmin Connect) took us on annoying little detours with surprisingly inappropriate gradients. It seems to me that very often a specified cycle route doesn't suggest enough thought has been taken on gradient!

The ride down from the B&B in Ardvasar to the Armadale ferry terminal was pretty quick as it was mostly downhill and pothole dodging. We had to hang around for a bit, but we chatted with a guy on a gravel bike set up for touring. The ferry to Mallaig is pretty straightforward, and crossing is about 50 minutes. The water was like a mill pond. The ferry had to wait for a bit before docking, to let the Mallaig to Lochboisdale ferry depart.

We cycled out of Mallaig on the main road before leaving it to what I thought would be a scenic route. Instead it turned out to be difficult and very twisty. Before returning to the main road, we had a nic chat with a couple of women heading off with various accoutrements for sea kayaking. They'd been on holiday for a couple of weeks.

Back on the main road we rode up and down various long inclines - none spectacularly difficult, but draining nonetheless. the traffic wasn't very heavy, which was a relief after our experiences on Skye.

I stopped to take in the views across to Skye - here's a panoramic video followed by a couple of still photos. At some point during a fairly rapid descent, our backup bike computer popped off its mount, bounced hard off the tarmac and vanished from sight. I jammed the anchors on and Carol walked back up the hill looking for it. I eventually found it lying face down in the water filled ditch with a corner of the screen broken away.

As an aside, my main bike computer is a Garmin Edge 840, which is operated via nice combination of touch screen and buttons. The backup is an Edge 520 Plus mounted on the stoker bars, and I'm told that it probably came off because it gets nudged by me when I get on the bike!

Everything looks great in the sunshine!

Soon we reached the Lochailort junction, where we turned to ride alongside Loch Ailort itself. We rode past Inverailort House, a former shooting lodge that was used for SOE training in the Second World War. It seems to be uninhabited and each time we pass is in poorer conditions, which is a little sad. 

By this time, we were looking for a spot to stop for lunch. This road is really pretty lovely, not too demanding, though as with all lochside roads, it does tend to go up and down a bit! On previous visits, we'd seen evidence of much house construction, but there was less of this obvious to us. We stopped to investigate potential picnic spots and eventually settled on one which wasn't knee deep in bracken. We hauled our saddlebag off the bike and set up the Trangia to heat up some vegetarian chili and rice.

It turned out to be a delightful spot, and in fact was the only occasion I tried out the HoverAir X1 camera to take the following video.

Once lunch was finished, we packed up and continued riding along Loch Ailort to Glenuig, where we stopped for a welcome ice cream at the little village shop before tackling the stiff climb and descent to Loch Moidart. This was the first of two serious climbs, but I think we rode up at a sensible pace, though not without perspiration! Over the top and we zoomed down the other side, alongside Loch Moidart and inland a little way to Kinlochmoidart. Here it's delightful, with singletrack roads and pretty cottages. Near here is the place we set up our tents on our first ever cycle camping trip with a couple of work colleagues, back in the mid-1990s. It was a weekend trip, and this was the second night, under trees by River Moidart, near the Kinlochmoidart estate. As I recall a wedding had been taking place and the happy couple came strolling by.

One further climb awaited us - and this was if anything a bit harder that that from Glenuig. But once again, we covered this in good style before whizzing down the other side into Acharacle. Acharacle never ceases to amaze me with it's beauty. There's a wide area of lush meadows with occasional houses, guest hoses and farms, and you cycle over River Shiel, alongside Loch Shiel and into the village itself.

Our accommodation for the night (and the following night) was the Loch Shiel Hotel. We'd stayed here a few years back, when it had just changed ownership, having been taken over by a new team of young people. At that time they were just getting it all set up, though our stay was nice and I was keen to revisit. On this visit, th hotel seemed to be up and running well! After getting cleaned up, we arranged to have dinner, then sat outside drinking Spean Bridge IPA in the evening sunshine. After a brief wal down to a jetty at Loch Shiel, we had dinner. I had cullen skink (a particularly nice rendition of this classic soup, with chunks of new potato and smoked haddock very evident, followed by a main course of even more scallops. Carol had an excellent prawn cocktail with massive prawns follwed by the excellent scallops. 

Beer!

It was the first fully sunny day of the trip, absolutely delightful. Unfortunately, the forecast for the following day did not look at all good.