We did absolutely no miles on day 3 (on the bike at least)!

We woke to appalling conditions of howling wind and driving rain – and rather pleased we’d left the tandem on the roof of the car.  After breakfast, we set off for Durness, where we paused to add money to Carol’s phone and try phoning her parents (they’d tried to call the previous evening while we were driving back from Ullapool to Scourie).  Then we went a short distance down the road to Smoo Cave.

Smoo Cave is a giant cave formed by both the action of the sea and by water flow from a large catchment area.  When we visited, we couldn’t really get far in because of the volume of water cascading through the cave.  In fact the cave was filled with spray going in all directions!  This itself was quite spectacular, but really we need to visit under rather less wet conditions.  Somewhat dampened by the experience, we returned to the car and motored on towards Thurso.

This took us south along Loch Eriboll, then back north along it’s other side.  The weather at this point was really awful, and Carol was having trouble steering the car due to the tandem on the roof like some kind of Dimetrodon sail.

As we proceeded along the north coast, the weather gradually brightened, and by the time we reached Thurso, it was actually quite nice.  We located the bike shop, which is called The Bike Shop, and wandered in to discuss the situation with the two guys there.  Leaving them to conduct a thought experiment about the likely problem, we returned to the car to fetch the bike.  As it turned out, my diagnosis of a broken freehub body was correct* though it was the fixing bolt that was the problem.

This would have been trivial to fix, except that current Shimano freehubs has a different spline arrangement, and so the parts in the shop wouldn’t fit.  In the end one of the shop guys sacrificed his own wheel to provide a freehub body and get us back on the road.  This must count as the best service I’ve ever had from a bike shop.  Unfortunately I can’t find a web site to link to for The Bike Shop, but they do have a Facebook Page.

Over a brief lunch, we deliberated on what to do with our cycle tour.  One problem was that the car was now in the wrong place!  Another was the likely bad weather over on Orkney.  In the end we decided to head south, perhaps to Pitlochry to stay for a few days of doing day rides.  With this plan in mind, we drove south to stay at Helmsdale for the night.

*The mail order emporium I bought the wheel from  says this of the hub: “These are reliable and durable, the axles do not bend, the flanges do not break off, and the freehub bodies do not fail.”  Hmmm…

Over breakfast, we made the final decision to wind up the tour with four or so rides based in Pitlochry.  So from Helmsdale, we set off in the car – destinationPitlochry. This was Plan C, in which we stay three nights, for four rides in Perthshire. This was a rather dull drive down the A9, though broken by a supermarket visit in Aviemore.

Good weather all day!

Once in Pitlochry, we looked for a B&B for three nights, though we actually went for a self-catering house instead. After getting unpacked and buying a few supplies, we set out for a short ride over to Loch Tummel and the Queen’s View.

The ride took us out of Pitlochry on a cycle route (actually a B road rather than a purpose built cycle track) through Killiecrankie and Blair Atholl. The road was delightfully undulating and it felt pretty good to be back on the bike again.  Eventually, the road started going up, and we were cutting across a hillside to get to Tummel Bridge.  Along the way, we stopped to eat one of the meals we’d taken for the tour. For this we stopped next to a sandy bank where sand martins were nesting (much too their dismay!)

You can’t actually see the birds, as they’d scarpered, but their nests were at the top of that sandy bank.  Loch Tummel itself is rather pretty (it was even more so on the ride on Day 5), and is blessed with the famous Queen’s View (below), named for Queen Victoria.  Actually, in Queen Victoria’s day, the loch was considerably narrower, amd the view would have been rather different.  The present loch resulted from damming in the 1940s for use in generating hydroelectric power.

From Loch Tummel, it was only a short ride back to Pitlochry.  On the way, we rode across a bridge over a gorge, offering fine views:

All in all, a very nice bike ride, and refreshing after the problems of the preceding couple of days.

This was a really warm and sunny day, and was forecast to be like this all day. I’d planned quite a long ride, encompassing climbs over Schiehallion and Ben Lawers, scenic rides on the Foss road and up Glen Lyon. In total this came to about 75 miles, and in the event brought with it some excitement!

We set off quite early, and negotiated our way to the Foss road. Annoyingly (since this is a road that would particularly appeal to cyclists), it seems one has to venture onto the A9 to get there. Fortunately, this is only for a very short stretch, and it was still quite early so traffic was light.  After leaving the A9, the Foss road rolls up and down before running alongside Loch Tummel. The loch was particularly still, and offered near-perfect reflections of the other bank. It was idyllic, with the sounds of birds and livestock among dappled shade and lushly green meadows and trees.

Shortly after reaching Foss, we joined the road that winds its way over the side of Schiehallion – a lovely climb through woodland eventually reaching more open moorland.  From some angles Schiehallion looks like a gravelly pyramid, up which paths can be seen snaking upwards.  Apparently Schiehallion was the site of an experiment conducted in 1774 to try and deduce the mass of the Earth (The Schiehallion Experiment).

Reaching the top of the climb, we paused for a snack bar and a drink before descending. Even though it was still quite early, we were finding the climb rather hot work.  After a lovely swooping descent, we took the turn to Fortingall, where we stopped to look at the famous Fortingall Yew. This ancient yew is thought to be 5000 years old, and is frankly rather decrepit after years of abuse, and it’s now protected by a walled enclosure. This makes it rather difficult to photograph, but I made a stab at it!

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There’s  a rather nice engraved flagstone footpath that leads through the church yard and past gravestones to the yew enclosure, which emphasises the tree’s age.

From Fortingall we pressed on up Glen Lyon. Confronted by roadsigns warning us look out for red squirrels, we kind of pooh-poohed the likelihood of actually seeing any of the beast.  However, shortly after rounding the corner we indeed saw two of them. This was quite nice, because in most of the UK, the red squirrel is being out competed by the introduced grey squirrel.  Unfortunately I couldn’t dig out the camera before the squirrels made off into the trees.

While very attractive, the road up Glen Lyon is quite undulating, and I was sustained by memories of the tea room at Bridge of Balgie.  My stoker Carol was rather scathing of this, holding that I was just mixing up memories of riding in other Scottish glens! However the tea room did exist, and we tucked in to scones with jam and cream, washed down with tea, while sitting outside in the sunshine with swallows zooming around our heads, and chaffinches pinching crumbs from our plates. We also bought a bottle of chocolate milk, the significance of which will become apparent later.

From Bridge of Balgie, a little single track road ascends the side of Ben Lawers – a delightful climb, and passing motorists helpfully used passing places appropriately (except a twerp in a delivery van that occupied more than the width of the tarmac). At the top, the road levels out and passes a small hydro-electric reservoir.

The descent to Loch Tay was rather steeper, and I had to brake rather a lot, particularly at hairpin bends. This had disastrous consequences just as we were reaching Loch Tay.  At this junction, the road forks and joins the main road rather abruptly.  A few metres from the junction itself, I was braking to stop when…

B-L-A-A-A-M!!!

…the front tyre decided to explode, presumably from braking heat. Somehow I managed to stay upright and bring the tandem to a stop (not easy with the front rim running on tarmac).  We pulled the tandem off the road, and I set about repairs. The rim was far too hot to touch, so we shared the chocolate milk before starting. The tyre was quite badly shredded, with considerable damage to the bead. I booted the worst section with a small piece of tyre carried for the purpose, but had to leave the other. With the tyre only pumped up soft, we pressed on, rather nervously. At this point, we had about 30 miles to ride back to Pitlochry.

A few miles down the road, we stopped at Fearnan to see how the tyre was getting on. It was developing an alarming bulge. We scratched our heads for a while, considering how best to keep the show on the road. Eventually I remembered the now-empty choco-milk bottle. We cut out a section, and used that as am enormous tyre boot.

From Fearnan, we had a pretty uneventful ride via Kenmore to Aberfeldy, where we stopped for a quick drink bought in a store. The tyre was bulging alarmingly, and seemed to be worse that before. We rode on to Logierait, where we rested briefly (and contemplated the worsening state of the tyre) before joining Cycle Route 7 to Pitlochry for the last 4 or 5 miles back to Pitlochry.  This featured several brief climbs, and associated descents (alarming in view of the front tyre!), before entering Pitlochry across a pedestrian only bridge.  Bizarre on a cycle route, but there you go.

We left tyre repairs for the following day, and after getting cleaned up wandered out for a pint and a curry.  All in all, an excellent (if overly exciting) day’s cycling.

After yesterday’s debacle, we were a bit late setting off (plus we did a little gift shopping in the morning).  I got a replacement tyre from the bike shop (Escape Route) that was very conveniently just across the road from where we were staying. When fitting the new tyre, it was pretty clear how lucky we had been to make it back OK – the inner tube was badly worn by the choco-milk bottle tyre boot, and was on the point of puncturing. At least the choco-milk bottle tyre boot had stopped the tube pushing out between the tyre bead and the sidewalk!

Eventually we drove over to Kinloch Rannoch, where we parked the car in a layby that looked to be mostly used by canoeists (judging from the warning signs about log jams downstream!).  Weatherwise, this was quite a change from the blazing conditions we’d hadon the previous day  – we’d woken to rather cooler temperatures, and during the morning it had not only got cooler still, but the overcast skies had started to drizzle at times.

We chose the unclassified south road to start. This was delightfully quiet, with only occasional cars, and we mostly saw fishermen in the Loch, with occasional tents by the Lochside. On this section, we saw another red squirrel, but once again could’t take a photo.

Rounding the far end of the loch, we continued to see lots of fishermen – eventually we asked one whether there was a fishing competition, but apparently it was just a coach-load of blokes from Irvine.  On the way back, we saw an astonishingly small micro-pony, with its even tinier “pocket foal”.  We stopped to look, but the foal got rather anxious and we moved on.  On the subject of livestock, we saw a fine multi-horned ram in a field (below).

We returned to the car pretty uneventfully, and went back to Pitlochry, where we went to the Auld Smiddy for some beer and dinner (venison sausages on mash wth roasted vegetables).

This was  to be a short ride, as we were leaving Pitlochry and visiting friends in Tayport (across the Firth of Tay from Dundee).  After packing all our kit into the car, we cleared up the rented house and made sure we’d not left anything behind.  From Pitlochry, we drove down the A9 to Dunkeld.

Dunkeld’s a place I’ve cycled to on many, many occasions – it was a favourite club run destination when I was with the Dundee Wheelers (1990-1999).  We left the car in a car park by the River Tay, and rode off along the main street.  We started by climbing up the A923 in the direction of Blairgowrie.  The route was completely familiar – all those Dundee Wheelers club runs  seemed to have left tyre ruts in the tarmac!

Reaching Blairgowrie, we negotiated the new one way traffic system and went down to the cafe that we used to frequent, down by the river.  Unfortunately it was closed and boarded up for good.  Our attentions turned to the next door Cargill’s Bistro, where we stopped for tea and scones (excellent jam!).  Very friendly, especially considering they were still clearing up for the day’s trade.

From Blairgowrie we headed off along the A93 then returned to Dunkeld along the A984 – the most notable feature here was the appallingly damaged road surface, much worse than I remember it.  Pretty uneventful ride really, through rolling mixed arable farming landscape, and very pretty.

Back at the car, we loaded the bike back on the roof rack, did a spot of shopping, and then left.  Our so-called “cycle tour” was now over, bar social visits to friends and family.