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!

Day 5 Departing from Tarbert and Cycling on Skye

This was to be the longest day of our tour in mileage terms - around 60 miles. The plan was to catch the early ferry from Tarbert across to Uig on Skye and basically head down via Portree, Sligachan and Broadford to Armadale. I'd had real problems arranging accommodation on Skye - since the bridge was built, vistor numbers have rocketed and much of the accommodation is for rental cottages of books up well in advance. Added to this was the disappearance of the last to ferries from the website! In the end, I found a B&B in Ardvasar, a mile or so beyond Armadale.

Day 4 North Uist, South Harris Thursday 30th May 

Redburn House is a ‘self-service’ B&B, with no resident manager – breakfast is provided for guests to help themselves. This was convenient, and this enabled an early breakfast so we could set off by 7.30 to cycle  over to Berneray for the 9.30 Leverburgh ferry.  

Day 3 Eriskay, South Uist, Benbecula and North Uist, Wednesday 29th May 

The plan for today was to ride through Eriskay, South Uist, Benbecula and North Uist to Lochmaddy, where I had booked accommodation. We were up fairly early because we planned to ride to Ardmhor ferry terminal for the first Eriskay ferry at 0925 and we thought it prudent to allow some time for mechanical hiccups. In the event the ride was straightforward, so we arrived early, and had to hang around for a while before the ferry came in.  

Day 2 Barra Tuesday 28th May 

I slept well and woke to sunny spells but drizzly rain came on. Today we planned to potter around on Barra, but given the forecast (very heavy rain in the afternoon), we weren’t sure how much cycling we’d actually do. 

Day 1 – Out to Barra 27/5/24 

After getting up and checking our touring baggage, and having some breakfast (instant porridge and a pain au raisin), we drove the car (with the tandem etc) down to Stoddarts for storage. We assembled the bike and piled on the luggage. The bike handles really nicely when loaded, so there were no issues riding down to the Caledonian MacBrayne terminal by the harbour. By the time we’d set up the bike, the early drizzle had stopped. 

Day 0 – Arrival in Oban 26/5/24 

As usual we drove north to Oban in stages. On the final drive, we planned to drive up from Edinburgh which is a drive of approximately 3 hours. We woke to rather heavy rain, and loaded up the car with panniers and the tandem in a spell of lighter rain before setting off. It continued to be very wet driving from Edinburgh along the M9 – see the video below, which includes the sight of the famous Kelpies statues. 

Some great albums here, plus some real dogs (in my opinion, obviously). The highlight in this set of albums is London Calling by The Clash, but then that's been a favourite of mine for many years.

I hadn't listened to Orange Juice's Rip it Up much at all over the years, and I kind of appreciated this. So that's the album I'm flagging up here. Devendra Banhart's Rejoicing in the Hands was also interesting. Both these are in my Qobuz favourites for further listening.

We had a rather nice evening for this event (except for the brief rain shower before the event started). I rode the P5 TT bike with the deep front wheel as there was only a very gentle wind throughout. I actually felt pretty good and was riding well above my current estimated FTP for much of the time. This is quite encouraging as I come back from a brief medical hiatus in training.

We were all a little concerned about traffic levels as stationary traffic on the A421 increased the number of vehicles on the course as drivers used the road as a rat run. But by the time we were riding everything seemed to be back to normal. I had a clear run through. 

Though it's still some way off, there were a few things than needed checking before we head north on our cycle tour. Firstly, there was the question of our fitness for several consecutive days of cycling, and more specifically my ability to sit on a bike for long periods. Secondly, we recently replaced our creaky 2014 Ford Focus with a newer 2023 model - would our tandem fit inside, or would we need to sort out roof bars?

Dealing with the second point first: since 2013, our touring tandem has been a Thorn Discovery Raven Twin. Notably, this tandem was specced with S&S couplings which allow the bike to be split into two parts. The rear section is the larger part. The photograph below shows the old car loaded for our 2023 Normandy holiday - including the Thorn tandem and my Cervelo P3C time trial bike.