This year's cycle tour was partly blogged as I went (only slightly successful, as internet access with my Vodafone modem was patchy and 2G at best).  For this writeup of the tour, I've updated the blog articles, and linked them to this article.

Day 1 - Tayport to Aberfeldy  In which we meet old friends, both expected and unexpected.

Today's ride was on home turf, practically, as we were riding roads we frequented when we lived in Dundee for a decade.  We returned to Dundee via Caputh, Coupar Angus, Newtyle and Muirhead, followed by a frantic ride through Dundee to the Tay Bridge.  Because we reached Dundee around mid-day, the traffic was reasonably light, and we had no real issues.

35.64 miles; 10.7 mph ave; 27.2 mph max; 3:18:04; total distance 523.33 miles

We spent just about all of today on Cycle Route 7.  We had a few light showers between Aviemore and Kingussie, but really the day was dry with many sunny spells.

Setting out from Aviemore, we chose not to ride initally on route 7, as this would have added 4 or 5 miles - instead we chose a more direct B road.  Kingussie looks more like a "real Scottish town than does Aviemore - it has a main street lined with older stone-built properties.  Route 7 works pretty well as far as Dalwhinnie (notable mostly it seems to me for an elegant distillery building - and presumably the distillery within!). 

On another fair day, we began by traversing the Black Isle, first through mixed arable farmland, and then mixed woodland.  This involved a surprising amount of climbing.  We eventually picked up cycle route 1 (for Inverness) at Munlochy.

This proved to be quite a circuitous route, and eventually led us under the A9 to cross the Kessock Bridge on a path alongside the northbound carriageway! Unfortunately, this deposited us in a huge industrial estate, among huge articulated lorries. We extricated oursleves by ignoring any cycle route signs, unfortunately, this led us to take cycle paths which required us to cross busy dual carriageways.

Up bright and early, with lovely blue sky with puffy white clouds scudding across! Set off eastwards, initially flat, but then climbing through woodland, with plenty of rhododendrons.  After a while, we emerged onto rather bare mountainous landscape.

We reached Achnasheen at about 11.30am, and stopped at the cafe for paninis and tea. Pressing on, we eventually started a gentle descent through woodland. We were aware of big black clouds, and as we approached the main road to Inverness at Gorstan, we had the first proper drenching of the tour so far. It was fortunately quite short-lived, as the rain was pretty cold!

We woke after a well-earned sleep, for an 8am breakfast.  The plan for today was to ride over to Lochcarron, a short day in mileage terms, but one packed with steep climbs, particularly on the south side of Lochcarron (of which more later).
We rode off towards the Skye Bridge on a rather undistinguished road.  Snce the bridge was built, it seems to me that the character of the motor traffic has changed, if not the character of the island.  Stll, it afforded some good views of Skye and the mainland.  The bridge itself is surprisingly steep, but quite manageable. 

Once back on the mainland, we paused to look at the map. Being a bit fed up with the mainroads we'd been on since Lochailort on the previous day, we decided to take the winding and quite arduous unclassified roads from Kyle of Lochalsh, through several villages to rejoin the main road above Stromeferry. This route takes you through delightful broadleaf woods with cuckoos calling (and less fortunately midges, though at this time of year they're not too much of a problem).  We briefly stopped at Plockton station for a cuppa, but found the restaurant there had closed down.  We stopped to brew up teas a little further down the road, by a patch of woodland with a bunch of cows - they seemed to find us fascinating and came to have a fair old nosey-parker!

Our sojourn at the excellent Salen Hotel ended with the finest breakfast of the trip. Everything about it exuded quality - bacon, scrambled eggs (on a potato scone), mushrooms, sausage (their own recipe) and Stornoway black pudding set me up famously. But before that, I'd been out to sort the gears - turned out the indexing was way out of whack.

The weather this morning was glorious - sunshine and clouds, but a bit cooler than of late. The road over to Lochailort features quite a bit of climbing (before the biggest climb, over to Loch Ailort, we were hailed by a bunch of sea kayakers) but the roads were splendid, leading us through fabulous woodland. As we approached Lochailort, we spotted a steam train heading for Mallaig, emitting vast clouds of smoke.

After breakfast, we rolled the bike down the B&B's extraordinarily steep driveway, and then rode it down the hill into Tobermory and on to the ferry jetty on the harbour.  From there, we took the ferry across the Sound of Mull to Kilchoan in Ardnamurchan. 

We'd decided to nip over to the beach at Sanna before heading to Salen (or possibly Acharacle, depending on how we felt).  So we rode over the hills to Sanna Bay, where we were rewarded by a virtually empty beach composed of glorious silver sands - here we had a drum up. On the walk over to the beach we walked past former crofting fields, with streams populated with a variety of small wildlife, and with butterworts growing around the banks.  We were also rewarded with spectacular views of some of the Inner Hebrides (Coll etc).

We woke to see sun and clouds, and this later cleared to give clear skies and, yes, more hot weather! However this did make for an excellent day of cycling on Mull, an island we'd not visited in about 15 years.

On a weekday morning, Oban is mighty busy, and getting to the ferry was a little awkward (and I even made a wrong turn in the 0.75 miles from the B&B to the ferry terminal!). Once there, we bought tickets (one of the 'Island Hopsctoch' tickets) and embarked, along with many others, including 6 coaches - everyone seemed to be heading for Iona.

The day began and finished with cloudless blue skies - for much of the day, we had puffy white clouds. Unfortunately this didn't lessen the temperature, and part way through today's ride, I had to stop wearing my helmet as a consequnce of the torrents of sweat pouring out of it. We decided to try and reach Oban today, a distance of over 70 miles, much of it on main trunk roads.
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For me, the day began lethargically, and it wasn't until Kenmore that we were rolling effectively. Kenmore lacks B&Bs, though there's a good tearoom (closed when we passed), a hotel, and a number of what looks like holiday cottages. We paused at Kenmore to take a few photographs, in cluding one looking across to the Loch Tay Crannog Centre, featuring a reconstruction of a crannog, a prehistoric settlement built on a platform on stilts over water.  From Kenmore, we pressed on via the road on the north side of Loch Tay - this is a fair bit easier the that on the south side, which is a recommended cycle route. There's not much accomodation to be had other than the Lawers Hotel until you get to Killin, where there are plenty of B & Bs. En route to Killin, we passed a Google Streets photography car, though judging from the speed it was doing, we doubt it was active.Along the way,the landscape was excellent, with high mountains to our right (for example Ben Lawers) and the glassy smooth waters of Loch Tay to our left. 

After a cream tea in tearoom at Killin, we set forth with an expected 55 miles or so to still to cover (this was at 12.00, with 23 miles already on the clock). Next point was Crianlarich, followed soon after by Tyndrum - neither are particularly interesting, but do offer food and accommodation, mostly aimed at the climbing fraternity. For the rest of the day, we contented ourselves with bananas and snack bars, washed down with warm water from our bottles (vaguely plasticky tasting after two days in the heat). At one point, we paused for Carol to relieve her hot feet in a stream, in order to stave off foot cramps.