I thought it might be helpful to record some of the technical information pertaining to the tour.

The bike – we rode the Thorn Raven Twin tandem we’d bought back in 2013. This was reviewed over several blog posts on this site. The tandem worked pretty well until the final day of cycling, when the front seatpost snapped, rendering it unrideable. That’s only the second time in my life I’ve had a seatpost snap. Other than that, we found that gear shifting seemed a bit sticky. Perhaps an oil change for the Rohloff hub is due. 

Day 8 Monday Acharacle to Oban - in which we suffer a serious mechanical problem that brought the tour to a sudden end! Monday June 3rd.

Up bright and early for breakfast - pancakes and bacon this morning. After loading everything up and settling our bill with the hotel, we we set off towards Strontian. Our plan for the day was to ride over to Strontian, round the end of Loch Sunart and over the long three mile climb to the equally long descent to Lochaline. From Lochaline we'd catch the ferry to Fishnish on Mull and cycle a few miles down the road to Craignure for the ferry to Oban.

Day 7 Sunday Acharacle (2nd June)

It was a bit hard to believe after yesterday’s excellent weather, but the weather forecast for rain all day turned out to be true. We did get out for about 18 miles in the drizzle, cycling along Ardnamurchan as far as Glenborrodale through lovely mixed woodland. Saw a red squirrel. A very wet red squirrel!

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. 

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.

As alluded to in my previous post, planning our 2024 tour has been fairly complicated. But now with route, accommodation and ferries planned, the overall route is shown below.

As usual, we're starting and finishing in Oban - this route is a bit of an outline, there will be extra bits of cycling dependent on the weather, local sights and of course fatigue. The opening leg is principally the ferry crossing from Oban to Castlebay in Barra - a crossing of nearly 5h. In total, we have seven ferries!

Back in the day, and I’m thinking mid 1990s through to maybe 2010, we used to just set off on our trusty touring tandem with no fixed plans, no pre-arranged accommodation* and clutching our Caledonian MacBrayne Island Hopscotch tickets**. And we rarely ran into problems getting on ferries or finding somewhere to stay.

Our last Scottish cycle tour was back in 2017 since our attempt to tour in 2018 foundered due to missing our first ferry in Oban and then having all the ferries cancelled due to a storm. In subsequent years we were unable to tour owing to family circumstances and the Covid pandemic.

This year, we decided to visit some of the southern Hebridean islands that we hadn't ventured to before. This report is written using Microsoft Sway. We used our newest tandem, a Thorn tandem - it behaved impeccably and we continue to have no issues with the Rohloff hub. Or the 32-spoke wheels. Or the S&S couplings.

We ended up back in the Hebrides again this year, but somewhat later than usual, due to work commitments. We decided on island hopping because it seemed likely that CalMac would lose the bidding for the ferry contract to Serco – but in the end, sense prevailed and CalMac continue to provide the service. Actually, the timetables and routes seem to be a bit easier to understand, with a regular 1.40pm departure from Oban to Castlebay each day of the week. But the Lochboisdale ferry now goes from Mallaig!

Our 2015 tour was organised after a winter and spring in which our cycling had been seriously curtailed by pressure of work. Accordingly (a) we desperately needed a break, and (b) I needed to be quite conservative about projected daily mileage.