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.

This event saw my return to club events after a brief hiatus on medical grounds (minor operation), so I was a little apprehensive as to how I'd get on  - while I had done a few turbo sessions, this would be the first time out on the road.

As it turned out, I got on OK, though a bit of the pace I'd have expected on such a nice warm spring evening. I had no real issues other than my usual mucking up the clipping in at the start!

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.

Quite a few years ago, I started an exploration of my family’s genealogy. This began as a Christmas holiday project, then became a bit of an obsession until the ‘easy wins’ were all done. While clearing my late father’s house prior to sale, my brother uncovered a bunch of photos that we think were included in my paternal grandmother’s belongings when she died in 2000.

In these photos were three that included men in military uniform. One of these was clearly identifiable by the handwritten inscription on the reverse of the photo. The others are a little more complicated!

The albums in this list of 1001 continue to be predominantly anglocentric, which is a bit of a disappointment. Anyway, here is another tranche of 20 records. I was pleased to see Suicide's first album show up. I have a vinyl copy of the UK release (which has a slightly different track listing than the original US release), but also a CD copy of the US release. I bought it because I was intrigued by a review in a HiF magazine which rather rudely announced that only a poseur could possibly claim to like the record ("poseur" was something of a standard insult in those days!). I loved the album from the off, and went on to buy many more Suicide albums, and albums by Alan Vega and Martin Rev.

I was pleasantly surprised by Green River by Creedence Clearwater Revival, but many of the selections seemed to me to be rather inconsequential records. 

I think this event replaced the regular Icknield RC 30k event that for the last few years has been run on two laps of a circuit that takes riders over Mentmore Hill. That’s always a bit of a shocker, because the descent has appalling road surfaces. This year’s event was held on the Astwood circuit course (two laps), with the Bike Bus as race HQ.

On the day, we had brilliant sunshine but there was a rather strong wind (it was 15-17mph during my ride, with gusts exceeding that. I had some technical issues though these didn’t affect my admittedly lacklustre performance. More on that later.

So here I am, having passed 10% of the albums. It continues to be a rather anglocentric exercise, with most albums from the US, UK and Canada.

No discoveries of albums in this tranche that I subsequently added to my collection. But the exercise is exposing me to records I've not played before, which has to be a good thing even if it confirms my existing taste! 

The Duo Normand was the best time trial I regularly rode, and as a 2-up tream trial, I always rode with my long-term 2-up partner Gerry (together we styled ourselves Team Grumpy). There are many reasons why I believe this was the best time trial - a large field raning from non-specialist riders through to professional teams; a challenging course of around 54km; and in a great location in the heart of rural Normandy. Gerry and I ended up taking annual holidays in Normandy because of this race.

Sadly the Duo Normand seems to have fallen off the calendar of events, partly due to the Covid pandemic, partly due to local sports politics, but also (I believe) due in part to the political stupidity that is Brexit. 

Here are my thoughts on albums 61 to 80 from the 1001 Albums website.

It's still very English language on the whole. On the other hand, it keeps exposing me to new music which is always a good thing.