Cycling LeJoG 2017: 07/23/17

Until Friday night, we've been very lucky in the Youth Hostels we've stayed in, which have been very quiet overnight. On Friday our luck ran out, as a coach turned up at Glen Nevis hostel at 11.45 pm, just as Steve and I were trying to go to sleep. It stopped outside our window with its engine running for 15 minutes or so, and of course its impossible for a coach load of people to come in very quietly! Not conducive to a good night's sleep!

Coming back to the cycling - on Friday I was very thankful for the cycle tracks we travelled - yesterday (Saturday), I was very unimpressed!

From South Ballaculish, where we finished on Friday and started again yesterday, there's a good cycle track alongside the road as far as the Corran ferry - although at one point it suddenly disappeared, there was a confusing selection of patched road and dropped curbs in the wrong place for cyclists, which resulted in Joel taking a bit of a tumble - fortunately no real damage was done.

The National Cycle Network sends people across the Corran ferry to the north side of Loch Linnhe, and then back on the ferry at the other end to Fort William. We'd already decided to stay on the main road - it's shorter, and avoids the potential delays waiting for a ferry. We also picked up that the route over there goes along a single track road, which is used by lots of logging lorries, so it's not much safer than the main road anyway. It was lucky for us it was a Saturday - traffic wasn't too bad. But the main road has no provision for cycles, and little opportunity for people to overtake, so I was very relieved when we made it to Fort William without incident! At one point, we'd pulled into a layby and were joined by another cyclist. He was doing Lands End to John O'Groats in nine days - yesterday being the penultimate day. That means cycling about 100 miles a day - the most we've managed, on a very good day, is 65! But speed isn't everything - the best bits of our ride, for me at least, have been the times when we've been on quiet roads, or off-road on good tracks, and there's time to enjoy the scenery, hear the birds sing, and give thanks to our Creator God for so much beauty.

Once we were through Fort William, we joined the towpath beside the Caledonian Canal, which was a lovely ride. The Caledonian Canal was built as a shipping canal, so it's very wide. It joins the lochs along the Great Glen, so ships can travel from Inverness at the north-east end to Oban and so out to sea at the south-west end (and vice versa, of course!) It's one of Thomas Telford's amazing feats of engineering. The locks (with a 'k' not an 'h'!) are enormous - we saw about half a dozen boats of various sizes start on their way together up 'Neptune's Staircase' (a series of eight locks) from Fort William. According to Wikipedia, it's the longest staircase lock in Britain, and it takes about 90 minutes for a boat to go through the whole system.

When we got to the south end of Loch Lochy, we were onto minor roads for a few miles, but then found ourselves on a very bumpy forest track for the next few! After a few minutes, we'd had enough of it, and unfortunately the next section of canal towpath, between Loch Lochy and Loch Oich, didn't look very good either! So it was back to the main road for the next few miles. Fortunately, that was followed by another good section of canal towpath to Fort Augustus. It's a shame that you can't tell from the Sustrans map what kind of surface an off-road cycle track is going to have . . .

From Fort Augustus, we had a big climb up the road to the south side of Loch Ness. It was a killer, at the end of the day, and after six days of cycling! We didn't quite make it as far as we'd intended, but we'd done most of the climbing by the time we decided to call it a day. Once we'd loaded the bikes onto the car, we drove the rest of our route to Inverness (we'll cycle it tomorrow!), and stopped at the viewpoint to take some photos.

Last night and tonight, we're staying by Loch Ness. Today is a rest day (much needed) - a chance to wash smelly cycling clothes, do some maintenance on the bikes, and take stock. We were watching the weather forecast this morning, and looking at the map of Britain, and where we now are, it seems phenomenal how far we've come!