Wednesday, 12 November 2014

Saturday 20 September: day fourteen – Glen Coe to Inverness

85.6 miles. 7:47 hours of cycling. Average speed 10.9mph 

Woke up to a beautiful morning and set off along the edge of the loch. We were riding across the lochs and canals which link the Irish Sea with the North Sea – a brilliant feat of Victorian engineering.  

As it was Saturday the A82 was not too busy and we got to Fort William very quickly where we saw a pipe band leading off a mountain bike race. 

 
We left Fort William with Ben Nevis towering over us and picked up a side road which turned into a forest track. It was beautiful but very rough and hard to ride. It went on for nearly 12 miles, which was exhausting.

We took an unpaved canal path towards Fort Augustus which was not as rough, although still tiring. We lunched in Fort Augusts and decided not to follow the Cicerone route up into the hills above Loch Ness, which the book said had some stiff climbs, but to stick to the A82 which, being Saturday, was not too busy. The high road was part of the network of military roads which was constructed in the during the middle part of the 18th century as part of an attempt by the British Government to bring order to a part of the country which had risen up in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715. The first four of these roads were constructed in the 1720s and 1730s under the direction of General George Wade (an Anglo-Irishman) and are commonly referred to as General Wade’s Military Roads or simply as Wade’s Roads.

Not taking advatnage of General Wade's construction meant we had a fairly dull 32 mile slog along the edge of the Loch with sparse but very fast traffic.

 
We arrived at Inverness completely done in by all the rough track riding. The youth hostel is huge, rather impersonal and seemingly full of Japanese tourist – not at all like Glen Coe. There are loads of cyclists and we were able to borrow a track pump to get our tyres to the right pressure. I had picked up a sliver of glass and had to fix another puncture.The small, travelling track pump I was carrying is great, but the pressure gauge is not very accurate.

As we were riding along Millburn Road loopking for the hostel I had smelled curry, so we went back to find the restaurant and stuffed ourselves.

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