Day 7: Inverness to Carbisdale Castle

The scenery changes again to the flat shores of the River Ness. Equally beautiful, and you can see the mountains to the North blue in the distance. The roads are still quiet, and what traffic there is, is generally very considerate and doesn’t get too impatient about having to stick behind a couple of cyclists while we toil uphill.

At Dingwall, we manage to get off the main road onto a smaller side road, but soon find that this means a lot of climbing. This seems to be the pattern- side roads are safer and prettier, but a lot hillier. We pedal along for what seems to be an astonishingly long distance. It all seems quite bleak, empty, no habitations, no people, virtually no cars, and I begin to wonder how much longer there is as I push one pedal in front of the other. After a while I’m considerably bucked to discover that we’ve unknowingly taken a shortcut, and are actually much further on than I thought. Just as well, really, as it very soon starts to rain.

After a bit we stop and have lunch at a View Point, though it’s not much of a view today since it’s raining so heavily you can’t really see anything. At last I’m beginning to see the point of at least some of the cycling gear. The shorts might look like something Baden Powell might have worn when he went clubbing, but they very quickly dry on you.

After this, the road goes downhill, and after a few more miles, we finally find ourselves in what was to be one of the trip highlights, Carbisdale Castle Youth Hostel (sic). The castle is every bit as amazing as the pictures suggest. There’s a long hall with classical/vaguely erotic statues, which seem all to have finger marks where guests are photographed touching.

It also has a large drying room, and Norman and I stand there for about 20 minutes to warm up. We get a splendid room and an excellent dinner in the impressive dining room, overlooked by a portrait of King Haakon of Norway. As we near the far North, the place is increasingly filling up with End-to Enders. I reckon that at least half of the guests were doing this in one direction or the other. This seems to be one of the main factors keeping hostels going by this time.

Today the support team explored Inverness, then turned the Sat Nav off and got lost. Then turned it back on again.