I have five days on the 30th to tour a little bit of the Scottish Highlands. I’ve never been to Scotland and now i have a few days i’m keen. I’m going to be rough camping with a bob trailer and a mountain bike. I havn’t decided about slicks or knobblies, but i fancy riding not offroad…but on teeny roads and maybe a few miles of gentle offroad a day (remembering i’m going to be bobb’ed up and with a host of camera and camping gear).

I’m coming from Manchester and am going up on the train. I don’t really want to hang around/overnight in any cities and the only thing I know i want to see is Cape Wrath and sleep a night on the beach there. I wouldn’t mind going to see John O’Groats and i’ve noticed that there’s a train line which runs near there. That might be a good start/finish point. I have a guide book, but it isn’t proving very usesful in offering a route.

Can anyone suggest a good 5 day route for me, with a train at the start and end and some ‘must see things’.

Undecided if i should try and cover more ground or just focus on eihter the north coast or west coast of the Highlands.

Get train to Fort William, go up the West coast and see a lot of brilliant stuff. Get train back from John O’Groats. That’d be my choice.

West is Best!
ps, pack midge repellent – if it exists.

Hi Joe,

I think mrmichaelwright is yer man. He posted on here about a month ago about a route he did around the NW Highlands from a base in Inverness. Looked like an excellent route. Druidh seems to be pretty clued up on this kind of stuff too.

mmw’s thread is here (some very engaging photos on it… :D)

Joe

I’ve been looking at some plans myself, including a NW Highlands jaunt. TBH – there are very few roads to complicate any route-finding issues. Even the major roads are “tiny”. As regards trains, your most North-Westerly stop will be Achnasheen. From here, you could pop down to Gairloch and just follow the road from there. Poolewe, Ullapool, then the “wee mad road of Sutherland” out to Lochinver, Stoer, Kylesku, Scourie and Kinlochbervie. Now we hit upon a problem…

The beach you refer to is most likely Sandwood Bay. You’ll easily make this by bike and Bob. But do not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, plan to continue to Cape Wrath by this route. Trust me on this. If you really want to get to Cape Wrath (where there isn’t a beach), then head back North to Durness and get the wee ferry across.

From Durness, just follow your nose towards Tongue, but take the wee road south past Ben Hope to the railway station at Lairg rather than continue to JoG. You’ll otherwise find that the scenery gets rather dull and uninteresting and there’s nothing but tack at JoG anyway.

Note that this is all on-road stuff.

If you want more distance, then get off the train at Strathcarron and head over the Bealach na Ba to Applecross and, again, just follow the road North.

Must see?

All of the coast, all of the beaches, all of the mountains. The pie shop in Lochinver, the chippie in Ullapool, the bridge at Kylesku (possible detour to the falls of Eas a’Chuill Aluin), the craft village at Balnakeil, the Broch in Strath More.

Druid…

…DO you reckon it’s doable inside 5 days? Or 4 days? What do you think?

ouch £80 single to get out there from manchester. Makes me want to take the motorcycle. Makes a few days out there quite expensife.

Difficult to say – I mean how many miles are you prepared to do in a day, how much stuff will you be carrying (do you really need a Bob)?

Given travel time, it might work like this.
Day 1 – train to Achnasheen plus ride to Gairloch (30 miles)
Day 2 – Ullapool (56 miles)
Day 3 – Kylesku (56 miles)
Day 4 – Sandwood Bay (40 miles)
Day 5 – Alltnacaillach (60 miles)
Day 6 – Lairg (35 miles) – plus train

Looks a bit much? Well – you could always miss out the Gairloch bit and cycle from Garve to Ullapool as a Day 1 (32 miles) – that would knock a day off?

As regards train fare, try looking for bits of the journey separately – e.g. MCR to GLA, then GLA to Achnasheen. You’ll often get better deals this way.

You MUST include some riding on the ardnamurchan peninsula… I road from corran ferry (near fort william) to the lighthouse – the furthest west point on britain! it was 6o mile each day (out an back) but 45 of those were singletrack roads and I passed about 10 cars all day! only 2 shops on route, but a great pub at Salen. I stayed in Sonachan bunkouse at £10 a night, 3 miles from lighthouse and about 2 miles from Sanna beach.

Could also do this route from fort william, via corran ferry. Overnight at Ardnamurchan point then head north via Lochailiort to Mallaig. Stay here then ferry to skye… from there you could tour skye, head back over wee ferry at Glenelg, then over to Glen Sheil and north to Applecross via bealach na ba (alpine climb!) and back round coast via Sheildaig.

Yeh. Those figures look about right for me. Smashing DruidH…I think i’ll do that route. Very nice. I’ll hit you guys with a ride report in mid-June hopefully. Go and buy some maps tommorow!

An excellent beach is Sandwood Bay (S of Cape Wrath), there is a track down but I wouldn’t fancy it on a roadie/trailer (sand, grit stones, rocks (9″-15″ some of them) – would be a killer coming back (but I uspect you could leave the trailer with natives). Some people camp in the house ruins about 1/2 mile up from beach(less distance) but the beach is awesome.

You can probably camp at Cape Wrath lighthouse (nobody there) if you want to do this get back as my Dad was a lightkeeper there so I can get (slightly out of date) info. *Ferry/military usage check.

I dislike John O’Groats intensely – if you want a mellow N experience go to Dunnet Head (*it is the North) – plenty of space (and old military buildings) – NO facilities. Stacks of Duncansby worth a punt. Dunnet Bay – tropical sand – shame about the weather.

Garvault Inn – most remote – I enjoyed it

Cheers