am hoping to go touring with a couple of friends of mine, neither serious cyclists.
one will be on her own bike, and the other will be on the back of our tandem.
looking for ideas of where to go touring on the N or W of scotland this summer. preferably with good train access, not too many hills and good camping/hostel accom along the way. reckon on 20-40 miles per day
any suggestions? (not off road, but maybe very good landriver tracks, if necessary)
monkey - can't give this full attention this second but i'll give you some suggestions this evening, done a fair bit of touring up there and can give you some advice.
also have a look on crazyguyonabike.com for other people's tours
cheers mrmichaelwright, will look forward to hearing from you 🙂
will check that link out too...
If you want to avoid hills best to avoid Scotland really. It has a reputation for hills.
However, South Uist / North Uist / Benbecula is pretty flat. Shame the raging wind can make the effort required greater than an ascent of the Ventoux. You can get there from Oban which has train access.
aye, well hills are all relative 😉
lets say 'less' hilly...
You could get a train to Inverness, cycle to Ullapool, then follow the minor road through Inverpolly to Lochinver, carry on through Nedd and Kylestrome to Scourie, and on to Durness. And reverse. It's a good route because the total height gained equals the amount of descent. 😀
Where I was this week field tripping would be perfect tom.
Starting around Helmsdale, which you can get to using Scotrail from Inverness, you can pedal up the helmsdale valley-
This goes through Forsinard on a freshly paved, gently climbing road. Watch out for wildlife, it's EVERYWHERE- I saw 45 deer at once on Monday, and we almost drove into one yesterday. There's also harriers, merlins and eagles (if you're lucky), lizards etc.
This then descends for AGES in the Halladale valley-
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on the same fresh paved road. There's a bunkhouse here ( http://www.achumore.co.uk/) which is where we stayed. It's very plush and has everything.
From here you can head to the North coast, then along to either Tongue to the west on the flat coast road, or right to Thurso, John O'Groats then down to Wick and back to Helmsdale for the way home. There's a few good hostels in Thurso- sadly the one I went to is now shut.
Total distance on this is about 130 miles, and I'm planning on doing it in 2 days on the road bike this summer.
You will have difficulty with the tandem on trains - No scotrail trains at all - you can get tandems on the mainline to inverness on some trains but no further on the east and I think you can get one on the west highland line but I am not sure.
Depends how long you have - Inverness and across to Ullapool / inverpolly and back is possible as is Avimore down the spey to the coast and along to inverness
thanks guys, will have a good think... may need to source some roof bars for the ka...
There is the BikeBus - don't have the link to hand. Looks good and useful. Regular service to Durness I think.