[Closed] NC500 (Alternative) trip report

Looks very nice. I'd love the time to do something like this. Were there plenty of places to stop and get supplies if you were doing shorter days on the bike?

I do have to wonder why the other chap naffed off halfway through though... 🤔

Were there plenty of places to stop and get supplies if you were doing shorter days on the bike? - Yes.  Never found resupplies a problem.  I would say every 20 - 30 miles.  When I came inland there was nothing.

I do have to wonder why the other chap naffed off halfway through though - He didn't naff off, I think it was more my fault for stopping off and he thought I'd carried on up the road and tried chasing me down.  I think that deep down though, both of us wanted to have a few days on our own.

Very well written blog, I enjoyed reading. Having done a few of the north Scotland Sustrans routes I know the pleasure and pain rolled up together in these rides.

I enjoyed that, cheers. I’m doing a variation of it in the near future.

Stunning scenery and I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

Nice work.

I usually avoid pavement but this looks nice - were cars a rare sight?

No.  It was far from busy, but I heard from some of the local folk who live on the route that we had timed it right as in the next week or two it gets much busier.  The one issue is that most of the roads are single lane with passing places.  Whilst this worked fine when we did it, I can see a scenario where as a cyclist you are stuck behind cars waiting for each other.

To have the best chance of no traffic for the Bealach na Ba' climb I would camp by Loch Kishorn and then get an early start so you are on the road before 0800hrs or even earlier and then you should experience less traffic.

Great write-up. Thanks for sharing.

Were there plenty of places to stop and get supplies if you were doing shorter days on the bike? – Yes.

There are places to stop, but my experience was that you have to stock up when you can. It's easy to think you'll just push on to the next one, but when they're 30 miles apart, sometimes with significant climbing in between, and then you start getting the hunger half way... I did a variation of the route too, and off the beaten track there are very few places.

Inspiring 🙂

Thanks for posting this up!

Cheers!

I.

Wise choice taking the Loch Hope road - maybe you can have directed the naval shelling practise at John O'Groats because it needs it?  We were up there this time last year and another well-recommended deviation is the Inverpolly Road after Ullapool. Two good cafe stops are the Invercarron Golf Club, just before the Bealach and the Walled Garden at Applecross.

How would this route be on a mountain bike, say a Giant Anthem 29er ?

How would this route be on a mountain bike, say a Giant Anthem 29er ?

Bloody hard work. Why not just rent a bike for a week?

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