Tuesday 23 June 2009 - Inverness to Ballachulish

Inverness - Fort Augustus - Spean Bridge - Fort William - Ballachulish

The morning routine had already evolved into a recurring pattern - wake up, swear a lot, have caffeine fix, swear some more, get dressed, gather belongings, pack panniers, hump panniers downstairs, have breakfast, extricate bikes from overnight storage, load bikes and set off. Having done all the foregoing, we soon found ourselves ascending the long incline on the A82 out of Inverness. The perspective made the road appear flat, and for a while I wondered why I was having to pedal so hard. Halfway up the hill, I caught my badly mounted rear left pannier with my heel, causing it to release its tenuous grip on the rack and land in the road. More swearing ensued.
Within a few miles, we had passed Loch Dochfour and the vastness of Loch Ness lay before us. We stopped and took photographs. Paul and John were first time visitors to Scotland and I enjoyed being with them for their first sight of true Highland scenery, the grandeur of which increases as you progress south west through the Great Glen.
The long stretch of the A82 skirting Loch Ness is much hillier than it appeared on our inadequate map. At one point, between Drumnadrochit and Invermoriston, my bike threw off its chain in protest at my attempt to change from top to bottom gear at the start of an unexpected incline. Both Raleighs had a tendency to do this throughout the trip, and it transpired later that Paul’s had done likewise in exactly the same spot.
The chain had jammed between the crank and the frame. Song lyrics, vaguely related to whatever I happen to be doing at the time, often pop into my head during the day, and here, as I wrestled with the grimy, sweaty task of restoring my machine’s transmission, “Bat Chain Puller” by Captain Beefheart sprung to mind. The previous day, tired by the hills and incessant headwind, I passed a sign indicating seven miles to Tain where we were stopping for lunch, and instantly thought of Klaxons’ Isle Of Her and its repeated line “Row! There’s only seven more miles to go”. On the first day, as poor John laboured in agony on the A99, My Chemical Romance chimed in with “I’m not OK”. The mere thought being unpardonably callous and particularly offensive to a heavy metal fan, I didn’t tell him.
Eventually we reached Fort Augustus at the end of Loch Ness and stopped for a light meal at, for the first time, a café with tables outside. By now the weather was sweltering and Paul and John poured copious amounts of sweat from their helmets when they took them off. I was helmetless and as a result my forehead burnt in the sun, but I was rewarded later when it began to peel, providing me with the most agreeable pastime of picking bits off and flicking them around the pub.
Fort Augustus is a magnetic Highland village, and had I been by myself I would probably have inserted an extra day by stopping there to get drunk by the Caledonian Canal. No such aberration being forthcoming, we continued our journey by leaving the A82 to follow the canal path for five miles before re-joining the main road at Aberchalder after waiting for a graceful vessel to pass through the swing bridge. The ride by the canal was a delightfully flat and peaceful respite from the traffic, but the next twenty miles to Spean Bridge were much more demanding due to the heat, the hills and the headwind. I paused by Loch Lochy to cool myself down by soaking my shirt in a burn tumbling down from the hillside.
From Spean Bridge, with the watershed of the Great Glen now behind us, we rode mostly downhill to Fort William, stopping on the way to take photos of the still snow-capped Ben Nevis. The last mile or two into the town was nasty in view of the heavy traffic and the fairly narrow road, which we belatedly realised we could have avoided by a cycle track.
We pushed our bikes around Fort William for a while looking for somewhere to eat, although it was still only late afternoon and personally I wasn’t really hungry. We couldn’t find anywhere suitable so I asked a local. “No, we don’t go much on al fresco dining around here. That’s Highland hospitality for ye”, came the sardonic reply.
Leaving the Highlander to extend his welcome to the next hapless visitor, we pedalled off to complete the final stage of the day’s ride to our B&B at Ballachulish. By the time I reached Corran Ferry, at the narrowest point of Loch Linnhe, the heat of the day had subsided and the terrain was mostly flat. I stopped for a while and savoured the memory of my first visit to Scotland back in 1984, when at this spot I had met up with my parents on their Mercian tandem, built to Dad’s specification.
After rounding the coast to head east towards Onich, I caught up with Paul and John who were taking photographs of Glencoe, illuminated to perfection by the westering sun. From there only three miles remained - across the Ballachulish Bridge spanning the point where Loch Leven branches off from Loch Linnhe, then along the southern shore of the former to Ballachulish.
To my delight, our B&B was over the road from the pub, where a short while later I ate a proper evening meal at last. Paul and John retired back to our lodgings while I stayed for another pint, eventually being driven away when the sun went down at about 10pm and the hordes of voracious midges woke up.
Ballachulish was one of my favourite overnight stops of the trip, situated in some of the finest scenery in Britain at the foot of Beinn a’ Bheithir, next door to a pub and with the ridges of Glencoe and the Clachaig Inn with its legendary selection of single malts only a few hundred yards away. It will probably be the base for my next hill walking holiday in Scotland.