Fort Augustus to Inverness – 32 miles
The Germans had taken over the dining room of Morag’s Lodge, so we ate on leather sofas by reception. My vision of Morag’s Lodge as a cosy little cottage by a loch run by the descendant of a Pictish princess had already been shattered to pieces. The impersonal institutional feel of the place was compounded by the fact that someone had taken my cycling gloves from the drying room. Those gloves were important to me. Try and imagine gripping a metal tube sheathed in rubber for five hours straight. Your hands are rubbed raw. I had to find my gloves.
They turned out to have been taken, innocently, by another cyclist who thought they belonged to his friend. Apologies were tendered and accepted. My grumpiness abated. Jools had been spending the whole morning, and several hours the night before, trying to find a route that would avoid a very steep climb out of Fort Augustus up to the summit at Carn an t-Suidhe, about 1200 ft straight. He tried so hard, studying every possible option, but the only ‘low road’ was the A-road that runs along the north shore of Loch Ness. Too busy, too narrow. So we decided to suck it up and take the high road. We were stronger now. We could handle it.
It turned out be a brutal start to the day, the kind of hill that reduces your world to legs, lungs and a tiny patch of tarmac in front of you. You have keep your eyes on that patch, always. Look up and your resolve will be crushed by the sight of the seemingly endless ascent. Maybe, just maybe, around that corner, it’ll all be over. That’s what you long for. But then you get to the corner and no, it’s not over, far from it. The road just keeps rising and rising.
But we were stronger, no doubt about that. This was possibly the steepest, longest climb of our whole journey, worse than anything we had to deal with in Devon or Cornwall. But we dealt with it. Henry the Hernia behaved himself. And when we arrived up on the uplands, a few hundred metres short of the summit, we were greeted with a landscape of myths, the early morning mist skirting the pine trees out on an island on Loch Tarff. Cyclists with an aura of seriousness about them and numbers pinned to their chests started coming by the other way, alone, in pairs and groups. We’d heard that a big race was due to be held in the vicinity in a few weeks time. Perhaps these were the heats or the qualification round. They kept coming, some waving or smiling pleasantly at us as they rode by, others giving us the universal nod of cycling solidarity, others ignoring us, lost in their grim-faced world.
The summit of the climb offered wide views of the lochs far below, the mountains beyond and the wide expanse of tundra all around. A chill wind blew, an augury of winter. We sheltered behind a bus that had transported the friends and relatives of riders participating in the bike race. They just kept coming and coming, hundreds of them panting up the long straight road in front of us. We’d done the hard part, which was behind us. They were doing a far gentler, though longer climb. We were knackered, but so, quite clearly, were they. Maybe we weren’t the drongos we always thought we were. Maybe all our efforts had made us brawny.
I tried to fix my chain in that bitter wind. On an early part of the upward slope, it had jammed violently between the smallest sprocket of the rear derailleur and the frame. Now it was jumping about erratically whenever I moved it down to that sprocket. I needed a new chain, probably, so I googled ‘bike shops in Inverness’ and called one to check their opening times and find out whether they had a chain in stock. I felt uneasy about riding a wounded bike.
The glide down from the summit was long and gentle. And straight…yes, this was one of General Wade’s roads. We parted from the main B road and tumbled down to the shores of Loch Ness, along the course of the River Foyers to Foyers itself, where we found a gorgeous café beside a field full of Highland cattle. They all had the face and coiffure of Boris Johnson and the colouring of Donald Trump. The café served a top-quality selection of home-baked cakes, all made by the owner, whose name happened to be Morag. We sat outside on the mercifully midge-free terrace and refuelled, watching a pair of hawks hovering overhead.
The rest of our journey to Inverness took us along the little B-road that skirts the southern shores of Loch Ness. It felt significant to be riding beside the most famous lake in Britain, but any excitement was tempered by the very bland appearance of the lake itself, a flat grey blue expanse of water with an unvarying wall of pines on the opposite shore topped with low-slung hills. On our side, the road passed the occasional house, usually modern and single storied, or lay-by for dedicated monster spotters, or little grassy picnic area with picnic tables and bins. Never mind Nessie, my lust for the extraordinary would have been well served by some striking piece of modern architecture, or some form of human eccentricity, like a man in a pink kilt. But no such luck. It all felt very suburban somehow, and the road itself was narrow and yet tediously busy with motorised tourism. Who could blame them. What else would you do for fun in a car in this part of the world? Apart from racing along Loch Ness trying to spot strange ripples in the water.
At the end of the loch, the road went straight (another of General Wade’s creations) along the River Ness down into the centre of Inverness. My first impression wasn’t favourable. A scrappy mix of new and old buildings, dour, grey or brownstone, institutional, Calvinist, with a castle that looks like it was built twenty years ago, possibly out of Lego, and a raw, workaday atmosphere. No matter. It was only 3pm and, after my visit to the bike shop, we were planning to ride another twenty miles to the town of Evanton on the Cromarty Firth.
At a traffic light by the Ness Bridge I chatted to a cyclist in full lycra, on a turbo-spec’d road bike. He told me he’d just done Lands End to John O’Groats in eight days, as part of a group of 800 cyclists. Yes…eight hundred men and women in lycra! When I told him that we were on our 21st day and counting, he mumbled something about wanting to do it that way the next time. Then the lights changed, and he sped away.
Inverness Bikes was on the other side of the river, just near the railway tracks in a rundown area called Merkinch. The tell-tale signs of the hard life were all about…corner shops with grills on the windows, boarded up houses, crap all over the streets, cheap high rise apartments, sullen, harried faces. The salesmen inside the shop were dour and perfunctory and when I asked them if they could help us change the chain they said no, it was Saturday and their maintenance man had the afternoon off. Now, in my gospel of retail happiness, a situation like this could have been easily softened and warmed by a few well placed questions, like ‘have you got the right tools?’ or offers to just have a quick look and give us some technical tips, or even just a vague expression of concern like ‘Hope it goes ok, if you need any help, let me know.’ But there was nothing of the sort. Nichts. Nada.
Outside the shop, in the thickening drizzle, I set about trying to change the chain using Jools’ chain tool. Easy in theory, monstrously fiddly in practice, especially without a bike stand. I managed to undo the old chain and use it to measure out the new one, but then spent an excruciating three quarters of an hour trying to couple the end links, fingers getting greasier and colder, cursing, feeling wet and unskilled and guilty for holding up our journey. Finally, having completely ruined one of the end links, I swapped it for a spare ‘magic link’ which I happened to have in my own tool kit and started again. After at least another 45 minutes of straining and cursing, face like a wet rhubarb, I still hadn’t managed to secure the damn thing. Throughout this ordeal we were being harried by locals looking for a bit of excitement. ‘Hey…Ah’m a bike mechanic too! Yeah, know everything aboot bikes ah do!! Let me help youse wi’ that. Ah know what Ah’m fokkin’ doin!!’ And another geezer with a head shaped like a hammer, who offered to exchange his bike for one of ours. It was a truly knackered piece of tut. ‘It’s great! Parrfect warking ordah!’ he said, swaying and slurring. ‘I’ll give it for any one of your wee bikes there’. The guy was clearly swallied, or off his head in some way or other, and, though we smiled and joshed like our lives depended on it, we felt we were teetering on some kind of edge.
The chain finally came together with a loud clack, I stood up, dizzy, limbs aching and said, ‘Fuck Evanton guys, let’s just find a hotel here.’ There wasn’t a moments hesitation from the others. It was nearing 5pm. The sky was darkening, the rain beginning to sheet down. All in all, it was possibly the lowest moment of our whole trip. No exaggeration. We had to get out of Merkinch before one of us got unceremoniously nutted by some random nutter. We had to get somewhere warm and ‘normal’. Phil went through the rigmarole of trying to book two twin rooms at the Premier Inn, which was about four blocks away on the river, using his phone. When we got there, they told us they only had one. The place was absolutely full. I couldn’t help wondering why. I mean, Inverness in September? Anybody?
But ours not to reason why. Jools and I began to scour the net for alternatives. There were two hostel style cheapies with shared rooms not far away. I felt we need something more, some anonymous budget chain hotel with twin rooms and fluffy towels at the very least, and our own toilet. Jools insisted, as he aught, and hopped on his eBike to take a look. He returned soon saying that the ‘hotels’ would have been just right if we were 22 years old and desperate. But we were 60 years old and desperate. Not the same. In the end I said ‘Fuck the expense, let’s just take a room in the Mercure’, which was across the river from where we stood. And that’s what we did.
Daytime Inverness and nighttime Inverness are two different cities. I suspect that the switch between the two has something, possibly a lot, probably everything to do with alcohol. After a good rest, we ventured out and found those dour old streets a-buzz with revelry. The pub opposite the back entrance of the Mercure was shaking to the sound of a raucous cover band and a thousand pissed up voices. We wondered around for a while looking for a quieter place, but everywhere we went, Covid rules were in force and most places were full. All the restaurants were booked up. Bouncers stood outside every bar and club. You had the sense of walking around a hedonistic power station that was gradually revving up to full load.
We ended up in the Glenalbyn, just on the other side of the Ness Bridge. It was a quieter establishment; you might even call it an ‘old man’s pub’. Perfect for us. My friend Rob Challice, who was on a trip to Inverness, partly for work and partly for pleasure, met us there. His pleasure, as it turned out, was cycling. Like me he’d discovered or rather rediscovered the joys of pedalling at a late age. After a long and very successful career as a live music agent, cycling had become his pressure valve. Just as it had done for me. ‘It completely changed my life,’ he said. But his approach was slightly different to ours. On his phone he had an app that listed the hardest 100 climbs in Britian, with all kinds of additional data of the kind that excites the cycling nut. It was Rob’s ambition to complete all 100 climbs, and then move on to the next 200. In other words, his cycling kicks were diametrically opposed to ours. While he was up in Scotland, he was planning to compete in a major ‘open’ cycling race, whose name I’ve forgotten, and watch a few stages of the Tour of Britian that was coming through the Cairngorms in the next few days. All this was a tad bewildering to drongos like us. But that’s the spice.
Getting a table at a restaurant looked more and more unlikely, so Jools and Tim offered to go to a Jamaican take away nearby while Phil and I repaired to the room in the Mercure to watch Emma Raducanu in the women’s singles final at the American Open. Thus, from the pits of despair, the day climbed a new high. Jools and Tim had a festive time at the takeaway, where they were both served with a mean cocktail that readjusted their moods quite wonderfully. They were even given the recipe by the owner. They appeared back at the hotel towards the end of the first set, with bags of hot patties, jerk chicken, sweet potato chips and cans of lager. We ate and drank like dons, watching that historic match, enchanted. I lanced an old and guilty secret, which is that I’ve never really been as excited by women’s tennis as I have been by men’s. But Raducanu vs Fernandez put paid to that through sheer ferocity of spectacle, and the intensity of jeopardy involved, like it was a matter of life and death to both of them. As a spectator, that’s all you need, along with a side order of jerk chicken and Red Stripe .
Andy Morgan.
