Tour d'Ecosse Day 14 Loch Melfort to Tarbert, Loch Fyne Friday 15th July 2016

Tour d'Ecosse Day 14 Loch Melfort to Loch Fyne and Tarbert 58km 811m ascent
Cumulative: 1 110 km 14 387m ascent Ferries 12 Islands 15 Bridge 1

Elevenses in a layby. It's pi**ing it down!

It rained, it poured. It slugged it down. You know there are over a 100 words for snow in Icelandic, there must be that many acronyms for rain in Scottish English/Gaelic Ohhh look, isn't google wonderful, take your pick from this blog. Scots: More words for rain than Eskimos have for snow

But slugging it down isn't in there. It was slugging it down this morning. Going out in it was hard. Not far to go but a lot of climbing in the distance. A "get on with it and get it over with" day. Which was terribly disappointing as tomorrow is our last day.

The breakfast at Melfort House was delicious, we lingered, chatted to the other guests that hadn't eaten in last night. Generally prevaricated and put off going out in the stair rods of rain lashing down cats and dogs. Nothing dreich about it at all!

I presume it's just foxgloves we can see

We are heading back to Tarbert, where we weren't supposed to go on our first night but needed food after Arran.

We plod up the big hill and are very relieved to find Kilmartin Museum and Café after the summit. It was a fabulous café, being warm and dry may have warped our opinion. However, it was clean, warm, dry with welcoming staff not a bit perturbed by the puddles forming around us, with excellent coffee and cake to boot. Other visitors in dry cars agree with us too so it wasn't a warped view!

Eventually we have to go back out, the rain hasn't eased off.

More weather

Unfortunately, the next bit of the day was almost the worst of the holiday. After the final climb, we were descending in torrential rain on the A816 towards Tarbert, Steve was behind me. I was being very careful and holding my line as it was a narrow A road and bendy. A lorry drew up behind, very close and started hooting and flashing me. I did not look back, I was on a bend and there was nowhere to go. As soon as a layby appeared I indicated, pulled over and carefully stopped.

..and I gave the lorry driver the one finger salute with plenty of gesticulation. I was quite shaken but I think he got my anger. Steve drew up alongside me, the lorry had passed him on a wider part so it was only a minute or so he was behind me being held up. Other than that incident we barely had another incident, except for incongruously highly polished white sports saloons of the Audi and Subaru variety on sections of the North Coast 500 route who all seemed to be inclined to be driving too fast/showing off. Local traffic was exemplary, battered farm pick ups, tractors, land rovers who must be sick to death of being held up always patient and smiling.

Tarbert - The Loch Fyne one

We roll down into Tarbert for our second visit. What a relief, a bit of a fraught day for such a short one, although still plenty of lumps. It was early afternoon.

Loch Fyne

Tarbert (the Loch Fyne one!)

Just off the high street we quickly found our accommodation for the night, over the acclaimed Starfish Bistro and rooms. I had made sure to reserve a table here when I booked the room as they book up weeks in advance for Friday/Saturday nights apparently! No cycling home this time unlike our previous visit to the chippy on the first night after our day on Arran.

A welcome spot of colour on a dank and dreich day

We chained our bikes to the railings under cover in the alley and were shown to our room. Freshly renovated with the all important convector heater. We were so wet and so cold. Guiltily we had very long hot showers, made tea and draped our stuff around half halfheartedly to dry. We had one dry set left for tomorrow so no stomping on lycra in the shower required. No hope that our shoes would dry. Ortilieb panniers are good, and Steve's ancient leaky ones were fine when everything is wrapped in bags for life inside anyway.

Starfish Bistro with rooms in Tarbert

We realised the rain had stopped and having warmed up a bit we went for a stroll to buy a picnic. Good old Co op, we actually sat on a bench on the harbourside and feasted on mini Scotch eggs, the ever popular falafel salad with houmous they do, and a very extravagant box of blueberries.

Tide's out!

We strolled along and admired the working harbour, not prettied up for tourists but a good and honest hard working place.

Not so sure about the oil film :(

Although there was a flotilla of yachts in town for a festival, so not just a working harbour.

Tarbert

The weatherbeaten colours on the boats in harbour are stunning.

The weather beaten paint on the fishing boats is beautiful

Scotia Star is obviously a hard working but beautiful fishing boat resting in her home harbour of Tarbert, Loch Fyne

We went back to our room, unfortunately no view but we read, and knitted and looked forward to dinner, our final night.

We changed into our evening gear, laughing at the novelty of the same outfit yet again for the 14th night in a row! It's a good job only we know that.

Dinner did not disappoint. Absolutely superb seafood as you would expect. We had three courses and after being good all holiday and rarely photographing our food, I did. The flash was off though!

My starter, it had to be Scallops with chilli, ginger and lime butter.

Loch Fyne Queen Scallops with chilli ginger and lime butter

I then had Seafood Stroganoff for main, it was delicious too. Fresh and smoked haddock and salmon, mussels and queenies in a white wine, cream and smoked paprika sauce

Seafood Stroganoff

Washed down with my favourite gin, Botanist from Islay. Oh and water from a recycled Botanist Gin bottle, isn't it just gorgeous?

Botanist Gin Bottle...it has water in it!

Can you get better than rhubarb and ginger crumble with proper home made creme anglaise. I almost couldn't eat it all. But I did.

Rhubarb and ginger crumble and creme anglaise

It was a lovely leisurely meal that made our day. Fortunately nobody was hurt in the hideous weather. Another turn round the harbour on foot after dinner to stretch and to work out where to go for the ferry in the morning. This is Scotland in July, still light at 10pm!


Touring Tips in Scotland, or anywhere else for that matter!

1 There are over a 100 English words and phrases relating to rain. Visit Scotland and you will no doubt encounter 96.3% of them in any fortnight. I put "slugging it down" on my Strava notes for the day, not in the list so that's 101!

2 Eat local food

3 As long as no one is hurt it is a good day.

Tour d'Ecosse quick links:

Planning
Day 1 Isle of Arran and a little Mull of Kintyre
Day 2 Inner Hebrides: Isles of Islay and Jura
Day 3 Inner Hebrides: Isle of Jura-Tayvallich to Oban
Day 4 Oban to Outer Hebrides: Barra and Vatersay
Day 5 Outer Hebrides: Isles of Barra Eriskay South Uist Benbecula Grimsay North Uist Beneray and Harris
Day 6 Outer Hebrides: Isles of Harris and Lewis to Callanish Stones
Day 7 Outer Hebrides: Butt of Ness to Stornoway and Ullapool
Day 8 Ullapool to Gairloch
Day 9 Gairloch to Shieldaig - Applecross Peninsula
Day 10 Bealach na Bà from Applecross to Plockton
Day 11 Plockton to Inner Hebrides: Isle of Skye Armadale
Day 12 Inner Hebrides: Isle of Skye Armadale to Ardnamurchan
Day 13 Ardnamurchan to Inner Hebrides: Isle of Mull to Oban to Loch Melfort
Day 14 Loch Melfort to Tarbert, Loch Fyne
Day 15 Tarbert Loch Fyne to Ardrossan THE END!

Tour d'Ecosse Day 8 Ullapool to Gairloch Saturday 9th July 2016

Tour d'Ecosse Day 8 Ullapool to Gairloch 92km 1345m ascent

Cumulative: 677km 7186m ascent Ferries 9 Islands 13

I like Harris Gin too, served with a slice of grapefruit.

On your 28th wedding anniversary you go up lots of hills, eat some nice fruit cake and get very wet again after a dry start and finish with gin. Today's plan:
We can't believe our trip is half over already, although that's not to say it's downhill from now on. If anything we're more likely to have headwinds to cope with.

Today is our 28th wedding anniversary. Cue more slippery slopes downhill references, and "how many life sentences is that then?" Exactly four we decide, time for a 7 year itch! Well that was after I gave Steve my card with the gorgeous picture of Seilebost beach on Harris in the sun, and he twigged it must be our anniversary as my birthday is August sometime and we got married July sometime.

Another delicious breakfast, Waterside B&B certainly kept up it's superb impression with us. we had tasty Orkney smoked cheese, compote (which seems a competitive BnB thing with secret family recipes) to start and the oh so superb Stornoway Black Pudding as part of the inevitable "full Scottish" I rarely have the full fry up, I much prefer scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, or smoked haddock or kippers with lots of mushrooms. This is the bees knees champion of black pudding. we loved it. I think I may have had smoked salmon and scrambled eggs with mushrooms and black puddin'. I know I definitely had the latter! it wasn't all mixed together either.

Loch Broom towards Ullapool

We hauled our well fed bodies out of Ullapool on the main road alongside Loch Broom after absorbing the directions to the best coffee shop en route from our lovely landlord,  At the top of the loch was a chuffing hill, what a surprise! We carried on chuffing as we took a right onto a much quieter minor road and saw lots of 'slow down' signs for a sportive going in t'opposite direction. Oh yes, it's the normal world's weekend again.

The big hill after the main road wasn't as bad as we thought and we pulled over into a viewpoint, and admired the view of course, and probably ate  NAKD bar #31 and/or a banana #27 as was the norm by now.

Viewpoint after the climb up from Loch Broom. Quieter Gairloch road now. 

A nice dry bench!

It's positively sweltering this morning, we are only wearing arm warmers and gilet as extra layers with bare legs and it's dry. We descend, and as often seems the case, we can't believe how much ascent we have done and feel very sorry for all the sportive riders going the other way. We note the signs for Dundonnell and carefully ride all the way through the village and a couple of kilometres out the other side and as instructed, there was Maggie's coffee shop a little way past the village on the edge of Little Loch Broom.

It was a perfect stop. I think we had a toasted sandwich and home made soup then the fruit cake that hit the spot just perfectly. Lovely. The nice waitress enquired as to our route. She must have been a superb cyclist, apparently only one awful hill before Gairloch. One, she said...

Poolewe

There were five awful hills to Gairloch. We knew that really as we knew the stats, well over the 100m climbing per 10km that we class as a moderately uphill day. The rain set in and we were cold and wet by the time we reached Gairloch. The scenery was great though. We had to tour up and down a bit to find our BnB not at  the pretty end of town. It was OK, yes the pics on the website were accurate but a lot was missed out. Our room overlooked a garden of discarded junk, not the sea as you would presume. The owner and her family were nice enough, it was OK. But after a tough wet day it was just disappointing, Like being in someone's spare room with stuff stuffed in the wardrobe out of the way, and economy bottles of nearly finished shampoo. Sheets stinking of nasty fabric conditioner and slightly fusty. Not recommending this one!

Gairloch

Oh well, we showered, wrang out our kit, set the heater to high and went out to eat. Of course we hadn't factored in it being a Saturday, we hadn't booked. Back on the bikes and down the hill, we ended up on a nettley muddy track trying a short cut in our dry evening clothes. Turned away at the first suggestion and managed to beg our way to a table at The Shieling. Excellent Cullen Skink and steak saved the day, but served with just chips and onion rings. Please give us veg! Oh well, I fell in love with Harris gin served with grapefruit. That was fruit I think!

That is what you call a gin collection!

It was slightly drier as we puffed our way back up to the BnB and our room that was now doing impressions of a steamy hammam.

I'm so proud of Steve, we've had a tough few days with a few more to come and we are coping admirably, enjoying ourselves and appreciating Scotland's diversity in spite of the weather. Gairloch hasn't done it for us, but then again perhaps we didn't see the town at it's best. Most of the day was pretty good.

The chilly windswept palm trees in Gairloch

Touring Tips in Scotland

1 Do not believe the coffee shop assistant, however well meaning, as to how many hills you have to come until destination!

2 Arm warmers are your besties

3 After 28 years your husband still isn't going to remember your wedding anniversary!

Tour d'Ecosse quick links:

Planning
Day 1 Isle of Arran and a little Mull of Kintyre
Day 2 Inner Hebrides: Isles of Islay and Jura
Day 3 Inner Hebrides: Isle of Jura-Tayvallich to Oban
Day 4 Oban to Outer Hebrides: Barra and Vatersay
Day 5 Outer Hebrides: Isles of Barra Eriskay South Uist Benbecula Grimsay North Uist Beneray and Harris
Day 6 Outer Hebrides: Isles of Harris and Lewis to Callanish Stones
Day 7 Outer Hebrides: Butt of Ness to Stornoway and Ullapool
Day 8 Ullapool to Gairloch
Day 9 Gairloch to Shieldaig - Applecross Peninsula
Day 10 Bealach na Bà from Applecross to Plockton
Day 11 Plockton to Inner Hebrides: Isle of Skye Armadale
Day 12 Inner Hebrides: Isle of Skye Armadale to Ardnamurchan
Day 13 Ardnamurchan to Inner Hebrides: Isle of Mull to Oban to Loch Melfort
Day 14 Loch Melfort to Tarbert, Loch Fyne
Day 15 Tarbert Loch Fyne to Ardrossan THE END!