Scourie

We planned to ride from Lochinver to Durness, but the hills, wind, and rain advised us to cut it short and seek refuge at a holiday park in Scourie. Despite this self-imposed setback, we had a marvelous time. We even created a new sandwich.

Our first task was to ride along the B road that links Lochinver to Unapool. This road is part of a tourist route called the Highland 500, which spans from Thurso in the north to Ullapool in the west. Although we had to share this singletrack B road with way too many motorists for its size, the beauty of the landscape it passed through was spectacular. Look one direction and you see a ragged coastline speckled with small islands. Turn around and you have these otherworldly mountains and rock formations.

To get through this impressive landscape, the road sent us up and down steep and twisty hills for about 20 miles. We stopped to take a lot of photographs as an excuse to give ourselves a chance to rest.

By the time we reached the mellower A road, our legs were already feeling like rubber. We stopped for tea in Unapool and left feeling frisky again, only for the dark clouds to find us with their gift of rain.

After 15 miles of rolling hills and intermittent showers we were nearing our breaking point. Between showers, we stopped to make some lunch. This is when we created the butter, cheddar, and jam sandwich, which I’m now calling the “buddamwich”.

We each had two buddamwiches and then started rolling just in time for the rain to start again. After maybe five more minutes we came to the village of Scourie and its holiday park. The question then became do we call it early or ride in crappy weather for 25 more miles. It was an easy decision to make.