Westward Ho!....

Dreich
Scottish English
Used to describe wet, miserable, dreary weather.
..ex. “it was a dreich August day”

Our destination for today’s ride was to the Lighthouse at Ardnamurchan Point, the most westward place on the mainland of Great Britain.

The road to get there, the B8007, is also the westernmost classified road on the mainland of Britain.

After a hearty breakfast laid on by our host Ella at our B&B we headed off in the light rain.

The first 9 miles of our ride was on continuously undulating road with barely a metre flat surface to be found anywhere. These were not the nice roll-down-one-side-and-roll-straight-up-the-other-side type of undulations that we had enjoyed riding alongside Loch Long on the morning of day two of our trip. This road consisted entirely of brutal short sharp 100 metre ramps well into double figure gradients or long 400 metre type drags that were not far short of double-figures.

Of course there were downs to go with the ups, but the downs were never long enough to provide any recovery or to compensate for the effort on the ups… Do they ever?

After 9 miles we stopped at the café just past the Ardnamurchan distillery, mainly for a coffee stop after the efforts of the ride but also partly to get some respite from the persistent drizzle (pizzle?, persizzle?)

Straight after the café the road rises continuously for several miles as it crosses over the backbone of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula, before dropping down the other side in a nice long descent into the village of Kilchoan. The weather had not been kind and our entire ride to here, nearly 20 miles in total had been in constant rain. We could very easily have decided to turn back at this point, but having come this far we decided to push on the final 6 miles to the Lighthouse.

This was more of the continuous steep up and down type of landscape we had experienced at the start of the ride, but on a much narrower track. Once we arrived we headed straight for the café partly because we were hungry but mainly get out of the rain and to escape the swarms of midges but suddenly appeared. The café had a very limited offering so we were forced to eat more cake for lunch…What a shame!

Midges not visible

For the entire ride out I had been wondering what these views would have been like on a kinder day, and as we finished our tea and cake lunch, the rain seemed stop, a small patch of blue sky appeared and there was even hint of some sun breaking through.

This is the point where I would love to be writing an “Its a game of 2 halves, Motty” type of report, Where the ride back was in glorious sunshine and we enjoyed stunning views of the mountains and lochs. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out like that....the misty drizzle (mizzle?) soon reappeared and we made our way back along the same route in the same miserable weather.

The islands of Skye and Eigg

The final 9 mile slog along the same road back to our bed for the night felt far tougher than the huge climb over the backbone of the peninsula, and when we finally arrived the relief was almost over-whelming.

51.4 miles, 4000 feet of climbing. Millions of midges.