Touring Scotland

Aye, I can see that. I'd be tempted by an Edinburgh > Cairngorms > Fort William > Glencoe > Callander route then. Plenty of the sublime in that, some lovely roads and stunning short walks accessible right from the car...

thank you guys! :)

Sorry to jump the thread.. Has anyone done any of the Caledonia Way? http://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map/route/route-78 I'm looking for a short trip (Friday to Sunday) to do with my mum in April/May. I recently bought her a second hand road/light tourer, and she's forever begging me to take her on my next trip, so I figured I'd plan one for her birthday.

I was thinking of getting the sleeper up from London on a Thursday evening, arriving on Friday morning to begin the route south. I don't intend on taking her the whole way down to Campbeltown, so we'd probably just follow the route from Inverness down to Oban, and hop on a train back to Glasgow from there. That's about 100 miles in total, which is probably enough for her, given that she hates hills, hasn't done much more than 60miles in one go, or ever ridden with kit..

Should we expect crazy hill climbing? And is it easy to find camping spots on that route without going too out of the way?

Day 1: Edinburgh to Callander, then Strathyre, Crianlarich, Tyndrum then west through Glencoe and either stay in Glencoe village or head up to Fort William and stay there.

Day 2: Up the Great Glen to Loch Ness, maybe Inverness, then head south east to the Cairngorms.

Day 3: South through Pitlochry, Dunkeld, Scone to Perth. Then a quick blast back to Edinburgh.

This is brilliant - cheers, Andy (and everyone else).

I wonder if I could convince them to stop in Callendar and rent some bikes and do a couple of hours on the national cycle route up into the Trossachs and back. So. Beautiful. A bit hilly though.

If you can make it to Loch Katrine there's bike hire there and you can cycle round it pretty easy, or go half way around to Strontalachan and take a wee steam boat back over...

Hi Guyz! Thank you very much for the advises earlier! Our scenario has changed a bit - we have the dates of flight (11-18 August, Glasgow), we have the cities and places we want to visit (Glasgow - Inverness - Fort William - Loch Lomond National Park - Kelburn Castle maybe - and back to Glasgow) - but we won't bring our bikes with us, we'd like to hire or something like that...
Do you know a shop or anyone to contact with? It'll be hard because in a day (dunno yet exactly which one) we'd like to ride from Inverness to Fort William but we won't ride back... I hope we can manage this. Any ideas? :)
(I've tried to contact with them http://www.invernessbikehire.co.uk/index.asp on e-mail but haven't replied yet..)
Thank you!

How long do you want to spend in Inverness? I think you could pick up a bike in Fort William, get an early train to Inverness (be very sure to book your bike place!), poke about Inverness for a bit, and then cycle back. It'll still be daylight until nearly 9pm in Fort William. Though, are you thinking of riding along the A82 between FW and Fort Augustus? I'm not sure that will be a relaxing cycle. If picking up a bike in FW, what about getting the Corran Ferry and trying to get a bit more into Scottish countryside away from the mainest roads.

.

So I had three days of very light (as in effort - 40 miles a day sort of stuff) touring/camping planned for me and my partner Sunday - Tuesday. It involved a train from Glasgow to Tyndrum. Just learned there's a strike called for Sunday.

If you found yourself in Glasgow with bikes and camping kit, what would you do? Lap of Trossachs obvious answer, but anything interesting heading West?

Isle of Arran is quite pretty. Easy to get to.

Isle of Arran

Whoa, quick google certainly makes it look nice!

Other option is to ditch bikes, get rail replacement somewhere, and just camp and ramble for a couple of days and then buses back to Glasgow.

Ride to Saltcoats, get ferry to Islands. Eat chips and drink whisky on Arran

Cheers @gillies and @bazschmaz - this may be the perfect backup plan. Any thoughts on wild camping on the island?

yep, and getting from Glasgow to saltcoats is pretty easy, too.

Should be fine. Lots of lovely bays and beaches that would be ideal. Just find a place that looks sensible and well off the road by a few minutes walk and leave no trace.

Awesome - thanks guys!

as @mk1mark 's recent post https://www.lfgss.com/comments/13130348/ in the bikepacking thread shows the midges around the Trossachs at this time of year would make it pretty miserable anyway... I'm not sure Arran's much better tbh based on my travels around Skye so make sure you 've a can or two of Smidge!

Another option is to head east, skirting Stirling to Glendevon then to Lomond Hills National park. Fife's got nice rolling roads and beautiful scenery and the more Easterly you are the less of an issue the midges are too...

Or... Head South to Castle Douglas via the Dark Skies park https://scottishdarkskyobservatory.co.uk/about-us/ in Galloway Forest if you're into astronomy...

Cheers - I was in the Trossachs around this time last year and didn't see a midge. Miracle by the sounds of it.

There looks to be sooo much excellent cycling in Scotland.

Arran will definitely not be as bad as Skye. But taking some repellent is always a good idea, anywhere in Scotland really.

If you want a route from Glasgow to saltcoats, lemme know and i'll strava something up for you

Yeah, that would be excellent, thanks! I was planning to just drop this into my Garmin: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/dir/Glasgow,+UK/55.6400161,-4.8233682/@55.7404972,-4.7502722,10.71z/data=!4m9!4m8!1m5!1m1!1s0x488815562056ceeb:0x71e683b805ef511e!2m2!1d-4.251806!2d55.864237!1m0!3e1

DEET50 is the only thing that works all the time. Avoid getting on plastic and anodised metals. Its an excellent solvent.

does anyone have any experience cycling on the A9 north of inverness, riding the north coast 500 in a couple of weeks (clockwise) and was wondering what it's like?
i'm planning on turning off at Tain and taking the ferry to black isle but was wondering what it's like further north still and if there's any alternatives without too much extra distance

It's fine, some traffic in places but no worse than a B road outside Essex on the weekend. Not as scenic as the West coast but still some beautiful spots and lost of sites of interest, castles etc.