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@jambon
A few weeks ago I took 5 days off work, cashing in on 2 weekends and the August bank holiday it ended up as 10 days to conquer National Cycle Network 78… AKA ‘The Caledonia Way’ which runs from Campbeltown to Inverness, along 234 scenic miles.
After work on a Friday, my girlfriend and I strolled over to Euston Station with our bikes and boarded the Caledonian Sleeper, waking up Saturday morning, sufficiently bloated from a full Scottish breakfast in Glasgow.
The first part of the adventure was riding to Ardrossan along NCR7, where we picked up the ferry to Campbeltown – the official start/finish of NCR78. The motivation for the trip was to ride through the Highlands on essentially one piece of tarmac where you’re safely separated from busy roads. As well as being safer it meant we could suffer, dragging our bikes and panniers up the hills in relative privacy, apart from the gaze of the odd highland cow.
Cycling along the shores of Loch Awe, Loch Lochy (Scotland’s lochiest Loch) & Loch Ness meant taking 3 ferries and crossing several bridges which all added to the excitement. One concession (less than I admit) from the girlfriend is camping isn’t allowed, which in reality means we ended up staying with some interesting characters – the wonders of Airbnb! ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’ comes to mind when you’re out in the sticks.
From riding through Wales last year (NCR8) we had a better idea what worked for us and seemed to have more fun, reducing the miles worked well. With a relaxed pace of 30-50 miles a day it meant we were able to stop along the way, exploring anything we found interesting (activities included bird watching and fishing) but with the long summer light all we had to worry about was looking for the blue NCR78 signs and trying to work out which passing pub was likely to serve the best macaroni cheese.
The highlight for us was probably the route from Lochgilphead to Oban, the amount of people we saw we could probably count on one hand. Oh and the Caledonian Sleeper.
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