Saturday, June 1: A summer ride...
Inverness - Tornagrain, 35 km
An 8am start with continental and full cooked breakfast available, then a pack up before leaving our panniers with hosts while we cycled down into Inverness. Purchasing some needed supplies for our bikes etc and a lovely lunch at the recommended Velocity Cafe. Also some beers to shout the team at Ticket to Ride for their above and beyond service of free tyre, advice on routes etc... and what are proving to be great bikes for our trip!
A stunning summer day, really hot and clear skies... Inverness must always be like this as it also was the day before we left on our cycling 10 days ago! (although locals assure us we are mad if we think that!). Being a beautiful Saturday the town was busy with people all out and about.
Picked up our panniers and headed back towards and past the Culloden battlefield site. For enlightenment of how we are finding our way about: we are utilising a GPS bike unit (Wahoo Roam V2) onto which we load our planned routes. In turn these planned routes have been provided to us (as for today via Gavin) or else we are heavily using a website called cycle.travel which personally we find brilliant... it is just a matter of putting in a start point and end point and it comes up with suggested routes/options on quiet roads, cycle paths, canal paths, unpaved paths, national cycle routes etc depending on what you wish/choose to use. The website also has many popular routes listed with descriptions, and we have done our overall planning utilising some of these suggestions. Scarily you can also view your upcoming climbs, gradient and distance, although a lot of the time it pays not to look! The screen shots we are including in the blog are from the Wahoo stats for each day showing our route.
We followed NCN (National cycle network) routes 1 and 7, as well as just random roads as plotted. Through the Inverness University area and quiet residential streets as well as a big hill... puff puff... to reach Balnuran of Clava.
This is an area with 2 stone cairns and a stone circle alongside standing stones some 4000 years old. Carbon dating has shown occupation from approximately 2000 BC for some 200 years then a further re-occupation at around 1000 BC. Once again nobody is completely sure of their use, who etc but the whole area is mostly very intact.
During the 1870s however it is known that some of the cairn stones were pilfered for building fences and a couple of the standing stones were shifted to make a road!
The positioning of the cairns entrance towards the south west means it gets the mid winter sun and the largest of the standing stones are also to the south west. The most recent archeological reports conclude different coloured stones within the burial chambers present perhaps indicated wealth status.
From there we biked up another steep hill and through rolling farmland of sheep and crop farms. Lovely roads/lanes bordered by rock fences and lots of oak and Rowan trees. Also a view of the Culloden railway viaduct which is impressive. Led us to our friend Gavin's house in the small town of Tornagrain around 5:15pm. A shower and a catch up, some route planning advice gratefully received, before we headed out to a nearby pub for a great dinner.
The trick tomorrow morning will be full bike packing!
Back in 2002 Gavin was the vendor of Isabella's Cottage, our cottage in Denbigh St Arrowtown. At the time Gav was backpacking through NZ and with a bit of Scottish courage had purchased the cottage and fully refurbished it before we were lucky enough to be the purchasers. Gav re-connected with us last year when he was touring NZ by cycle, and stayed for a couple of nights... subsequently he gave us the hint of where to buy our bikes for this trip, fantastic advice that has worked perfectly. It has been brilliant to catch up again, and we appreciated his hospitality, and good natured advice, hugely. As a very keen cyclist, as well as his technical knowledge, Gav has covered most routes in the UK and further afield.
Sunday, June 2: Saddle up the Palamino's, the sun is going down...
Nairn - Lossiemouth, 65 km
Up at 7am with the aim of puzzling out how to load up the bikes with all our gear. Tent, sleeping bags, sleeping pads and our travel bags... all of which we had not taken to the Outer Hebrides.... hmmm!
Managed to do so, panniers slightly heavier for us both and front rolls attached as well. Luckily for us it is mostly a tail wind and pretty flat riding today to try it all out and see how it feels.
Gavin suggested we take the train from near his house, Inverness Airport Station, to Nairn which will save us 15 km off a reasonably long day without missing anything of significance. A good idea! Just as well Gav came to the station to farewell us... a local guide to show us how to get bikes in lift, over to the correct platform, where to line up for the bike carriage etc. A 5 carriage train with 2 carriages having small areas for a couple of bikes... and our bikes fully loaded took up all of one such space and more! The train was en route to Aberdeen but being a Sunday morning it was not busy at all, we imagine if we utilise trains later in our travels we will have to remove the panniers to make an easier negotiation of the space available.
From Nairn it was lovely riding through country lanes weaving between farmland and woodland. Farming mainly wheat, potato fields and also hay being cut or conditioned by tedder. A handful of cyclists met but not much other traffic.
Came across the site of Brodie Castle, so turned into the paths that are open to the public and went for an explore of the outside of the castle. An impressive 800 year old castle that is still lived in by some of the Brodie family. We didn't do an inside tour, although we could have as being members of Heritage New Zealand gives us reciprocal access to quite a few of these properties in the UK, but did explore the lovely gardens area, shop and playground area. A lot of people about enjoying the day.
Continued riding on through villages such as Dyke, Broom of May to reach seaside Findhorn for lunch. Located on the coast of Moray it has a couple of pubs, seaside cafe/bar, bakery and not too much else! Opted for soup at the marina cafe and sat outside in an increasing wind. Findhorn was on a peninsula so was a pleasant in/out diversion passing by a former air force base which had been opened in 1939 as a training establishment for WW2. Regular flying operations ceased in 2011 an it is now the home of the 39th Engineer Regiment.
As we left the town of Kinloss once rejoining the main route we spotted Kinloss Abbey, the remains of a Cisterian Abbey which had been founded in 1150. The Abbey is surrounded by a historical, current and also a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery. The Commonwealth War Graves has burials of the former air force personnel who died in service right up to the closing of the base.
The Abbey history is from when a Cisterian monastery was established by monks sent north from the Scottish borders and it was "confirmed" 1174 and grew rapidly due to the endowment of a large area of land by the then King and succeeding monarchs. The monastery operated here for 400 years up until the Scottish government abolished the Catholic church.
The area continued to operate as a landholding but split with some given to an Edward Bruce (Lord Kinloss) and some to Alexander Brodie. Sadly the Abbey was largely demolished in 1650 when Alexander Brodie sold Oliver Cromwell much of the stone to build a Citadel in Inverness. Apparently this is largely how Brodie could afford to build his castle, which we visited earlier in the day!
We continued on our route via picturesque farmland, still mainly crop, potatoes and oil seed rape, although we did see some stud Angus cattle. Another castle spotted so we had a quick wander around Duffus Castle. Originally built 1151 by timber and then replaced with stone during the 14th century. Not so much of it left but still an impressive edifice.
The final leg of the day was riding past Lossiemouth RAF airfield, a large complex originally also opened in 1939. Established for training, aircraft preparation and storage whilst also the base for launching attacks on German ships across the North Sea. The base is still operational... and seems to be surrounded by pigs! Lots of them on an outside system over large areas, maybe free range each with their own little shed but each also fenced into their own "section".
Arrived at our rather grand looking hotel in Lossiemouth around 5 pm, and instructed to wheel our bikes in through the front entrance and store them in the function room... the most flash storage they have had to date :). They deserve a luxury break as there was a bit of head wind and some hills later today... no wait, that's us.. not them!
We went for a walk around the shores of Lossiemouth which historically has been a fishing town, and is also well known now for its golf course and lovely sandy beach. Found a restaurant... Sunday roast of the day including dessert... luxury!
There is a monument to a fishing disaster just opposite the hotel, 21 men and boys (all the males in the village at the time) disappeared without a trace on Christmas Day 1806 when they were out in 3 boats.
