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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Cycling
the Scottish Isles In both 2002 and 2003 we took our main holiday cycling one of the Scottish Islands. In 2002 we went to Skye and in 2003 to Orkney. It’s a sort of holiday that we really enjoy, and we thought that we would like to share with you some of the tips we have picked up for organising your own Scottish Island holiday. We like to start our holiday by cycling away from home. That way the holiday starts as soon as we leave the front door. For getting to Scottish Islands it helps that our front door is in rural Aberdeenshire. Going to Skye we cycled to the local railway station at Dyce and caught the train via Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh. Tip 1: Book your cycle space with the train operator that you are travelling with. We booked over the Internet with Virgin’s TrainLine and despite the booking confirmation indicating that we had two cycles booked on the train, their computer had not communicated this fact properly to ScotRail’s booking computer. It was a good job that there was only one cycle actually booked on the Inverness to Kyle train. The friendly staff at Inverness, who were obviously used to this problem, managed to squeeze three bikes into the space allocated for two. From Kyle we cycled over the Skye Bridge, which is free for cyclists and pedestrians, and thence to our first B&B in Broadford. We have reached the age where we like to stay in B&B’s or small hotels, rather than camping, for the en-suite shower at the end of the day and the warm, dry bed to sleep in. On our Skye holiday we mostly stayed just one night in each B&B before moving on. However, in the case of Broadford we were going to stay in the same B&B on our last night. This enabled us to leave a bag with our first day’s dirty clothes and clean clothes for our final day at the B&B and so slightly lighten our load. One place where we did stay two nights was on a side trip to the island of Raasay. This turned out to be a slight mistake, as a number of the roads on Raasay are very steep and we spent rather more time pushing the bikes uphill than we like. Tip 2: Check your route on the appropriate Ordnance Survey map at the planning stage to ensure that you are not setting yourself too difficult a target for distance or gradient. The spectacular scenery on Skye and the quiet roads and friendly people convinced us to repeat the experience in 2003, with the minor variation of visiting Orkney instead. This time we started by cycling to the Ferry terminal in Aberdeen and catching the Northlink ferry to Kirkwall. Tip 3: Don’t arrive too early for the ferry, you can be left standing around on the jetty for some time while they sort out the loading of awkward large vehicles. The disadvantage of this ferry is that it arrives quite late in Kirkwall, officially 11pm but often later, and the new ferry terminal is over a mile outside the town. So, we ended up arriving at our first B&B after midnight. Also, the weather was quite rough for our crossing, to the point where we didn’t feel up to eating an evening meal. So, you might want to consider the other ferry routes to Orkney: a) The “John O'Groats Ferry” from John O'Groats to Burwick - a foot passenger ferry - but it does also take cycles. b) Pentland Ferries’ route from Gills to St Margaret's Hope. c) Northlink Ferries’ route from Scrabster to Stromness. All of the above are accessible from Thurso which is at the end of the train line north. On Orkney we booked two nights in each of our B&B’s. Tip 4: If you book two nights (or more) in each place then you have the option of taking a day off if the weather is bad, or you are exhausted from the previous day. Or, you can cycle a short or long loop depending on how you feel. We do like to book our accommodation, as there's nothing worse than turning up somewhere only to find the last bed has been taken and the recommended alternative is “only 10 miles down the road” on a wet and windy night. Booking two or more nights in one place also reduces the number of telephone calls you need to make to do all the booking. Tip 5: Contact the local Tourist Information Centre and get all the local cycling information that you can. The Orkney Tourist Information Centre advertised a book “Orkney by Bike” on their website and this proved invaluable in working out interesting routes. The TIC is also a useful source of accommodation and dining information. We could tell that we would have no problem finding somewhere to eat in Kirkwall or Stromness. But in the more remote areas, there wasn’t always a convenient restaurant at the end of the day, and it was more appropriate to book “Dinner, Bed & Breakfast”. This was a contrast to Skye, perhaps because Skye has more in the way of small towns where there was generally a reasonable choice of restaurants. Even Raasay had two different eating places, so we could spread our two evening meals between them. What can
you expect to see when you get to a Scottish Island? On Skye the emphasis
was on scenery. The majesty of the Cuillins, the seals of Loch Coruisk
(which you can visit by boat from Elgol). On Orkney the emphasis was on
On the ferry back to Aberdeen we met two more cyclists. One was a Canadian who had flown from Canada to the Netherlands with his bike and cycled through France and Ireland before reaching Scotland. He carried his tent and sleeping bag on his well travelled machine. The other was a Frenchman who had crossed to Scotland on the Zeebrugge-Rosyth ferry, cycled up to Scrabster and was working his way back to Rosyth for the return ferry. He travelled with the smallest panniers we’ve seen, and epitomised the opposite extreme of travelling light. Will we be back cycling on a Scottish Island next year? You bet! First published in VISA issue 55 (March 2004) |