Day 2: avoiding the 'a' road

today started well, with an almost lie in. our 'small full english' breakfasts went down very well and our legs felt fresh as we set of at (just gone) nine, a luxury I fear we won't be able to afford from here on out.

we anticipated an early arrival in inverness with only 10 (ish) more miles to cover than the day before and less hills.

that was until we met the traffic on the a9 though.

we'd planned a few alternate routes to take in the sights and help to break up the day, and we rapidly found that once we'd left the a9, we didn't really want to get back on it.

our first stop was dunrobin castle, with the potential for a cafe. you had to pay to get into the castle first though and we couldn't even be bothered to find out how much it was, instead we just took some pictures with it as it was a very pretty castle. however they are on emma's camera so cannot be shared (bad blogger!)

next up was 'the coffee bothy' in golspie which was a very warm respite from the drizzle, and they made very tasty cake!

after golspie we took a little single lane coastal road past skelbo (i'm loving the place names up here) to dornoch where there was a pretty, though very isolated and slightly desolate, beach...

before briefly rejoining the now horribly busy a9 for a short while. 

then it was a detour through tain where we met three men who are heading as far as shropshire. we stopped here for a long chat during which my bike took a rather amusing tumble due to poor bike propping skill. i'm hoping that the helpful sixth former was genuinely wanting to help rather than just laugh at the silly cyclist.

from tain we didn't have much a9 to go before detouring through invergorden where we saw some oil rigs being worked on (built? refurbed?) it was an odd sight but an interesting one.

a few wrong turns found us back on track on the western side of the a9 where we decided that even if it did add quite a few miles, we'd stick with ncn1 through dingwall instead of doing any more battle with traffic.

it was the best decision we made all day, allowing us to climb to tore, above inverness, on well tarmaced bike path and very small, lightly used roads, affording us some great views at convenient rest spots on hills...

...and keeping us smiling to the end of what turned into quite a long day!

best bits: taking more rests (in case you hadn't got that from the post) and genuinely looking forward to more peddling tomorrow down the side of loch ness in the great glen :)

not so much looking forward to the additional 20 miles and 2 very large steep ascents compared to today's eventual 80 miles.

i must offer thanks today to everyone who waits patiently to overtake cyclists, rather than squeezing by with barely an inch to spare, and also to annie for putting us up and feeding us very well!

today's data:

79.8 miles

2,992 ft of ascent 

5h 52m 24s peddling

13.6 mph average speed