Cheap Thrills - Cycling on a Budget

We often don’t do things because of lack of time, money or motivation. There are obviously an abundance of reasons for not sacking it all in and going for a cracking adventure, but ignoring all those I’ve opted for putting fun first.

I recently engineered my life so that I had a bunch of spare time, but not much money (a smooth way of saying I quit my perfectly decent job because I wanted to go have fun). The result of this was a pretty entertaining journey! My tall tales of getting lost, soaked, and eating my own body weight in lentils can prove that there is always a way of saying a strong YES to whatever it is that’s brewing in the back of your adventure brain…

There are 2 parts to this story. In the first I have an adventure from Inverness up to Ullapool and enjoy some hilariously bad weather. In the second, I go try the other direction! From Thurso down to Ullapool.

Part 1

The Friday afternoon train to Inverness was comfortably empty. After some strong begging with the conductor to let my bike on the train, we were safely aboard and ready for a rejuvenating doze on the way up north. Normally, I don’t carry much stuff on my bike and I have no issue hitching it onto my shoulder and carrying it up, down and around whatever obstacles you fancy (stairs, children, dogs, stiles, cattle grids). Unfortunately, this time I had given myself no such luxury. I discovered this when the bike and I fell off the train, in a very heavy heap, into Inverness’s late evening sun and a cheerfully dry sky.

There were a few things about my trip that I was pretty unsure about: I hadn’t planned where to sleep; I had a tent, what else needed planning? I hadn’t practised cycling with the weight before, hence the ungainly heap at the train station. I didn’t actually have a map of where I was going until I made it to Garve, which I knew was about 25 miles away. The biggest challenge when I began was that I was using trying out cleats (cycling shoes that clip onto the pedals) on this journey. It was a mixture of terrifying and thrilling to balance myself and my load and be ATTACHED to the whole thing.

Mask off and we’re on the road! Thanks to sustrans the route from the station over the bridge is mostly on cycle paths, so I had a nice time getting used to being wobbly without being run over. In my head I ran through my impeccably researched and well-structured plan: cycle until it gets dark, camp somewhere flat-ish, cycle some more, get to Gairloch.

Lesson 1: I have to concentrate when I cycle.

Day 1 and it’s glorious weather, I’ve made it onto my map and am thoroughly enjoying figuring out where I am as I cycle. It’s wonderfully fulfilling knowing where you are in the context of lochs and mountains whilst having absolutely no clue where you’ll be along the road the next day.

I began the trip with a lot of worries, that I would have a lot of time and maybe I’d get a little lonely, or miss WiFi, or worst of all - have to give up within a day. Turns out, I just had to peddle and that was more than enough to think about! I am a slooooooow cyclist. Especially going uphill.

In stark contrast to the never-ending grind of the uphill, the whizz of going downhill was unbelievable. Weirdly, it also required a lot of thinking ahead. With my heavy panniers I couldn’t really go over a bump bigger than a grape without my eyes popping out my head and a bolt of fear that the whole bungee-corded contraption would explode right there and then. Most of my thoughts were about going in a straight line and not crashing.

By day 3 I was fairly used to the wobbles and I’d learned how to clip in whilst going uphill.

I spent the majority of the trip drinking in the views. They were mostly just incredibly moody mountains because it rained A LOT. In between appreciating the greens, greys, blacks, blues, yellows and purples, I skilfully avoided thinking about the very ominous clouds. For anyone that’s been along the A832 from Tore to Ullapool – it’s a stunning road that coasts along Loch Maree into Gairloch and then around the Northwest coast. Part of the NC500 (which I refuse to mention ever again unless as a nation we decide to put compost toilets along the whole route) it attracts a lot of campervans, but it’s still an absolute delight.

Lesson 2: Don’t carry 5 days of food, or more than one book.

My bike was just unnecessarily heavy. Also, there are wee shops everywhere. People do live in the north west and, unsurprisingly, they also need food. I was obsessed with finishing a book that I’d been trying to plough through for 6 months. I still haven’t finished it. Ironically enough, this is something I’ve done multiple times before and I just don’t seem to learn. Almost worth writing about.

Lesson 3: If you make your adventure somewhere interesting, stop and look at it.

I nearly crashed about 30 times in the afternoon on day 3, entirely because I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the mountains. Eventually a moment of sense came over me and I pulled into a layby coming down the hill from Gairloch into Poolewe and got the coffee stuff out. I think it’s important to highlight here that as much as you should pack light (see lesson 2) it’s also of unequivocal importance to bring luxuries with you. I had to justify to myself: I’m on holiday, I’m wild camping wherever I so wish, I’m eating lentils and oats and I’m cycling 9/10 hours a day. You definitely deserve treats if you are doing these things – as a side note everyone deserves treats anyway.

Back to the coffee stop. I took easily an hours break and I still had to remind myself of those big bad clouds in order to tear my thoughts away from the mountains.

Lesson 4: Tame the bog love

I made the mistake of camping in a bog and although it didn’t have any midges in it, it was a typical bog and very, very soggy. The only reason I had camped in this bog was because of the incredible swimming pool it was next to.

This poor decision probably also occurred because we’d had a small disaster earlier in the day and I dealt with the recovery from this by diving in the nearest swim spot I could find. Swim your worries away folks, in gorgeous mountain pools.

The disaster: My pannier rack broke! Long story short, the nicest man I’ve ever met fixed it because I happened to break down outside his house. This is probably the effect of all the karma I’ve culminated throughout my entire life and I thanked all my lucky stars for my good fortune.

In a nice way, the disaster made me deeply appreciate how smoothly the adventure had gone so far. More importantly, it hammered home one of my strongest beliefs: that if you love and respect nature, you will both love and be loved by, respect and be respected by people, too. It’s simple and potentially strongly naïve, but on every journey I take it’s demonstrated over and over again how kind and lovely people are. I always come away from my adventures – where more often than not I am trying to get out of my humanscape and into the landscape – with a deeper sense of connection to both community and the wilderness.

Lesson 5: Go home on a high

I made it to Gairloch, and then up to Ullapool where I met a friend. Amongst other things we discovered baked beans with veggie sausages. This set the tone for us having a fantastic time together, and a break from the cycle/ camp routine. Before meeting her I had planned on carrying on for another 2/3 weeks of cycling up north, but afterwards I decided to finish up there.

Basically, it had rained a lot and the only person who cared about where I went was me. So, she gave myself and the bike a lift to the train in Aviemore and we went home! It was a 5 day adventure, I’d been thoroughly soaked and my legs felt pretty happy to go home too.

To Be Continued.....

Useful stuff:

If, unlike me, you’d like to put a bit of planning your adventure – here’s some helpful websites for getting about by non-car ways!

Find a route on the National Cycle Network - Sustrans.org.uk

Good Journey - car-free days out