Loch Ness to Roy Bridge
General Wade's Road over Corrieyairack
It's crunch time. Do or die.
So far we’ve met the daily goals I'd penciled in, with Dave persevering with his painful knee, but today is be a big one, the longest and most arduous, a ride which will see us going over perhaps the highest bit of track in the UK.
The fact is today we have Fort William to reach. Otherwise we’ll have to bin our expensive train tickets from Glasgow to home. It means getting over Corrieyairack Pass.
The B&B owner offers his map when I ask about the route over the pass. He says from here there are two options, but it seems best to go via the head of Loch Ness, just so we can have a look down it – then make a right and find the start of General Wade’s Road.
It all seems easy and simple enough.
There's no sign of the Monster when we get to Loch Ness. After a snap, we continue cycling. The road climbs. I hadn’t noticed that on the map.
And it climbs more. And keeps on climbing.
Where was that right turn?
We climb some more.
Eventually we see some road workers and I ask about the route. Sure enough, we’ve missed the turn. It's way back down the hill.
We find it, but only after spending 90 minutes messing about, expending precious energy and getting frustrated.
I just wish I’d photographed that map when I had the chance at the B&B.
Wade's Road: the rough track was built by George Wade, a British Army officer, who, from 1724 to 1740 was Commander in Chief of the army in North Britain. During that time he built about 240 miles of military roads across the Highlands, plus some nice bridges, and, as we saw in Glenelg, military barracks.
All this construction activity started soon after the first Jacobite Rising in 1715, with the basic idea being English troops could have a safe place to sleep and be able to get around much faster, while trying to keep a lid on the independence fighters.
Still we can't find the entrance. We turn around and eventually spot it. It's somewhat overgrown, with a small sign obscured by branches. We push our bikes up a walking trail, find the steel gate with the painted sign on which I’d seen journals, walk through a wild patch of undergrowth, then meet the contractor’s road we’d been told about. We should have started at its entrance instead of battling the prickly bushes.
It’s been a bad start to the day. It is already 11 o’clock.
It's a steep track made of rock. We continue walking.
The sun comes out, but soon disappears.
Huge electricity pylons are being built and the hillsides have clearly seen some serious digging and excavation work, probably to provide material. The original surface of his ancient road over Corrieyairack has long gone; it seems the pylon contractor has recently put a new layer of compact gravel on it. I’d seen old photos showing it like a quarry, or rough river bed.
We keep walking. It seems it’ll be a long day. Then the incline eases.
With the surface being quite good -the slate and gravel compact and dry -we ride, up and down, always taking it steady.
The route ahead of us climbs for quite a while and my guess is it’ll take us another two hours to get to the very top. It turns out the climb isn’t too bad and we cycle a lot of it, apart from the last section, which just seems to go on forever.
The 770m pass is a flat-ish; an open area; pretty windy with the chilly air sweeping unhindered across the vast, treeless landscape. There's snow on the nearby mountain slopes, just small patches of it. A pair of leather-clad motorcyclists on robust machines reach the spot at the same time as us, them looking slightly puzzled at me in shorts and a thin shirt.
I put on my fleece for the long drop. The motorbike riders warn us about it being pretty rough in places. It is, with large rocks and loose rubble making riding difficult and dangerous on a loaded bike. We walk down the top section, looking at the winding trail flatten out far below.
All we’d had to eat was some few-day-old bread covered in peanut butter and jam, plus a couple of energy bars. There's nothing around here.
We bounce down, across a couple of steams, followed by the pylon contractors who have finished work for the day, traveling back along the track in a buggy with six wheels. At the end of the trail they climb into vans, which go off along one of their service roads. We follow them, which turns out to be a mistake.
Wade’s Road is a little further down the valley and we have to battle the rough grassy surface for a while until we find a spot where we can reach the tarmac lane heading roughly east to the A82, to a junction where the village of Lagan sits.
The lane is mostly downhill, gently so, but there are a few sections where we climb.
The sun comes out for a short while.
There's no traffic.
We press on and get to Lagan, hoping to find a place selling food, or at least a drink.
A local getting in his van says trains from the nearest station – Newtownmore – only travel east, and to get to Fort William we’ll have to get one from Tulloch, or the next stop after that, Roy Bridge. And if we cycle that far, we might as well keep going to Fort William.
There's nothing along this isolated stretch of road. We're hungry and tired, but there's no option but to keep on riding, veering west along the A82, which thankfully isn’t as busy as I’d feared.
The sun was gets low over the hills at the far end of Loch Laggan.
We just get our heads down and clock up the kilometers. The only place I know of where we might get something to eat is a hotel close to Roy Bridge. That becomes the new goal.
A cyclist tags along for a while. He knows the train times and where we could eat and how the road undulates. We’ll be going downhill from the point where he finally speeds off on his road bike, he says. Music to our ears.
Debbie has stopped speaking to me.
The road keeps on undulating, although it does get easier. Still, it's 8.30 when we get to the Glenspean Lodge, which is the time they stop serving food. We just make it and I eagerly order three curries to fill us up, with packets of crisps as hors d’ouevres. The meals get washed down with pints and we soon feel a whole lot better, although not really in the mood for much more cycling.
Outside it's dark.
Roy Bridge isn’t very far away, but once there it's hard to see where we can stealth camp, the whole area being either built on or fenced off.
It's now 10.30pm.
A B&B sign catches our eye and after knocking on the door, the owners quote a reasonable rate of 30 quid each, so we snap up the chance of a comfortable bed. It's no less than we deserve.
We haven’t reached the day’s objective – Fort William – which we may possibly have done had we not got lost first thing near Fort Augustus, but this is close enough.
Today's ride: 90 km (56 miles)
Total: 380 km (236 miles)
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