Day 17 - Across the Firths

From Foyers to Dornoch (route)

Following our most expensive dinner meal in "portion control" Foyers Bay House (not just a B & B, it's a country house), the breakfast proved equally economical with its quantities and was only alleviated by the spectre of red squirrels gambling across the lawn.

In common with some of the previous days, we discovered at the moment we were setting off that one of our bicycle tyres had decided to leak air during the night. In this case it was Hill Junior's rear wheel, which had been causing us grief the previous day. What with fixing the puncture and a half-hour lie-in (we were not permitted to breakfast before 8.30am) we set off late.

After five good days of weather in Scotland, our good luck broke. Our ride to Inverness was through a persistent drizzle, becoming driving rain, which of course, was into our faces rather than on our backs (in 16 days of riding we can only count one day in which we enjoyed a tail wind).

Hill Junior purposefully rode off ahead at break-neck speed to get his real wheel repaired in Inverness, while Hill Senior dawdled along the edge of Loch Ness, enjoying the low-level misty views, and taking photographs, including one in which the Loch Ness monster can be spotted in the left middle ground by those active members of the wine society and CAMRA.

The two Hills were reunited at the Highland Bicycle Company, Inverness, where Junior's bike was fixed for just a tenner. Bargain. Meanwhile Senior's bike had developed a hernia on its rear wheel - necessitating a new tyre, the old one having become completely threadbare after only 200,000 miles.

Such is the extent to which these bikes are being ridden, yet more equipment failures came to light. Senior's front deraileur has sheared in two, preventing automatic gear changes on the front, so the fallback change mechanism of dismounting and manually moving the chain to a different ring was adopted. We picked up a new super-deluxe deraileur mechanism, but haven't yet had time to fit it.

After all our bike maintenance, we scoured Inverness for tea shops and settled on the Pumpkin Cafe in Inverness station, which served us medium mugs (quite large) of tea and "blissfully blueberry muffins".

We continued our journey by taking the A9 across the Kessock Bridge, acorss the Moray Firth (first of our three Firths today) and then we veered off the A9 into the Black Isle (thanks to a passing Irish cyclist for his informative navigation advice). Spotted a red kite soaring above us. Through ever-increasing rain we made our way to Fortrose where since there was no open pub, we took our lunch in the lee of the Co-op who provided us with some plastic sandwiches and fresh fruit.

After lunch the weather cleared up, the sun was seen again, and we were able to enjoy a spectacular climb up to a radio mast on the highest point of the Black Isle. From here we had good views across the Moray Firth to the Aberdeenshire coast. We then descended into Cromarty where we caught the Nigg ferry. This takes two cars, and has a strange turntable mechanism to rotate the vehicles once on board. The ferry took us across the Firth of Cromarty (second Firth of the day) - it was very picturesque - we saw a crowd being taken out to see the local dolphins.

We enjoyed a quiet run along the edge of Nigg Bay (a RSPB reserve) until we rejoined the busy grand-prix track of the A9. We took the A9 hard shoulder (apart from a brief and worthwhile diversion into Tain) all the way across the Dornoch Firth (third and last of our Firths), and then found a minor road through Cuthill to the town of Dornoch. Or perhaps one should call it a city because it boasts a cathedral? Certainly its a very smart and attractive spot to spend a night.

This is the first of the B&Bs booked by Hill Junior who promised a kind of massage parlour (for cycling muscles) allied with a lycra laundry and a mecca for real ales.

Total mileage today is well into the 60s. You can't see from the graph, but honestly, there was a head wind. Our total mileage so far is just shy of 1000 miles - and yet according to a recently viewed roadsign, we have something like 80 miles to get to John O'Groats in the two days remaining.