GNT - Day 10 - Garve to Loch Hope 21/08/21

I’m not quite sure how we did that. I don’t think any of us do. We sat in the pub last night to go through our options, as it was clear our original plan was in tatters. We had hoped to get within striking distance of Durness today, giving us time to get the ferry to and from Cape Wrath and back to Durness for the bus to Inverness. In the last 2 days we had done just over 50 miles each day and finished the day completed ruined. We needed to do 86 today. That meant 12 hours in the saddle and the cumulative exhaustion from the last 9 days meant that was vanishingly unlikely. We looked at road options, we contemplated not going to Cape Wrath. In the end, we just decided to go for a gravel ride and see where we got to. And we did the 86 miles. 

To give ourselves a chance, we were on the road before 8.30. The first 10 miles was easy, on roads, before we headed off up a farm track, tarmac eventually giving way to hard packed gravel. Perfect conditions for our bikes. We never gave much thought to the choice of bike, but on the Great North Trail Facebook page, there is plenty of chat about it. The consensus seems to be mountain bike. Thinner tyres and no suspension meant we were constantly being thrashed by the rocky terrain. We were making decent progress until the first of Kate’s mishaps. A puncture needed plugging and took a while to sort properly, but we were on the way again shortly, stopping briefly to chat with some other bikers who were ditching their bikes to hike up a mountain. Quite an ingenious way to cover the mountain approach we thought. 

These tracks are never easy, but this was much more manageable than some of our previous days and we pushed on. From being in total wilderness one minute, we came down a descent and to one of the most remote houses in Scotland. Part of the Alladale Estate, where Bear Grylls runs outdoor activities and where the estate owner is ‘rewilding’ - allowing the peat bogs to recover and even looking to re-introduce wolves to help manage the population of red deer. We kept an eye out for the local eagle, but not today. Shortly after this, Kate decided it was her turn to demonstrate the moving involuntary dismount but whereas mine had ended comically and soggily in a bog, Kate hit the gravel track hard and was in a lot of pain. Both these women continue to astound me though and before long Kate was up and going again. True grit. 

 After a nice descent and a bit of road, we reached our halfway point for the day, in Rosehall, where there was a cafe and shop. There, we met a couple on the same route, though they had started in Glasgow. They were on mountain bikes, were quite a bit younger than us and looked quite fit. Naturally, we had the MTB v Gravel bike debate. Pros and cons. They left a good 20 minutes before we did and our advantage today was clear when we sailed past them relatively quickly. Served them right for the (lighthearted) comment that 2.45pm was quite late in the day to be at our halfway point.

I have barely mentioned the weather in this account, which is remarkable given where we are, but we have been so lucky, with just a couple of damp mornings. That changed now though and the rest of the day was wet. At times, hosing down at others a gentle drizzle. It’s also midge day, so any sort of stop for even a few seconds was hazardous. We had one significant climb to contend with but, helpfully, it was on the road. The final off-road section of the day took us up a manageable track, climbing steadily into more wilderness before a long, meandering descent, past a strange house; completely remote but looked like it had been plucked from somewhere in Surrey. It was getting pretty late by now, after 7.30 and we needed to find somewhere to camp. The trouble was. If you stopped for 10 seconds you were immediately mobbed by a cloud of midges. So we pressed on toward the coast, hoping for some sort of breeze to blow them away. Eventually, at a random stop, we realised there were no midges, so we quickly pitched tents and started getting ready to re-hydrate our delightful bags of food.

Just then the wind died and the full assault started. Emma and Kate were sent to their tents whilst I made full use of my bee-keeper style midge net hat and covered up every inch of skin. It was like a horror movie, with thick swarms of the little sods milling around trying to get a piece of me. The main point of today, though, is that we have put ourselves in with a good chance of making it to Cape Wrath. It depends on many things, not least the ‘ferry’, a little wooden boat that goes back and forth when the owner feels like it and when the military choose not to do live firing. We got ourselves in that position with a Herculean, nearly 12 hour ride. Not there yet though. Enough wind to deter midges but not too much or the ferry can’t go! Rain seems to have stopped.