Day 29, 15th June 2011, Isleorsnay to Uig (Skye)
We met a woman on the ferry into Hull a few weeks ago who had been on a cycling holiday, based in Ghent. She had rented a house for a week with a friend and gone on daily bicycle excursions. Ghent is a good place to do this from. Other possibilities for a similar holiday would be Delft in Holland, Sarlat in the Dordogne Valley in France and Passau on the Danube River in Germany, amongst many others.
We don’t do holidays, we do a tour, or perhaps and adventure. Our tours are as much about the travel as the sights, and we feel perhaps a bit guilty when we ride straight past one of the wonders of the world. Scotland suites our kind of tour, but may not suite those who want a holiday. The distances between things is a bit greater than other areas of Europe, and some of the wow factor of European civilisation is not here. Instead, there is a wild and subtle beauty and good roads. And of course there are historic buildings, castles and the like, that we have not seen, but were told that we should.
On a tour you expect to be a bit uncomfortable, like this morning when we left in cold drizzle to ride up and over a number of ridges. I think hill riding with a touring bike loaded with all your possessions is a bit of a learned art, and for that reason, I don’t think Scotland is the best choice for a first tour, but of course many people do so.
We stopped after about 40km or so, as we were a bit chilled and there was a nice pub with an open fire. That was worth a second cup of coffee, and a slightly extended break.
By the time we left, the weather had mostly cleared, and the afternoon’s ride was good. The scenery today was not as attractive as the little corner of Skye that we saw yesterday, mostly rolling moor country with enormous spectacular peaks.
The town of Portree is unusually attractive, with gleaming white buildings with grey rooves. In our experience, building sightly homes is not a Scottish forte, many homes being covered with some sort of pebblecrete or other ugly stucco.
From Portree to Uig there is barely a building that does not fit the white and grey model, and it enhances the countryside no end.
We passed a large number of B&Bs on this road, many run by Mrs McLeod, not Susan Mcleod, or Fiona McLeod, but Mrs McLeod.
We are going to catch the ferry to the Isle of Harris tomorrow, and Uig is the ferry port, so that is our stop. 86km today.
We rolled into Uig, and there is not much of it. We knocked on the door of a likely B&B, there are many, and there was a vacancy.
We have an unusually large and comfortable room, for the modest sum of 50 pounds, with WiFi, unlike…..
For the first time on this trip, my datalogger failed, so the map does not have the full data set of other days.
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