Day Ten Glencoe to Inverness

This seems so odd - having got a day behind, (due to wifi speed in Inverness) I'm trying to write about only two days ago, but already it seems to be an age. Cornwall seems like a lifetime, or at least an entrirely separate trip! the pictures I've taken help and it is probably worth starting with the view out of my bedroom window in Glencoe -  a fantastic (a very over-used word but truly appropriate for Glencoe) place all round. The B&B (or really a Self-Catering-chalet-with-someone-who comes-and-cooks-breakfast!) was excellent, with a lovely pub in walking distance, in the middle of nowhere.

 Mountains in your face, and the sound of water everywhere. And if you walk home from the pub and you see a couple of wild deer - Mr Deer got decidely agitated that we were clearly getting to close to Mrs Deer; shouting and jumping up and down at us! - you know it's different.

 Which made it really hard to leave. Looking back on the road up to Fort William shows just how special a place it is. However the trouble with Scotland, is that almost everywhere you look there's a brilliant view and once we'd got into the Great Glen it was difficult to keep riding rather than stopping to take photos! Once we got through Ft William, we took a smaller road running parallel to the A82 on the Western siide of the glen and we were rewarded with fantastic views of Ben Nevis and the rest of the Nevis range (Ben Nevis is the lumpy one on the right below)

Our B road was lovely and quiet, but a bit hillier than the A road. We managed to miss meeting Mary at the first rendevous (she was waiting at the carpark in the picture below while I was photographing the Nevis range behind her!)

 We continued up the A82 - fantastic scenery all the way past Loch Lochy (pretty unimaginative! bit like calling a lake the Lakey Lake, surely!) - and eventually reached the southern end of Loch Ness at Fort Augustus. You can see though that we were enjoying good weather now with sun off and on, and virtually no rain. Still pretty cold though. Here's our first sight of Loch Ness. 

 The road up the loch pretty much follows the waters edge, but every now and then we needed to go slightly 'inland' to get round the next river enetering the loch, and the small town that was nestling in the valley it created. All are beautiful places  - here's the old bridge at Invermoriston.
 and we finally met up with Mary at the next lay-by. As usual, she re-fuelled us with coffee and cake and we've also had the occasional pasty and macaroon!

 We continued to enjoy nice sunshine all the way up Loch Ness (boy is that a long loch! it's about 23 miles!)

 and passed Urquart Castle which was difficult to get nearer to because of all the tourist traffic. The road was generally reasonably quiet except for all the tourist coaches - hundreds! However, John was now beginning to struggle with a hamstring problem that was beginning to hurt going uphill, so we took each incline at a steady pace

and reached Inverness a little later than planned, but still in good time for the B&B, which was overlooking the river Ness - which looked a bit full to me!

This is the view from by bedroom window later that evening after an excellent meal at the Castle Tavern. However, as a result of John's discomfort, we realised that heading over the country to get to Scourie on the West coast for the following day (about 90 miles and pretty lumpy) was going to be too much, and we agreed to re-route up the shorter (and hopefully flatter) East coast. A few calls to cancel original B&B bookings, some (frustratingly slow!) web searches to find new places in Dornoch and Lympster and calling with our fingers crossed that they'd have vacancies!

So our new Route for day 11 is Inverness to Dornoch, although I opted to an extra loop up to see the Falls of shin, adding another 37 miles.