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Day 20  Thursday 13th May 2004

Grantown on Spey to The Black Isle (north of Inverness )

The Bank House was a lovely building and was well maintained.  In previous years these upstairs flats had been occupied by the bank manager but with the tightening of purse strings a lot of them had been sold off for other use.  I did wonder about security but I guess they had security cameras pointing at the ceiling in the bank below in case B&B residents decided to tunnel through in the night.  I put these thoughts to the back of my mind.  The main disadvantage with the Bank House was its position in the centre of town.  There were celebrations going on at various drinking establishments up and down the main street well into the early hours.  This area is famous for its whisky distilleries.  My next door neighbours at the B&B returned about 2am (and they weren’t very quiet about it) and the last I heard was a happy chappy outside in the main street at 4am .  All in all it wasn’t a very restful night.

The target today was to get to Inverness to pick up the train tickets and then hopefully get some extra miles under the belt which would take me into the area between the Moray and Cromarty Firth.  When I left in the morning I didn’t have a B&B booked for the night but I thought that I would be able to find something by calling in at the Tourist Information centre in Inverness .  The owners of the Bank House informed me that my ride today would be much easier than the previous two days.

It soon became obvious that the strains of the last two days have had their effect on my legs – my left calf especially felt as though it was going to cramp.  The route leads me over the Dava moor to the village of Dava on the Nairn border.  On the way up I come across more oyster catchers in the fields.  It has puzzled me during the whole of the trip that there are so many of them in the fields – I always thought that they were a coastal bird.  Today I discover the reason why – at one field I am lucky enough to spot lots of baby oyster catcher chicks rapidly taking cover as their parents issue warning cries on seeing my approach.  And then there were none.  Within a few seconds they had all disappeared.  On the top of the moor I hear the unmistakeable sound of the stonechat and one brave bird sits for long enough on a bush beside me to enable me to attempt to get a photo.  It is still very small in the viewfinder.  A bit later on a solitary goose flies in and lands on a lake not far from me.  I am finding the cycling today quite tiring.  There aren’t any big hills but there is a lot of up and down to negotiate.

Next I pass the Bridge of Dulsie - the river here flows through a ravine – and I continue north and then north west through remote country villages with perhaps one or two houses and no signposts to indicate where you are.  If I am lucky enough to come across a signpost at a road junction, quite often I am not able to find the place on the map.

Eventually I reach Cawdor Castle.  It’s approaching 11am so maybe I can get my first cup of tea here?  Unfortunately there is an entrance fee to the castle before you can access the café so I give this up as a bad job and cycle on deviating from my route into Cawdor village where a sign indicates a tea shop – again no luck – I can’t find the shop.  At last just before 12 noon, having passed the Culloden Railway Viaduct – another very impressive multi arched structure – I come across Rosannes Tea Shop and B&B.  The tea and scones tasted good here.

I am not far from Inverness now.  The cycle route avoids going into the centre of the town and makes instead a beeline for the bridge across the Moray Firth .  I have tickets to collect and possibly a B&B to find.  For the first time on the trip a car which is following me decides to blow his horn at me – he doesn’t like my lane discipline at a roundabout.  I was in the correct lane for going straight ahead – but this meant he had to wait for me before he could go round the roundabout so he overtook me on the inside.  Perhaps I’m lucky to get this far without being tooted at!  I find the station at about 1pm and ask about my tickets.  No they haven’t received authorisation.  They are however already on the phone to Newcastle trying to assist some other lady without tickets so I wait for this to be sorted and then they move on to my problem.  “ Newcastle will send us a fax in the next 15 minutes – can you come back in half an hour”.  No problem.  The ticket man expresses the fact that he has had a hard day and that all these problems have quite worn him out!  He remains very obliging though so I ask for directions to the Tourist Office.

At the tourist office I search through the accommodation list to find a suitable place – there aren’t very many in the catalogue for the area to the north of Inverness .  The only one that comes anywhere near to fitting the bill is at Invergordon which is off the CTC route and is further than I really want to travel.  So I decide to give this up as a bad job and trust to luck that I might find somewhere along the road.  A lot of places don’t bother to register with the tourist office as they charge £700 a year for the privilege and this takes a lot of reclaiming with extra visitors.  On top of that they charge a commission every time you book of 10%.  You can understand why a lot of landladies decide just to rely on their advertisement on the board at the roadside.  While I was in the centre of Inverness I also decide to seek out a camera shop – I had been having problems with the battery charger for my camera and I wanted to see if I could find a spare.  I tried two camera shops but neither could supply me without ordering a replacement from Fuji .

I eventually got back to the station after about 40 minutes – the ticket man I had spoken to was nowhere to be seen – he was obviously taking a well earned break.  BUT they had received the fax and the tickets were authorised – in fact tickets for the whole of the journey and a return!  I declined the full set and came away with the ones I wanted.  By now it was time to eat lunch but there were no obvious signs of a park on the map on the station wall.  I was even more desperate to go to the loo and the only one around was one of those posh jobs, a “Superloo”, on the station concourse.  You have to pay 20p just to get in – this time I had no choice!  Inside, the loo looked like any other loo – what a rip off.

Feeling relieved but still feeling hungry I made my way to the bridge across the Moray Firth and onto the Black Isle.  This is not really an island but a peninsula which sticks out between the Moray Firth and the Cromarty Firth.  Here I got round to eating my lunch sitting beside the Beauty Firth (the western side of the Moray Firth ) – it was 2pm and I was famished.  Not far from my picnic spot I came across the North Kessock Post Office cum shop which looked a possibility for a postcard – I forgot all about that while I was in Inverness .  I couldn’t find anything obvious on the card stand but the post mistress willingly delved into her boxes at the rear of the shop and came up with a card showing North Kessock and the Beauty Firth at Twilight – that will do.

As I left the Post Office I spotted a black cloud approaching from the west – perhaps I can avoid it by carrying on with the ride.  This ploy seemed to work with only a few spots of rain falling on me.  A bit further onto the isle a shower catches up with me so I pause under some trees to get protection.  And what do I spot next? – a B&B sign right out in the wilds, 2 miles from the nearest village.  The landlady will even cook me an evening meal so that I don’t have to go out again tonight – I can have a relaxing evening.  I am now only 40 miles from Lairg which is my aiming point for tomorrow – this should be a nice gentle ride – and the day after I will be on the north coast of Scotland .  I must be nearly there!

Today I have cycled 49.3 miles at an average of 9.7mph.  This now brings my total mileage to 989.9

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