FAST FLEET
Tipler’s 986 Boxster S visits the Orkneys.
When continental travel is off the agenda, the next best thing is a road trip in bonny Blighty. So, when our pal, Charlotte, announced she was booking a farm cottage for a couple of weeks on the Orkney Isles and asked if we would we like to join her, the response was an affirmative no-brainer! Ahead of the adventure, going local, I treated the Boxster to an oil change at Norwichbased Porsche specialist, Autowerke, and had the Group 4 Wheels Fuchs replicas and their Falken boots perfectly balanced at nearby Kingsway Tyres. I drove away in what seemed like a different car.
With the best will in the world, north Norfolk to the Orkney Islands is a twoday — make that three-day — journey in itself, given the luxury of being on holiday. It’s roughly 650 miles in one direction, excluding excursions, which is why we broke it up into three legs: Cromer to Biggar (in Scotland’s southern uplands), to overnight with another pal, Glenys. ‘We’ being Mrs T, Ferdi the miniature longhaired dachshund, and me, three-up in a fully laden 986 Boxster. The advantage of a mini-dachs is that he is small enough to occupy a lap for long periods, and did very well on the journey. The tedious bit is the two hours getting out of East Anglia and trudging up the A17 to join the A1 at Newark. Then you feel you’re on your way... a bit. We paused for refreshments off the A66 at picturesque Appleby, Westmoreland, which should have been in the throes of its annual gypsy horse fair, but was bereft of any such equine actions. Having stormed Beattock Summit at over the ton, we savoured South Lanarkshire’s lovely rolling countryside around Biggar. There’s a great butcher in Biggar, and we loaded up with local produce for our next stopover (Fort William) with our son, Alfie, who’s normally an outdoor activity instructor, but currently employed as groundsman at a baronial pile near Lochailort on the Ardnamurchan peninsular (‘Lochaber no more’).
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before reaching the Highlands, there’s the traverse of Glasgow on the mostly elevated M77 and M8 — this time, in the rain — spanning the Clyde on the Erskine Bridge, followed by the innumerable twists and turns up the west side of Loch Lomond after Tarbet. I spotted the entrance to a yacht club where, once upon a time, Antony Fraser and I had been taken out to dinner by local classic Porsche dealer, Tom Fitzsimmons of Balmaha-based Border Reivers.
We get to Tyndrum, where I’m reminded of a mad dash we made, en famille, aboard an Alfa Romeo 155 V6 (there’s a
clue as to how long ago it was) to spend Hogmanay at Portree on the Isle of Skye, when prevailing blizzards froze the snow on the wipers and it was so cold the heater refused to clear the windscreen. Now, it’s merely drizzling.
After Tyndrum, the landscape gets remote, the A82 hauling ever higher onto Rannoch Moor, which, by rights, ought to hold the award for the most dour and inhospitable terrain in the country. This wilderness morphs into the foreboding pass of Glen Coe, flanked by awesome soaring mountains, broken up by waterfalls plummeting from giddy heights (our boy actually goes climbing here). After Ballachulish bridge, it’s not so far to Fort William, where Alfie is billeted.
The Ben Nevis Inn at the foot of the eponymous mountain — where the trail starts from — provided a decent birthday dinner treat for him. Cullen skink, haggis and cranachan? Yum!
The following morning, I pointed the 986 northeast up the Great Glen towards Inverness. The stretch of A82 after Fort Augustus, running alongside Loch Ness, was deserted. Not a single car encountered, enabling me to monster the black-top and indulge in some vigorous driving through the swerves, serving to point up just what a fantastic car the 3.2-litre 986 Boxster S is, given its head.
Here’s where the story goes slightly awry. In genial discussions pre-trip with Northlink Ferries, who I would recommend unreservedly, Mrs T bought into an overnight crossing from Aberdeen to Orkney, complete with dogfriendly cabin and three-course dinner. During these negotiations, she’d been reminiscing about our 24-hour voyages to Santander in the good old days, and got carried away, because although the Aberdeen ferry does indeed go to Orkney, it takes a mere six hours to get there, while the daylong voyage gets you to Shetland. When this oversight came to light at Aberdeen’s port check-in, the ferry company kindly refunded the overnight cabin, though Ferdi was confined to a kennel. At least we still enjoyed our dinner watching dive-bomber gannets and hungry gulls fishing. More next month.