Ride the crazy Applecross road
One of Scotland’s best passes will challenge your skills, while its scenery will leave you spellbound
‘It’s one of our most famous, or infamous, biking roads’
As I took off my helmet to have a drink, I could see Michael the photographer looking around, drinking in the scenery. Behind us and several hundred feet below, sun flashed on the surface of the loch. Ahead, giant granite cliffs loomed on each side of an ever-narrowing valley, framing the road that scaled the heights in a series of zig-zag traverses. Above us, a perfect and cloudlessly hot blue sky. “Man, this reminds me of Qua-Zulu Natal,” the South African snapper said. I nearly choked on my water… “It’s not always like this,” I told him. “Yeah, but when it is, is there anywhere better in Britain for riding a bike?” he asked. I shook my head: at that moment, I couldn’t think of a finer location. We’d stopped about three miles into the climb up the Bealach na Bà, the pass of the cattle, the road to Applecross. It’s one of Scotland’s most famous – or infamous – biking roads. It was always the most demanding part of the Wester Ross
Coastal Trail before being incorporated into the North Coast 500, attracting even more visitors.
A couple of factors combine to make it a tough road to ride. There’s the basic topography: 11 miles of steeply climbing and falling terrain that can be crossed only by a road that twists and turns with the contours, studded with hairpins in the steeper sections.
The road itself is a challenge even without the steep, tight turns. It’s seriously narrow, with passing places as it’s not wide enough even for a bike to overtake a car. The edges often fall away into nothing – stopping to put your foot down outside a passing place can be a real heart-in-mouth moment. On top of which, the surface is far from great: bumpy, polished, patchy and gravelly. In the wet, it’s a nightmare. Which brings us to the weather. Everyone comes to Applecross hoping for a blue-sky day… but at an exposed 626m on a peninsula that juts out into the North Atlantic, summer here can still see misty fog, rain and even sleet. Michael and I got a sunny day because we’d both been on standby for three weeks, waiting for the forecast to be just right. Two weeks later, a colleague who was there for another mag, was left sitting in his photographer’s car inside what appeared to be a marshmallow, with zero visibility. Then there’s the traffic – which
‘Experience 11 miles of steeply climbing and falling terrain
has become much heavier since the launch of the NC500 in 2015 – ironically, at the time I was there with Michael. The traffic can make or break your run over the pass. I’ve ridden it at least once a year since the early 2000s (apart from 2019 and 2020) and it’s fair to say there’s been more and more traffic on each successive visit – with dramatically more in both 2017 and 2018.
When I first started visiting Applecross, you might meet the occasional local and a handful of other bikes on the pass. Now the chances are there will be at least a couple of camper vans and cars full of daytrippers going in each direction. If you get stuck behind an ignorant one (as most seem to be) and they don’t stop in a passing place to let you overtake, it can be cheek-chewingly frustrating. But if they just drive straight towards you without using the passing places, it can be downright dangerous.
All of which might make you wonder why you’d do it… And it’s because we’re all optimists at heart. We all hope for that blue sky day, for that quiet mid-week run with little traffic, for the pure Applecross experience. And it because when it does all come together, as you carve through this glorious landscape on this most demanding and rewarding of roads, that’s when you know: there really isn’t a better place in Britain for riding a bike.