Take the High road
Savvas Eleftheriades drinks in Highland sights (and whisky) on a cycling tour
Freewheeling down a steep, winding, four-mile descent on an empty mountain road, I feel like I’m in the Tour de France. My cycle computer tells me I’m edging towards 40mph.
The landscape is breathtaking with jagged mountains tumbling down to brilliant rock-strewn streams and I’ve got a huge smile on my face. This is everything I imagined my cycling holiday in Scotland would be, and more.
The trip is the brainchild of my friend Dickie, who is a keen cyclist, a whisky aficionado and Scottish. The idea is to take the sleeper train to Fort William and cycle in a big loop around the western Highlands and Islands taking in some distilleries, eating great food and ending up at Inverness a week later to get the sleeper train home.
Our group of middle-aged men in Lycra soon expands to six, which was convenient because that is the maximum number of bikes you can book onto the sleeper train.
So one Sunday evening in June we set off from London’s Euston station with our bikes safely stowed in the train’s special racks and woke the next day to find ourselves trundling through Scottish mountains. The adventure has begun.
Day 1: Fort William to Oban – 50 miles, 2,000ft of climbing
We cycle down to the little harbour at Fort William and take the smallest ferry ever across Loch Eil so we can avoid the busy A82. Our bikes are tied to the roof and the cabin worryingly smells of diesel but we cross in one piece and we set off on a quiet back road south, taking in the wild flowers and enjoying the lack of cars. We reach the Corran Ferry and cross over the loch again to continue to our first lunch stop, pausing for a photo opportunity at Castle Stalker, built on an island in Loch Linnhe and one of the locations for Monty Python And The Holy Grail.
Lunch at the Creagan Inn at Appin sets the tone. We eat the freshest oysters and mussels while sitting right on the loch where they have been caught. After lunch, we continue along winding mountain roads, climbing 2,000ft before dropping down into the beautiful