We had breakfast with fine views of the most northerly Munro and promise of fine weather.
The wind had dropped to barely a flag wave and a pretty road along the lock took us up a wooded hillside. It was as though we had been transported south overnight or even a different planet, lush deciduous trees and broad green leaves. Such a contrast to the wind-scoured landscape of brown heather and tree-less landscape of the north west. I stopped in a lay-by to completely re-think my clothing for the day it had reached a tropical 14 degrees so I stripped off- not something I would normally consider on a main road but there was little more than a woman walking her dog and a delivery truck in the first hour of the A836 this morning.
Long slow climbs over ever flattening landscape gave great views back to the complex summit of Ben Loyal behind us and Caithness to the east ahead of us. We had joined the NCN 1 at Tongue, a route we would see a lot of in the coming weeks as it runs from the top of Shetland down to Dover. This is now a popular route for Land's End to John O'Groats (LEJOG) cyclists so as we near the last 50 miles to JOG I wondered how many of the smiling, waving motorists thought we were near our finish when we are yet to reach half way!
Our long decent to the small town of Bettyhill took as past the B871 which we will return and take in a few days, we stopped in the Bettyhill Cafe and reaffirmed the sensibility of this backtrack with the man running the tea room. Basically the Caithness coast from the top to Inverness only has one route, the A9, which is described as death road so we will come back down through the mountains instead.
We had lunch at Bettyhill and visited the Pictish Far stone before continuing to a warm welcome from Patsy at Sharvedda B&B on Strathy Point. We accepted the kind offer of a lift to Strathy Inn for a meal where we had good food and discussed the rights and wrongs of wind farms with The landlord and a Polish man who was here working on the new wind turbines.
Figures:
Distance:- 38.7 km
Cycle Time:- 3 hours 10 minutes
Average speed:- 12.1 kph
Total Distance:- 2794 km
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