Blown away

As Beck’s latest post alludes to, we’ve been having a bit of a rest. In fact, we planned to leave to head south yesterday but the wind (and rain) kept us hemmed in. Our ferry was cancelled—which is saying something around these parts—so we stayed for a second full day at Lickisto Blackhouse Camping. It’s the perfect place for us with a nice communal space in a blackhouse and (wow!) so many nice folk. We really loved our time there, chatting and chilling.

We needed a bit of that after two days that were rather taxing. Let’s be clear, we have been very lucky with the weather during our trip but the last two days have been quite full on. We’ve faced a good dose of rain but also some really wild winds. Gusts that come out of nowhere to force us sideways off the road, even on our stupidly heavy touring bikes. This eventually ended in a mini disaster. Here’s how the two days before arriving at Lickisto went…

Day 1

We started at a beautiful spot and soon saw a golden eagle. On the flip side, the downhills had become uphills, with us having to change down through our gears and pedal hard whatever the gradient. Then things took a turn for what you might call a ‘surreal comedy’. We spotted a nice spot just down from the road for lunch with a bridge we could sit either side of to give us a nice flat surface to cook on. We walked down through gorgeous thick grasses and set up our chairs. As I sat down the rear legs of my chair fell through the bridge and I catapulted the entire bag of cookware into the water. We rescued it after a while, opened the bag and started to shake water out of the various items. At this point we noticed that we were both covered in ticks. I had tens of ticks on each foot alone. It was like a scene from a horror movie with them fanning out across our clothes and skin. We rushed back up onto the roadside and brushed everything down. By this point, we were hungry and more than a little frustrated. We ended up getting the stove going and ate by the roadside, leaving various bits of cookware out to dry. Right at the end of eating a huge truck passed at speed and many of our items were blown back into the tick-infested grass. You couldn’t make it up…

We finished the day rushing to an unusually ‘industrial’ camp spot in a lay-by, in an effort to beat the rain. We failed, getting caught in a serious downpour, really soaking us as we struggled to push tent pegs into the hard standing. All part of life on the road but we went to bed (after an extensive tick check) hoping for a better day the next day.

Day 2

The wind was up again but due to our foreshortened previous day we were able to go to a cafe in a garage for breakfast. They also had a decent shop and toilets. Win! We then rode into an increasingly fierce headwind for hours. We’ve not experienced winds like there were on the pass near An Clisean before. We battled on with one of us (Sam) finding it exhilarating and the other (Beck) finding it terrifying. Then came the mini disaster, when Beck was unable to remain upright on a descent, falling off on to the verge at a fair lick, hurting her knee and breaking another Ortlieb pannier clip. We need Suzie the Pannier Angel again! The first I heard of events was a driver stopping to tell me, “She has fallen off but she seems ok.”. Apparently, Beck had given him a thumbs up after her cockle but in reality she was rather shaken by it and has some grazes and bruises. After some deliberation, snacks, and roadside fixes (those reusable cable ties coming in handy again), we decided to carry on to camp. That also proved harder than hoped as we couldn’t find a spot for ages, got soaked, tried to set up the tent in high winds to no avail and eventually had to ride on much further than we would’ve liked. But we did find a great spot in the end.

Of course, each day also had many upsides. Some of which are touched upon above but we also wanted to give a special shout out to Gail and Sue who we met at the Pairc Raiders monument when we were about to head up it (the Canadian couple we chatted with were also great!). Gail and Susan were also riding laden bikes into that wind. We have thought about them a lot since as they seemed to have a more defined schedule than us, so maybe they had no choice but to carry on the past few days. Damn!

Following our tougher than usual couple of days, we decided to find a campsite and have a bit of rest. After the weather forced us to stay one more day, we were low on supplies (and nobody wants a Hangry Beck) so we rode into town yesterday morning to grab some groceries. We got a taste on the way back of what we would have cycled into if we had left yesterday morning. It was so intense. Exhilarating (Sam) and terrifying (Beck) in equal measure.

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This blogpost was brought to you from a calm tent on the isle of North Uist after a day that involved a lot more pedalling down hill…