Caledonia

In my Blog ‘Scotland The Brave’ a few days ago I outlined the North Coast 500 route, and I set out a few facts and figures around the overall challenge that our Ride & Stride venture is about to embark upon. Today, for some further flavour of our intended exertions, I thought that a quick run-through of the first three days of our itinerary might heighten interest in our quest, albeit at the risk of injecting more anticipatory anxiety amongst the R&S participants! But rest assured, that whilst things may not turn out entirely as proposed, then at least we are starting out with some kind of plan!

We set off on our quest on Tuesday next, 6 September, when most of the team will fly up to Inverness. We will pick up our minibus and meet up with Phil, as he is driving to Scotland in the camper-van that is to be our second support vehicle. After making our way to the Aye Stay B&B to collect our various bits, bobs and thoughts, we then plan to adjourn to Bella Italia in order to stock up on carbs.

The real fun starts after breakfast on Wednesday as the cyclists lead us off from Inverness Castle, the generally-acknowledged start-point for the NC500, on the first sector of our journey. Taking a westerly route through the attractive red sandstone town of Beauly and passing the Glen Ord distillery, the riders will proceed to Garve and then through some remote landscapes en route to their eventual goal of Craig. According to the plan, the cyclists will have covered around 55 miles, and something over 700 cumulative metres of ascent before handing over to the runners, (and walker!) for the final 10 miles into Lochcarron. Here, after travelling a joint 66 miles and 850 metres of ascent we should get our first views of the waters of the west coast.

Since we started planning our R&S challenge, the steep climb over the 626 metre high Bealach na Ba (Pass of the Cattle) at the start of Day 2 has preoccupied the cyclists more than any other section of the NC500 route. The ascent is notorious in cycling communities, involving some prolonged steep sections up to an awesome 17% of climb! The corresponding descent into Applecross, our most westerly point of the trip, looks equally hazardous to me but I guess it will come as something of a relief to our two-wheeled team! Eventually I take over on an undulating walking section before the runners bring the team home to our overnight destination on Loch Maree. In total today we should cover around 62 miles and well over 2,000 metres of ascent.

Assuming that everyone recovers from the exertions of the previous 24 hours, Day 3 poses some further significant challenges to the team as our route turns northwards along the lochs of the west coast. The runners lead off for the first 10 miles, then I have a remote walking section of similar distance up to Poolewe, where the cyclists take over. Once again our friends on the bikes will have their work cut out in pedalling around 50 miles with 1,100 metres of cumulative climb. By the time we arrive in Ullapool at the end of our third day we will have travelled an aggregate of nearly 200 miles and around 4,700 metres of ascent. These first three days mark the most difficult third of our route, and if we get this far still in fair condition then we will certainly be celebrating at our overnight accommodation in the Ceilidh Place!

Incidentally I love the quirkiness of the convention that I seem to be following, of stating distances in miles (imperial) and ascents in metres (metric). I’m not sure if this is just the way my mind works in the context of our unique culture or whether any others out there are on the same page? At any rate I am sure that one of us will be compiling all the statistics around our efforts, and certainly I will be posting plenty of photos in my Blog each day once our journey begins. It will be interesting to see how accurate our plans and forecasts prove!

I will conclude today by thanking everyone once again for supporting our three charities – Cancer Research UK, Mind and Parkinson’s UK. We had a Ride & Stride team meeting on Tuesday evening after our fundraising passed the original goal of £6,000, and we have decided to raise our target to £9,000! This is thanks to all of you who are backing our journey, and our appreciation is of course matched by that from the three charities. Thank you all.

‘Caledonia, you’re calling me . . .’ So say the lyrics for today’s song, a modern folk ballad penned by Dougie MacLean in 1977. Caledonia is of course the Latin word for Scotland, and this short anthem seems appropriate given our Ride & Stride destination amongst the Highlands and Islands. There have been many cover versions of the song, and the one that I am favouring on my playlist is by Scottish singer-songwriter Amy Macdonald – a ‘bonus track’ off some editions of her 2007 debut album ‘This Is The Life’ (all of the other tracks on this album are either jointly- or self-composed).