Laggan Locks to Inverness and home
I remember from long walks that the third or fourth day marks a transition: the sore bits hurt but the body adapts. This morning we both woke up sore: the neck and back, the wrists. Breakfast was enormous and we stoked our engines as best we could. Our hosts packed us enormous lunches. (See? Enormous. Enormous lunch bags with enormous sandwiches.) I found the barrel nut on Eleanor’s derailleur and gave it a prudent counter-clockwise twist so that she would regain the use of her lowest gear.
The teacher from Michigan was away a few minutes before us, but we clipped our bags onto the bicycles and were away soon after 9:00 AM. We knew we had to make our train in Fort William around 5:30. Even though that was a generous amount of time for the distance we had to cover, it was still an intimidating limit—–a broken bicycle or a collapse of morale and we would be stuck in Fort William looking for a place to stay and new reservations home. The short stretch of the A82 by Laggan Locks was the last unpleasant traffic we had to negotiate (though as it happened, we met the A82 again much later…) and we were quickly onto forestry roads along Loch Lochy. I had studied the map quite carefully and knew that this stretch of our journey involved short, steep rises and falls along a dirt track. We cycled up past a farm and looked back down onto Laggan Locks and ahead along the Great Glen.
To the left, several imposing peaks loomed over us. The trail rose gently into Clunes Forest. The road dipped sharply and rose up where a utility crew were working on a microwave relay—we lost our momentum for the rise and hopped off to pick our way gingerly around their conduits and wires laid out along the track. They looked at us rather strangely as we pressed on up the track, which rose steadily further and further into the forest. Even though Eleanor did have her lowest gear again, this was still not good. We were leaving the loch behind, and the trail continued to rise, and I began to wonder if I had made a wee mistake. There was almost no signal on the mobile but between the Sustrans map, Bikemap, and Google Maps it was clear that we were not on the right path. I remembered that our hosts the night before—–quick learners, given that they had only just moved up from Cromer—–had mentioned a fork in the path, with one fork leading up to the Munros above. We studied the maps, considered the evidence, and turned around.
We bounced our way back down the track to where the utility workers gave us a dour look. Sure enough, just past their vehicles in the dip was a fork, clearly marked. NCN78 went down; the path to the Munros went up. Now on the right path, we rose and fell through the aromatic woods. The path was as good as a forestry track could be. There were plenty of holes and puddles, and in one area the track was unhelpfully muddy and mucky from a working forestry crew. There were a few bits where the loose surface and the steep slope had us walking again, but the mad bouncy downhills (ouch! Puddle!) were gleeful and the long meanders by Loch Lochy were peaceful. We were both riding more efficiently and easily than we had two days before, pacing ourselves on the hills and working with the variable surface of the track. When we stopped to consult our progress, we were startled to see how far we had come. The rest of Clunes forest rolled past us, up and down the small hills, the last hard riding we would enjoy.
The forest track ended at Bunarkaig. We ate a bit of sandwich on the bridge. A sign said, No Fishing: High Voltage Line, which had not deterred someone from leaving a decorative lure on the wires. By the bridge was the only old house, comfortable stone nestled into the curve of the river. Newer houses sat above and below the road as we pedalled onwards, including one large architectural mistake that would have looked right at home in the embarrassingly overdone concrete houses of Kathmandu’s migrant workers. We were back on tarmac but this was a very quiet B-road. We climbed gradually up the hillside, wondering when we would see Gairlochy. Below us we could see Loch Lochy closing off at its end, and the beginning of the canal. Suddenly the road dropped and we practically fell into Gairlochy. We crossed the canal and set off on the penultimate stage of our journey, down the canal towards Neptune’s Ladder.
As easy as the canal path was, it was also boring riding. Here and there the canal flowed right over tributaries of its parent river far below. At one such aqueduct we stopped to eat the last fig. The figs had proved so powerful a restorative that I offered it with great ceremony to Eleanor, who received it with equal gravity. We had some cashews and an apple. A kingfisher shot past us like a sapphire hurled from a sling. We set off again, determined to keep up a respectable pace. Eleanor proposed a game and we rolled along calling out discoveries of natural things: a primrose, a holly, a honeysuckle, a duck. We passed more walkers, and then saw our old friends the kilted walkers from Johnstone. With a hullo! we rode by and were suddenly at Neptune’s Ladder. We drifted down the ladder then around in a peculiar loop and back down the canal.
From there we followed NCN 78 as it wandered around Fort William trying to get to the railway station. This included what was easily the most difficult passage of the entire ride. At a key point NCN 78, now on a road, follows the road up onto an overpass then right at the crest requires you to stop, cross the road, and then (because the cycle ramp has collapsed) carry your fully laden bicycle (and your daughter’s, too!) down a very steep and long flight of stairs. The staff at the railway station, who clearly love their cyclists and cycling, were sympathetic. Apparently this has been frustrating NCN 78 riders for an entire year, and had not yet repaired for the new season. It would seem that Fort William is less interested in maintaining NCN 78 than many of the smaller communities and estates along the glen—I hope that gets fixed soon.
From there, though, it’s easy: a bridge alongside the railway, a short ride through a housing development and there you are at Fort William railway station. We arrived at 14:15, with 3 1/2 hours to spare. I collected out tickets along with the news that there had been a landslip and the train was to be replaced with a coach from Crianlarich. We were both surprised at how quickly the last day had gone.
The station staff very kindly offered to watch the bicycles for us. The cyclemania at Fort William railway station runs deep: at least one staff member was cheerily looking forwards to riding the Loch Ness Etape, including—we checked, with some disbelief—specifically looking forward to cycling up the absurdly steep hill from Fort Augustus that we had plummeted down. Relieved of our steeds, we went across the road to the same cafe (Cobbs) where her mother and I had eaten 14 years earlier. As a souvenir, a gift brought by the travellers returning home, we bought Bhāvanā a beautiful solitary writer’s teapot in honour of the hard, hard writing she has been doing.
When we returned to the station there, amazingly, were the Kilted Walkers again, and the station rapidly filled up with any number of walking parties with packs and sticks. We were the only cyclists, oddly, but we were still glad to have reservations. When the train pulled out of the station it ran slowly—one of the engines had broken—and we were well over 30′ late coming into Crianlarich. Getting the cycles and all our kit onto the coach was a palaver, and poor Eleanor, who does not like coaches at the best of times, had to endure a windy coach ride on the same A82 down Loch Lomond. We arrived at Glasgow Queen Street with just enough time to make our train home to Aberdeen. As ever—the travelling you do yourself, whether by foot or bicycle, is free of stress and full of learning. As much as I love rail travel, it so often collapses into another miserable coach ride!
And so we are on the train now, almost home: our last ride will be through Aberdeen at night, from the railway station home.