The Cycle Path
Cycle Log
Day 16 - Sunday 4th July 2004
Inverness to Carbisdale
Early to rise and leave by 6. Only travelled 50 yards when the front mudguard bolt dropped off. Made a temporary fix and ground on through quiet Inverness and over the A9 bridge cycleway on the alert for every fragment of broken bottle glass...presents from passing drivers. It rained steadily until the turn off towards Rosemarkie on the tiniest of roads, sadly up a hill with the wind in my face. However the summit presented due reward...chanterelles under an avenue of beech trees. The leafy lane providing both shelter and a speedy descent to the main road. At Munlochy encountered some fabulous artwork outside the primary school with pictures of teachers and pupils painted onto and into the lettering of the school name...brilliantly conceived and executed! Further on found horse mushrooms the size of dinner plates by the wayside. Reached Rosemarkie in a pause in the rain sufficient to butter some rolls and eat with my Orkney cheese. Stopped by the Pictish museum building (shut) then ascended a long, long hilll before a blissful freewheel to Cromarty. Paid due homage at the house of Hugh Miller (shut) who was one of the so-called 'fathers' of British geology and a friend of nature tempered by stubborn religious zeal. Nice feel to the place and a lot of the houses are of conservation grade. Found an absolutely splendid new restaurant/coffee shop advertising its fresh local food by leaving a big basket of chanterelles by the front door. Intrigued I entered and had a friendly, helpful reception although too early for lunch. Look out for the Souter Creek (www.soutercreek.co.uk) near the harbour with its own hand built proper pizza oven which uses off cuts from the local kiln dried timber merchants as fuel. It's an enterprising cooperative and I really hope it prospers.
There was trouble at the harbour and an empty ramp that should have been squarely occupied by the Cromarty to Nigg ferry indicated either no ferry or a poorly one. An Irish family hoping to cross said there's been no ferries at all today...trouble with the hydraulic ramp. Not the news I wanted to hear as the alternative was a 50 mile crescent shaped trip to Tain along the way I'd already travelled. A white haired old lady foot passsenger anxious about meeting her daughter on the Nigg side went off to speak with the ferrymen. Before long they appeared chugging towards us in their busy little bee of a boat: we all cheered; saddled up; turned our ignition keys; hoisted our skirts ready to embark...clang, whirr, bonk. The ferrymen started doing throat cutting signals from the bridge...it looked bad and off they went again. White haired lady and I decided we would commandeer a fishing boat if need be and the Irish decided to turn round and go. Then 10 minutes later back it came, jauntily waggled its ramp at us and we all piled on board...one old lady, a bloke on a bike and now two vehicles. That was the payload. Throbbing across the bottle neck sized piece of water the whole vista of the oil rigs of Nigg became clear; at least 6 of them neatly spaced in a line from just outside the bay to its furthest inland corner. Nigg itself was messy with huge cranes, giant sheds and oil storage but very few people at work. A dream gone bad. Had lunch out of the headwind at Fearn Station with the station cat but no passengers and eerily no trains...like a Will Hay filmset. At Tain tried to find the sixteen men but I think they had gone to the Coop supermarket where alcohol sales were booming after the 12.30 Sunday 'watershed'. Picked up a bottle of Black Isles Brewery 'Yellowhammer' beer then stuck to the edge of the Dornoch Firth like draft excluder all the way to Ardgay. In the utilitarian village space there is a massive boulder of pure white quartz like a giant mint imperial; it probably weighs a ton or more. A small plaque describes how the stone was formerly carried by local people from place to place to mark their next market! They must have been superhuman or mad...why not just stick up a flag? I marvelled at this prodigiously quirky effort of local identity. Culrain woodlands were full of chanterelles and ceps so by Carbisdale Castle SYHA I had a bulging dinner bag. But by 6pm I was wrapped up in a duvet desperately trying to stave off the rigors whilst running a massive temperature. Only two hours later did I emerge well enough to eat my fungi with some nice teachers from Barra and wondering what had hit me. In the shower I found out...a nasty little tick behind the left knee. A blob of Deep Heat to smother his pores would cause him to withdraw his mouth parts buried under my skin... but what had I contracted in the meantime? That night the mythological pythons of Greece beat the Portuguese St Georges in the Euro Cup Final.
