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15 May 2008
It was a Thursday afternoon, and we were suddenly homeless. Homeless, and unemployed. We did not have a set of house keys. We did not have a job to go to the next day. In an age of global communications it was going to be difficult to disappear for very long, from many people, but we were going to try. It was going to be us, and a big BMW motorbike with yellow sides and a blue sports bag strapped to the back. Us, the bike, and the road.
Edinburgh was cold, as it almost always is, and it took an age to get down Corstorphine Road to the Forth Bridge. The traffic was heavy and we quickly realised that our test pack, and test ride, two weeks earlier had been hopelessly inadequate. Everything felt squashed. We were not going to make it, we and all our stuff did not fit on the bike. But then we were going over the water, feeling the wind whip around helmets and armoured sleeves, and the sky was grey and the fields on the other side were bright, bright yellow – and suddenly it felt like we were really on our way.
We stopped at the gigantic Tesco on the outskirts of Perth; we needed petrol, and something to eat. Toby walked around the bike, checking his straps and buckles and then – ‘the pannier’s burning,’ he says, and I look to where he’s pointing. So it is. The pannier had had a little incident involving a concrete block several weeks beforehand, and it was a little broken. Just a little, enough that when we put a bit of stuff in it and rode around the carpark at home, it was fine. And just enough that when we filled it with a weeks’ worth of clothing and shoes and then rode on the highway, the wind pushed it lower so it was right where the exhaust was releasing all its hot fumes. We had a hole in our pannier, a small hole with melted edges and a strong smell of burning plastic.
So we bought a Tesco sandwich and got some petrol and then set about trying to rearrange the pannier so it would be more flame-proof. To go back to Edinburgh and buy a new pannier? But where would we sleep? We have already said goodbye to our friends, and it always feels awkward to see someone again and have to go through the ritual for a second time. Accommodation is expensive. We are on our adventure, dammit. So we didn’t go back to Edinburgh, we left Perth and continued north through the magical Scottish countryside with its lakes and mountains and bright yellow fields of rapeseed until we reached Pitlochry, where we finally saw a camping sign on the highway and turned in. From the road it did not look like anything special; sterile caravans in shades of cream and beige sitting on flat concrete blocks, and not much else. But we perservered down the dirt track and were eventually rewarded by a girl from Western Australia in the office, who gave us a campsite for 9 pounds and sold us some sausages and a salad from their shop for dinner. There weren’t many people at the campsite; a couple of lone walkers, with their tiny triangular tents and pots of baked beans or soup for one, and a group of young people (I can say that, because they were younger than us), with hair dyed funny colours and not much clothes on, as though it was Australia in summer and not Scotland in spring. We cooked the sausages in our tiny frypan over our tiny gas stove, and drank a tiny bottle of Moet we’d saved from when we weren’t homeless or unemployed. We went to sleep feeling very pleased with ourselves, and only slightly worried about our pannier.
The next day dawned bright and sunny, and the young people continued to laze about on the grass with not much clothes on. We bought fresh milk from the shop once it opened, and ate our muesli and tea on the grass, and went for a walk along the riverbank. Still feeling very pleased with ourselves – we are awake, and being healthy and exercising, and today we will ride to Inverness, or further. And we really need to do something about that pannier. The day got hotter as it went on, and by the time we had the tent pulled down and the bike packed, we were both feeling rather hot and bothered. This wasn’t helped by packing the sports bag differently, just to experiment, and getting on to ride away only to realise that we were completely unbalanced and wouldn’t get very far like that. So we had to stop by the office again, strip off all our riding gear as it was so hot, and repack the bike. Of course being Scotland, by the time we were repacked and ready to go, the weather closed in again and we were suddenly chilly and wishing we’d worn warmer clothes. This is part of the magic of Scotland, the way it is part of the fun of Melbourne or a person with a split personality. You just never know. So we rode to Inverness, feeling the chill as we entered the highlands, and got rained on, because that’s what happens in Scotland, and got hungry enough to just stop by the side of the highway to eat our tuna and bread rolls standing up in the light drizzle.
Just before we got into Inverness we saw a tourist information office, where we asked for campsite suggestions and to use their phone book to find a bike shop. The woman gave us two addresses, although the man thought one had shut down ‘a while ago’, and off we went. The man was right, the shop was long gone. So we continued through town, which looked quite nice really, and then along the shore of the lake, and I was just starting to think we must have somehow missed it when there is was. A bike dealership on the edge of the lake; surely the best location in the world. They sold us some soft panniers and let us throw the melted one into their skip; I also had to throw out my thongs as one of them was now half the size. This is what happens when rubber thongs get too hot, apparently. We sat in their carpark, repacking our panniers and feeling rather relieved – if a little poorer – now that we didn’t have to worry so much about melting plastic anymore.
Feeling quite pleased with ourselves again, we decided to head to the Black Isle to find somewhere to camp for the night. We found one campsite, a narrow strip of land between road and water with nothing really to set it apart – no trees, no hedges, no walls. Just the grass. There was also no people evident, although there was a small mobile home that could have been an office. The door opened and an old lady told us it would cost 12 pounds for the night. I am not sure why, even now, but the whole place gave me a funny feeling like we might wake up minus a kidney, and I just didn’t want a funny feeling on my big adventure, so we said we might be back.
We weren’t back, because we couldn’t find anywhere else to camp and then we couldn’t find a petrol station and then we were feeling a bit tired and fragile so we decided to treat ourselves to a B & B. At the old-fashioned petrol station, so old-fashioned the petrol was put in the bike by an old man wearing grey overalls, we were given directions to a nearby hotel that sounded easy enough, but weren’t.
There was a B & B on the main road that went from village to village along the Isle, one of those double storied houses where the steps to the front door lead down from the footpath and there is no space between road and house. The guy who ran it was outside when we pulled up; he was very apologetic and told us he couldn’t really take any guests as he was selling the property and had an inspection in a few minutes. I was annoyed that he didn’t have a ‘no vacancy’ sign up somewhere, and annoyed that I’d been so adamant about not staying in the creepy campsite, but we decided we would try to find something else closer in to town. While standing by the bike making this decision, the guy came back from the house to say he’d spoken with ‘the boss’ (we later realised he meant his wife), who had said that as long as we weren’t around when the inspection was on, we could stay the night. A bargain at 25 pounds. Each. He acted like he was doing us a favour, tired and frustrated as we were, although thinking about it later (when we weren’t so tired), we realised we were actually doing him a favour by agreeing to leave the house for a period of time, and surely they could have done us a discount for that inconvenience. But it was too late by then. He told us the other guy staying was a student; he was a driving instructor who had people stay with him for ‘intensive’ week long courses to get their licenses. Privately we agreed this was a ridiculous notion, and Toby with his own driving instructor’s hat on was particularly amused by this business, but we didn’t say anything to the man about the appropriateness of his courses. We put our bags in a downstairs room that felt a lot like a room you find at grandparents’ houses, full of odd bits of furniture like old high chairs and record players that have nowhere else to go. But the bed was big and soft, covered in a surprisingly modern patterned white doona, and the bathroom was clean, so we were happy enough. We got changed and went to one of the two options in town for dinner, a pub up the road where everyone looked up when you went in, just like in the movies, although I was used to it since I’d gone in earlier to ask for directions to the petrol station.
We ate gigantic steak and ale pies and piles of chips while listening to the Eagles’ Greatest Hits and feeling like slight failures after our tedious, frustrating afternoon of driving up and down the Black Isle looking for campsites and petrol. We returned to the B & B just as the potential buyers were leaving, so we could finally get into our room and watch the TV which was one of those old bulky ones on its own little stand. That room was like a time warp, although we were to see worse on our travels.
Breakfast was served up a small staircase in a room on street-level, which looked like it had been a pub at one point, albeit with a nautical theme; the glass panel in the door was advertising some kind of brew and there were various ships in bottles and other paraphernalia around as well. In one corner was a disco ball and a gigantic stereo set up; I asked the guy who told me his wife was a karaoke fiend and were we big karaoke fans? We told him we’d dabbled once in Japan, and were sorry to have missed what looked like a great party, because you should never insult the wife of the man who is about to cook your breakfast. It was a decent breakfast, although the ‘tomatoes’ that came with my scrambled eggs were actually little red balls from a can that had been heated up. I suppose it wasn’t really tomato season, nor would it ever be tomato season on the Black Isle, but still it was a little odd. We felt very civilised though, what with sitting at a table drinking tea out of proper cups and eating warm buttered toast – a far cry from eating your muesli standing up in the outdoors, out of a blue plastic bowl.
After breakfast we packed up the room and then asked the guy if it would be okay for us to continue using his carpark while we sorted out our bike. Luckily he said it was, so we set about organising our soft panniers and doing some bike maintenance as well. We weren’t sure what to do about our hard pannier, the one that hadn’t burnt; it was worth a lot of money and still perfectly use-able. In the end I went to the post office down from the B & B, and the guy there helped me put stickers straight on the plastic to send the pannier down south to Margaret’s. It only cost 9 pounds so it seemed a better option than putting it in the bin. I also went to the hardware shop (for such a small village we were lucky the B & B was in a stretch of buildings that included these shops, open on Saturday) to buy a hacksaw to fix the rack on the bike. I returned it a few minutes later, once we were done with it; hopefully the guy will be honest with the next person who needs a hacksaw for ten minutes, and let them use it rather than buy a new one (even though it only cost 3 pounds, which was a bargain).
After all that drama, we were ready to hit the road again so off we went in hunt of Nessie. The monster, that is. We had lived in Scotland for eight months by this point and still had not seen Loch Ness, so it was high on our list of priorities. The countryside around there was fantastic so it was a great ride back through the Black Isle and down to the loch, and we stood on the banks looking for a hint of tail, but alas there was no Nessie to be seen. We were very glad to have seen it in the end, although we agreed that Loch Lomond was a far more spectacular setting. Toby’s theory is that the monster is an invention by the local tourist office to lure people away from the majesty of Loch Lomond and up to the relative ordinariness of Loch Ness. He is a cynical man sometimes.
After Loch Ness we headed westwards to the Isle of Skye, and if we thought we’d had good riding up to that point, we had a surprise in store. Approaching the bridge to Skye the scenery became dark, and tall, and menacing; it was very easy to imagine armies of Celts and Vikings spilling down the rocky hillsides and splashing through the streams, yelling and brandishing their weapons. We found a campsite by a lake near the village of Dunvegan, which was almost deserted. The guy in the office, once he found out we were Australian, asked if we were in the area to do family research. I said no, although ‘my mother is a McKinnon,’ I said, and his eyes widened. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Skye’s just crawling with McKinnons, I’m sure you’d meet a relative or two.’ Then he said he shouldn’t make assumptions about Australians and their connections to Skye because he’d once asked an Aussie guy the same question only to be told, ‘Well that would be a bit silly since all my relatives are in Croatia.’
The memorable thing about Skye is the amount of light they get up there. We would eat dinner in clear daylight, and at bed time would put eye masks on since otherwise it would be impossible to sleep in the light tent. The first night I needed earplugs as well since there was a group of middle-aged men on a kayaking trip who set up later in the afternoon, and they sat around all night drinking and talking. In truth, they weren’t that loud and it probably wasn’t all night; it’s just when you’re in a tent, everything is loud. And when you’re trying to sleep, it feels like it’s all night. The other thing about Skye was it was cold at night. I slept in my thermals (pants and shirt), plus a jumper, plus my explorer socks and my fuzzy neck thing I wear on the bike, and to snowboard. I don’t think I needed a beanie, but it was still the most dressed I have been for bed since an Outdoor Ed trip to Wee Jasper in Year 10, when I did need a beanie. The days were warmer though; sometimes warm enough to get down to a T shirt, although you would need a jumper on hand for the cool change which was likely to come any minute.
Another thing we enjoyed about Skye (and riding through Scotland in general) was the fact it was springtime and all the baby animals were just finding their feet. Skye in particular was full of baby lambs and we spent a lot of time watching them playing and figuring out how to be sheep. They had a lot of personality and this was around the time I started thinking about being a vegetarian; all of a sudden lamb just didn't seem that appetising anymore.
We decided to take a day off in Skye and just stay put, so we asked a different guy in the office about walks in the local area and although Toby was tempted by the four-hour ‘mountain’ walk he suggested, due to lack of equipment (and food) we decided to stick to the easy ‘two churches’ walk instead. On the way we stopped by the small general store where we’d bought our dinner the night before, but being Sunday and almost the end of the earth, it was closed. We managed to get some water and muesli bars from the petrol station and headed off on our walk of the two churches, the idea being to start at the ruins of the old village church and walk through some fields and what-not to the new village church. The best part of this walk was the beginning, with the ruins of the old church sitting in an overgrown cemetery. Even though it was the old church they had continued to put stones and plaques up for different families and clan chiefs; I didn’t even know they still had clan chiefs, but apparently they do. I found one McKinnon grave which was actually one of the sadder ones, put up by a male McKinnon in memory of his wife, who had died in October of 1925, and his daughter, who had died in December of the same year, aged six months. After the church ruins you walked through some fields and down a country path and then along a headland, looking out to sea, which is where we stopped and ate our snacks. The scenery changed again for the next part of the walk, when it turned into dark woods with dried pine needles on the floor and a distinct Narnia feel about it. We kept our eyes out for deer, the way tourists in Australia look for koalas, but unfortunately there was none to be seen. We came out again into sunlight by the new church, which was built sometime in the 1800s. It looked very new though, with its straight white walls and clean stained-glass windows. We didn’t go in; as it was Sunday there were people milling about in their nice clothes so it didn’t seem right for us to go blundering through in our shorts and sneakers. We saw a sign for Dunvegan Castle up the road so decided to follow that; unfortunately when we finally got to the gate we realised you had to pay to see the castle AND its grounds, and we just weren’t willing to do that, so back to town. There weren’t many options for a cheap lunch so we bought baked beans and some ‘long life’ bread rolls from the petrol station and took them back to the campsite. I think it’s safe to say that was the worst meal we had on the whole trip; after reading the ingredients list on the bread rolls and finding that it contained ethanol and some kind of acid, Toby refused to eat any and I threw mine out when it was half finished. Oh, and we were trying to conserve gas (it was very windy on Skye and we didn’t have a windshield yet, so just boiling the water for tea was using up a lot) so we had the baked beans cold, straight from the can. Yes, that was the worst meal.
We left Skye the next morning and headed south, via Glen Coe which was very, very chilly but incredibly gorgeous. The exciting thing that happened on that ride was we saw the new Knight Rider car being driven incredibly slowly on the highway. Well, I didn’t realise it was KITT of course, I just noticed a black car with American plates that looked like it should have been going faster than it was. But Toby was most excited. We stopped in Fort William for lunch and ordered burgers from a takeaway in the main shopping strip. The lady serving me asked if I wanted salad, and I thought well there’s salad on the burgers so I don’t think we need more, so no thankyou. Of course once we’d taken them back to the park and opened them, I realised she was asking if we wanted any salad at all. So we had slabs of meat and cheese between two bits of bread.
From Fort William we headed into the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park to find somewhere to stay the night. We decided on Tyndrum, which was just inside the park border, and asked at the tourist office for accommodation. We saw an ad for a campsite nearby that had wigwams for rent so thought that looked like fun, and a bit easier than putting up the tent again. The campsite was actually a farm a bit out of town, where we could camp in a paddock for 12 pounds or get a wigwam for 25. We decided on the wigwam, which was essentially just a tiny cabin with two gym mats on the floor, but there was a heater and a little window so it was quite cosy and a bit more comfortable than a tent. The meal we had that night was one of the best; they had a kitchen you could use, as well as a farm shop, so we ate pork and venison sausages with some vegetables off proper plates, sitting at a table. We sat up late that night doing laundry and chatting to a man from Glasgow who was walking to Fort William with some mates to raise money for a hospice. It never mattered how brave we felt for camping on a motorbike, we would always meet someone who made us feel like we had taken a pretty easy route. We paid for his laundry as a donation to the cause.
The next day we had a lovely ride through the national park and past Loch Lomond, even though it was quite slow at times as we got stuck behind lorries and the UK doesn’t believe in double carriageways. We arrived in Dunfermline that afternoon and got some directions for camping from a friendly old man in the tourist information office. Unfortunately, they weren’t very good directions, or else he hadn’t actually been to the campsite he suggested, because we ended up at a narrow bit of grass next to a lake, mostly taken up by caravans. The owner wasn’t there but some other guy who I’m sure was a guest but seemed quite knowledgeable pointed up the hill so a bit of grass next to the road and said that was where the tents went. Being introverts, we like our privacy and this just wasn’t what we wanted. Toby called in a favour from when he let me veto the campsite on the Black Isle, and said he didn’t want to stay there. So around we rode, looking for other options and wishing we weren’t so picky. It all turned out okay in the end though, when we followed a random sign up a long road and ended up camping in the grounds of a castle. We were the only campers there; our little orange dome looking very lonely in the middle of the flat green field. But they had a wee shop where we could buy noodles for dinner, and a book exchange, and another group of Australians who looked like they were about to invite us to dinner, as though we’d have something to talk about. It was a good place to end our little tour through Scotland.
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