If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know what I know. hate cycling. But being the award-winning idiot I am, I have embarked on three multi-day cycling adventures across mountainous terrain.
In 2017, Edita had the bright idea to quit her job and bike to the summit of Chimborazo, the furthest point from the center of the Earth at sea level (we didn't actually ride our bikes all the way – we got off our bikes and climbed). last bit). I turned that adventure into a book, Chimborazo's feet and wheelsThis is without a doubt The funniest book ever written Two people cycled from sea level to the summit of Chimborazo and got off their bikes for the final climb.
One of the biggest logistical challenges we faced was that we barely sat on our bikes because mullets were trending and Bon Jovi was high on the charts. So I hired a pair of push bikes and North Coast 500 Cycling (or NC500) As a warm-up, I use the back roads of northwest Scotland as my travel route up and down (and up and down a few more times). This extraordinary journey of discovery formed an important central part of my book.
we I didn't make much of a plan. Instead of renting two bikes with panniers from Ticket to Ride in Inverness for the trip, I went shopping to my local Decathlon store for a Lycra clothing set. (I found out that it's actually completely legal to ride a bike in casual clothes), with a copy of the 1:250,000 OS Roadmap of the North of Scotland as my trousers. We had no idea how far we would be able to ride our bikes each day, so we planned a loose itinerary based on bringing our tent and having fun at the campsite every evening.
A long time ago, 2017, There wasn't much information about the NC500., and almost all of them were aimed at people with cars (I was surprised to learn that many locals despised the NC500 due to the number of camper vans brought into the neighborhood each summer). The only guidebooks I could find were e-books available for download from the so-called NC500 Official Website™. The guidebook's willingness to describe the bumpier parts of the route as 'almost flat' led to a violent incident involving my Kindle and the bike pump. Websites that mentioned NC500 cycling focused on Mark Beaumont's famous 38-hour circuit, which was as useful to me as Graeme Obree's instruction manual for assembling a bike in a washing machine.
Imagine my excitement when I was contacted by Cicerone's marketing team earlier this year and asked to send them their copy. new guidebook Everything, yeah North Coast 500 Cycling. Of course, as someone who enjoys riding a bike as much as a flat tire, the odds of me ever going down that road again are about as high as Taylor Swift's support of Trump for president. But I was definitely interested in reading a guidebook about it.
I love this book by author Mike Wells incredibly useful One of the first questions we faced at that time was route choice. The biggest problem is that we don't realize we have a choice. The route was a route and, apart from the opening section across the country to reach the west coast from Inverness, we assumed we would simply follow all the little roads around all the rippling headlands and hug the coast as closely as possible.
The Cicerone guidebook offers several. alternative route, the most monumental part being the one across the northeast corner. The map has a single thick green line along the coast from John o'Groats to Golspie. It begins relatively quietly as the A99 transforms into a busy A9 and passes through some of the most soul-destroying places this side of Mars. To top things off nicely, it was raining when we did it, and it seems to rain most of the time there. From memory, this part can be summed up in just one syllable: grim.
But Mike Wells did the unthinkable by banishing this section to Room 101. His innovation is that the North Coast 500 You don't actually have to follow the coast. You can bypass this section entirely by looping 131 miles inland from John o'Groats across the vast peat bogs in central Caithness and Sutherland. The obvious A99/A9 section, which we believed was inevitable, is only explained as an ‘alternative’. Cicerone's new route follows the National Cycle Route 1 (NCN1) and passes through the remote community of Altnaharra and the inland metropolis of Lairg. We drove part of this route in 2022 when we climbed Ben Klibreck, the second northern Munro. There are few places in the UK with so many miles of empty roads and IMO it's worth cycling the extra 131 miles to avoid the village of Lybster.
The guide also has peppercorns attached to it. Shorter Path Variant This is useful information for cyclists to know. We headed to our campsite among the sand dunes in the pleasant village of Dornoch. We then took the Nigg Ferry across the Cromarty Firth and cycled across the Black Isle. But our route took a busier one than that of Cicerone. The guidebook is discerning about that Select path variant. Not to mention the more ridiculous we took to avoid the main road between Contin and Garve after a blog post on the NC500 website suggested the road here was dangerous. Our variant rocked on rough dirt roads designed to puncture even the toughest tires. It would have taken about two hours longer than the regular route, and you could have had a similar experience sitting astride the washing machine on the last spin cycle.
What's even more unforgivable is that Cicerone's guidebook also describes the area around the Applecross peninsula as 'alternative'. This is a section over 626m. cowway (or Bealach na Bastard as we call it) is the highest pass on the NC500 by quite a wide margin. Bealach na Ba is not pleasant. Even though you have to dismount and push the bike most of the time, you can't help but ride the NC500. Skipping Bealach na Ba is like photoshopping part of your child's hand out of a Mother's Day photo. If you try to cheat, people will suspect the worst.. In recognition of this fact, the cover of Cicerone's guidebook includes a photograph of Bealach's hair-growing rings.
According to all Cicerone's guidebooks, each section of the route includes: information panel Describes section highlights, distances, route markings, and overall ascents and descents for each stage. The latter statistic doesn't tell you how steep the climb is, but it is a good indicator of how difficult the stage is. This makes a big difference. Another useful feature is the so-called 'relief diagram', but to be fair, staring at a tooth pattern probably won't provide much relief to cyclists who don't like hills. The most frequently used adjective in this book is 'wave'. In this case, it's shorthand for jumping and falling like a salmon with hiccups.
The guide notes throughout the text: Facilities are available From the village along the way. This includes lodging, meals, camping, shops and bike shops. There is also a useful table in the back appendix summarizing the facilities for each stage. Another table lists 27 Monroes that could move up from the NC500. But I can tell you from bitter experience that pedaling a bike and walking up a hill mix like a jam and peanut butter sandwich.
If there's a criticism, it's that the information panels don't always work that way. Give me a feel for the stage By highlighting the most memorable features. The Dundonnell stage, for example, offers a huge climb over the Dundonnell Plateau with views across An Teallach and Fannichs, as well as an incredible freewheeling section of the A835 to Ullapool. A similar windswept plateau below Foinaven dominates the approaches to Durness, England's northern coastline, giving it a feel of the roof of the world. Again, look at this in the information panel.
Sometimes the text in the highlight box is eclectically selected. For example, a large panel describing Gruinard Island (aka 'Anthrax Island'), a biological weapons testing site during World War II, takes up almost one page. At the same time, the spectacular (but hidden) Corrieshalloch Gorge, with its huge waterfall tumbling between cliffs, is ignored in one sentence. I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that the second of these attractions might be a bit more appealing to visitors.
However, this is a minor criticism. It's about time someone produced a guidebook on NC500 cycling. this person is alive Cicerone's usual high standards. I wouldn't advise you to ride an NC500 bike because I believe long-distance cycling is for crazy people. Walking is much better. But if you're a passionate cyclist, you'll probably be shaking your head from the first sentence of this post and clearly disagreeing with me. This guidebook is for you, and I wholeheartedly recommend the NC500 if you like riding your bike up and down steep hills.
Click on the big green button look for more About the guidebook.