Today my favourite thing was making it to Lairg without running out of petrol, because honestly, it was a close call.
We had spent the day enjoying the newly cleared up weather so much that I’d forgotten to keep an eye on my fuel level. It was only as we turned onto the last road towards Lairg that I checked.
Previously in the week my low fuel warning light had come on at about 135 miles. I was getting up to about 110 miles and we still had 50+ to go! I started driving more economically, and not dicking about so much revving the engine to try and eek it out. (Ignore the oil light)
By the time we were right out in the middle of nowhere, it was saying 140 on the clock with 30 miles to go. This would have been a terrible place to run out of fuel. When I say it was remote this is truly the definition of the word. We even passed the “UK’s Most Remote Hotel – Garvault House” on its own standing in the middle of nothing.
Knowing that the fuel light comes on with a couple liters left in the tank means I can get about 30 miles before she’s dry. So only as the miles ticked by without it showing up did I start to relax, eventually topping up 16+ litres of my 19 litre tank in Lairg.
Aimi really loves the remote landscapes. She was a bit sad to cross over to John o groats because we are leaving the really rugged side of Scotland and started seeing a lot more agriculturally flat fields and fences. But after John o Groats we decided to take the longer more remote route inland. Here it was possible to look 30-40 miles in all directions and just sea heather, water and mountains. The only signs of life was the one hotel, the road and a line of telegraph poles.
And because you could see so far, you could get a shift on. So Aimi really enjoyed going a bit faster on these quite narrow roads. It was a bit like an obstacle course or a roller coaster ride bombing across the landscape keeping the bike singing and powering forwards.
Every now and again the beauty would become too much and we had to stop and take photos. I was just getting back on the bike when Aimi shouted at me to “look look look!” There was a Hercules aircraft doing a really low flight down the valley, barely above the loch surface. It was very cool!
Edds favourite moment today was getting the group photo at the John o Groats sign. Aimi was a bit nervous about barging in front of people with our bikes but after a quick Google, and asking at the information desk, they said it was fine.
We all lined up and when there was a brief lull in the tour bus-ers we pushed our bikes up to the sign. In the slightly mad dash to do it quickly, Edd tried to put his helmet on the floor to avoid dropping it. In the process, he ironically dropped his whole bike. It was a super slow and gentle drop onto his soft luggage so no damage was done, but it was so funny, especially because so many people were watching! But we got the picture of us all at the top of Scotland. We had made it!
When asked, Adam said he was just enjoying the scenery the whole day. He’s always been the expressive type…
Personally I’d have thought he would have been glad to keep the bike rubber side down. I missed the event, but according to Edd something had happened on an overtake to cause Adam’s bike to lose rear traction and slide sideways. He said it was a cattle grid, which Edd disputes, but even if it was then really he shouldn’t have been overtaking on a cattle grid. They are known to be super slippery. And if it wasn’t, then he must have touched some gravel under full power or the white line because a bike doesn’t just go sideways, he must have done something. Either way we are very glad he’s a good enough rider to keep it the right way up and carry on eloquently enjoying the scenery!
We decided to sort out our own food tonight because after 5 days of rich hotel food, we were looking forward to something a little more basic. So after filling the panniers with grub, and the tank with noise juice, we followed Aimi out of Lairg to the Airbnb pods we have tonight.
We found them easy enough, and bumped our way up into a concrete pad next to a large garage sized wooden pod. It has a huge sliding glass window overlooking a beautiful valley, the moorlands and the mountains we had been riding between. With microwave meals warming our bellies and a deck to sit out on, Edd and I enjoyed the view with the sheep. Adam and Aimi scrolled on their phones. It had been a great day’s riding, but quite a demanding one so we were in bed early, enjoying
