Another Scotland Trip

 24/10/21   start Mileage 53741 end mileage 55198=1457 

    Me and Clive

Met Clive at 7ish Pease Pottage services, it was mostly dry on the way up to Dalbeattie, where Clive went off to see his sister, and I headed to a campsite at Castle Point on the Solway Coast. The campsite was very windy and the ground was sodden, so getting the tent to stay up was a bit risky. Apparrently, the day before, 2 BMW motorcycles were blown over and badly damaged.

   The tent was soon put up, and spent the night alternately sleeping and listening to the storm.

I was impressed the tent stayed up (and so did the bike). Packed up the tent at 6a,m,, met Clive at 8am, and he gave me a couple of bacon rolls and some home made cake from his sister!

   It pissed down most of the way North, stopped in "The Green Welly" cafe for some food, then headed to Glencoe in the rain

and we eventually found a nice campsite next to Ben Nevis

The campsite had a bar and restaurant on site, so that was us for the evening, the food was lovely, Clive had haddock and chips, and I had the Burmese curry and so was the couple of pints of Bellhaven Best Bitter. 

  

   We also came to the decision that as the storms were getting worse, we would try for Applecross and book a camping pod for Tuesday night.

   After packing up the tents in the rain, I loaded up my bike, and as I was getting on the sidestand sank into the ground, and the bike went over, but with the help of Clive and another camper, the bike was soon upright, fortunately no damage. We headed to Fort William, got some fuel then stopped at Eileen Doonan Castle

An hour later we stopped for lunch at Carron restaurant then headed up to Applecross.

 Clive at the bottom of the Applecross road.

The road up the mountain was pretty horrendous

very strong gales trying to blow us off the cliff one moment , the next trying to blow us into the rock wall on the other side, also while trying to avoid large patches of gravel to skid on, also pissing down and thick fog. A few scary moments.

   We got to our camping pod, and set about drying everything off

 

The nearby pub was shut, so Clive shared some raspberry gin with me, he cooked a wierd pasta thing for himself, and I had an emergency jalfrezi curry, which was lovely. The gin wasn't too bad either.

   Next morning the decision was made to head South, as we were experiencing storm after storm, and all the camping gear was soaked, also, it is unpleasant putting up a tent in 2 inches of water.

 There was a breakfast van on site, so bacon rolls were a necessity.  The ride down Applecross was a lot easier than the way up

The rain was once again horrible, we stopped to have a look at the Glencoe waterfall

then we headed towards Glasgow where we split up, Clive going to see his sister Carol, and I went off to West Kilbride to see a different Clive and Carol, My caving buddies from the Bastard Squad Caving Club. There were loads of floods on the way to West Kilbride, one was so deep it knocked my feet off the footrests, a couple of cars following me didn't make it through the deep water.

   Clive done me a wonderfull sliced beef and peppers stir fry, which was delicious, and they put me up for the night. I left them at 08:30, and got home at 7pm, the rain stopped around oxford. Great trip, excellent company.