Day 6 - Thursday 8th September
We actually awoke to a dry day! We had a nice breakfast, packed the bikes and set off.
From Inverness we went south on the A82 alongside Loch Ness - one of my favourite roads. I was really happy we had a dry spell for this road and it certainly didn't disappoint.
I had been up to Scotland with some friends in winter earlier this year and we'd stopped in Drumnadrochit. While there we discovered an amazing cake shop and as we were passing through the town we decided to stop and buy some cakes!
Setting off from the cake shop I glanced in my mirrors and Nig wasn't there. It turned round and returned to the shop to see Nig standing by his bike having a smoke. It turned out he'd had a moment pulling out of the very awkward junction and decided to chill-out for a bit. We set of shortly after and pulled into Urquhart Castle.
We'd stopped at this castle the last time we were up on the bikes but that time all our luggage was in back-packs and the castle had nowhere for us to put them so we had to carry them around. This time our luggage was all secure on our bikes so we would be able to have a better look round.
After looking around the castle and taking a lot of pictures we carried on. The weather was still largely dry but with scattered showers and fairly cold. Heading towards Glen Coe on damp roads I started overtaking a car when my front wheel began to slide. I thought I was under the car when it suddenly gripped again, the bike snapped to the right allowing me to overtake the car, then at the next roundabout, still a bit puzzled as to why my front-end had slide, as I was accelerating steadily away the rear slid. I wasn't happy as I basically had lost all confidence in the grip levels of my bike. I took it very steady with all changes of direction from that point on.
We stopped for pictures in Glen Coe then went onto a cafe at the ski centre. I don't know if I was still disturbed by my bikes lack of traction or what but for some reason I really didn't like the cafe. It was quite busy and I initially didn't want to queue, Nig calmed me down a bit and we got a couple of drinks. I quietly seethed, which amused of Nig, and then we left much to my relief!
Luckily all the roads were dry from that point to the B & B and we had a really good ride. When we arrived at the B & B our room wasn't quite ready so the owners made us a coffee and we ate the cakes from Drumnadrochit which were very nice.
We had a short walk around the local area then went for a meal and a few beers. While we were having our meal a load of local bikers turned up - the pub turned out to be a regular meeting place for the locals. They weren't very chatty but it was nice to see all the bikes.
