No I haven't fallen off.  There was no internet connection at last night's B&B.  This update is posted on the return journey at The Caley Inn, Ullapool.

Kinross to Talmine

Another early start, tootling back into Kinross again to post postcards to the non-net fraternity, then off on the M90 and A9 northwards on the longest - and, I think, most spectacular - leg of the outbound journey.  Weather: Scottish, i.e. all four seasons in a morning, settling down later for a clear evening and night.

Not Pittlochry

I thought to stop for a pitstop at Pittlochry.  Its location suggests a pitstop sort of town; just off the main road into the highlands and the last outpost of the urban central belt.  There were certainly plenty of B&Bs and hotels and tourist-type shops, but I detected none of the distinctive breakfast aroma of bacon on the breeze.  In fact, in the one prim little cafe I found, it seemed that 9 a.m. was just too early for them.  Having placed my order and then watched the two staff dither around with their till and menu boards and counter displays rather than making the bloody coffee, I faked an incoming text and said that I had been called away!
I thought I might have better luck at the smaller villages strung out along the old B road that shadows the new A9; Killiecrankie and the like.  But these were too small to sport purveyors of breakfasts - or anything else, actually.  In fact, I'm sure I missed a couple of hamlets just by blinking.
So I got back on to the glorious, sweeping A9 and settled myself to enjoying the ride through Glen Garry, confident that the gods of coffee and bacon would eventually smile upon me.

Layby 81, Pass of Drumochter/Druimachidar Pass

...and sure enough, a snack bar came into sight just at the point where the road starts to descend towards Aviemore and Inverness.  It stands just under the twin peaks of the Boar of Badenoch and the Sow of Atholl - which should surely be couple of characters out of a story that Hobbits tell each other on Winter nights.
Now here's a curiosity.  On the road, there is a sign saying 'Pass of Drumochter: 1615 ft' but a couple of hundred yards away across the peat and heather is a sign beside the railway line saying 'Druimachidar Pass. Highest point on rail network: 1484 ft.'  The difference in altitude is not the problem; the road is definitely a few feet higher, but why the different names for the same pass?  Perhaps the Badenochians call it one and the Athollians' call it the other, fighting over it at the annual highland games with cunningly misaimed cabers.  

If I had a better camera, this would clearly be a picture of the sign on the railway line, not a curious study of a seagull and a bush. (That's one shoulder of the Boar behind the tree, by the way.)

Anyway, the best bit about Layby 81 is Ian and Nikki's snack bar and their most excellent Lorn rolls.  Ian generously donated my second roll in aid of my charity ride, so I'll add the price to the www.justgiving.com/John-Seaman site when I next get Internet access.  He also let me use the binoculars he keeps in his van for stag-spotting so I could read the aforementioned road and railway signs. 

...and this would be Ian and Nikki, Masters of Lorn (and bacon, and sausage, and ...)

Crossing paths on the A9

Purring along the A9, snow-topped Cairngorms to the right, I crossed paths with another charitable end-to-ender.  
'Crossed paths' is quite the right term since it turned out he was hiking from Lands End to John O Groats while I am doing the other diagonal.
I saw him striding along, rucksack on back, carrying an Olympic banner.  
'Hm,' I thought. 'He looked interesting.  I should've stopped to see what his story was.'
After a few miles, I thought, 'I really wish I'd stopped and spoken to that man with the Olympic banner.'
And after a few more miles, I thought, 'dammit! Stop! Go back!'
So I went back and pulled in a couple of hundred yards ahead of him.  As he came level with me, not wanting to break his stride, I fell in alongside and introduced myself.    (He was making a cracking pace, so I was very pleased that he actually stopped to chat.)

He was Billy Walsh and was hiking from Lands End to John O Groats in aid of Help for Heroes.  He set off on 29th April and aims to arrive on 19th May, just when the Olympic torch is due in John O Groats, hence the banner.

Not Inverness

I'd liked to have given Inverness a chance.  Once on holiday in Scotland, Mrs S and I had mentioned to a local couple that we intended to go to Inverness.  'Why?' they said, in tones of despair rather than curiosity.  That suggests it should be in the 'unloved' category and so should be just the sort of place I visit on this trip.  
What's more, on the approach to Inverness, I pulled in at what claimed to be an information centre and viewing point.  Sapplings had been allowed to grow up in front of the viewing point, the information centre was closed and the loos were locked.  Better and better.
To top it all, there were three blokes about my age parked there on large motorcycles and we agreed that so many bikers in one place definitely lowered the tone of the place.  

There goes the neighbourhood.

However, it's a big old place and I suspected I'd spent ages just getting in and out again, never mind having a sniff around the place.  So instead I thought I'd go over the bridge to North Kessock and see how my theory about the way places develop on opposite sides of rivers worked out here.
It's certainly different. Tiny; it took me no time at all to ride along the one main street lined with tidy bungalows, up to a lifeboat station just under the bridge.  (Yey! Another bridge!), then back to the one prim little tea room next door to the solitary shop.  

You just can't have too many pictures of bridges, I say.  This one crosses where the Murray Firth joins the Beauly Firth at Inverness.

The tea room did a fine bacon and brie panini and while I sat there munching it, vacantly looking out over the Beauly Firth towards Inverness, I suddenly noticed a dolphin porpoising around in the riptide.  I confirmed the brief sighting with a lad on the next table who had also been looking out.  We stared long and hard but didn't see it again.  The lad's father told me that Chanonry Point, further out along the Moray Firth is the best place for dolphin spotting; they'd seen five there earlier in the day.

Bonar Bridge

Back on to the A9 across the Black Isle, over the Cromarty Firth (no photo here; it's more of a causeway than a bridge) then off on the the B9176 over some rolling countryside as a short cut to Bonar Bridge and the A836 all the way to Tongue.

Just by chance, I came across this curious memorial.  A tree planted to commemorate the London Scottish regiment's march across the highlands in 1936, subsequently replanted by the local authority.  I wonder what all that was about.  

Well, I couldn't not take a picture of the bridge at Bonar Bridge, could I?

Apart from its small but perfectly formed bridge, Bonar Bridge has a small but perfectly well-stocked Spar.  Inter alia, they select a good selection of amazing talking pastries (you know, the ones that whisper 'eat me' when you walk past the shelf).  
What Bonar Bridge doesn't seem to have is a petrol station, and there were many miles of empty road coming up, so I crossed fingers and went on to Lairg.

Lairg

Lairg sits prettily at the bottom end of Loch Shin, but for me, the best sight in town was the petrol station.  No fuel at this point might have forced a serious bit of replanning.  From here on Northwards, it's all single track A roads and a lot of emptiness.

On single track roads

Obviously, one must ride (or drive) within one's stopping distance, and for a single track road; less the other guys stopping distance, too.  And his stopping distance is bigger than yours; he's a local and, like all locals, he has the contempt for stopping distances born of familiarity, i.e. he drives like the clappers round blind corners and over summits.
So much, so routine.  Everybody knows that.  John's tip for safe and enjoyable highland riding holidays, though, is never EVER to use the passing bays to brake in.  They are liberally sprinkled with gravel and loose chippings - like ball bearings and banana skins to a two wheeler. Always slow down on the main carriageway, no matter how anxious the approaching local looks, THEN pull in to the passing bay.  

Crask Inn

It's not complete empty up here, though.  

The Crask Inn stands in wild, expansive country, brooded over by 3156 ft Ben Kilbreck, the highest moutain in the district.  Built around 1815 by the Sutherland Estate, this most remote of havens has provided welcome refuge for generations of weary travellers in the far north.  Thomas Telford upgraded the road in 1819, but it is still single-track even today, and the only electricity comes from the inn's own small generator.  There are no street lights to polllute the clear night skies.  There is a working croft alongside, reclaimed from the heather and bog-moss, where Mike and Kai Geldard raise Highland cattle, sheep, and vegetables, inbetween looking after various intrepid guests.  This is rugged country and there are no airs and graces about the Crask, but the welcome inside is as warm as the peat stove in the tiny bar.
Could you tell that's not me writing?  I quote from the blurb enclosed in the inn's own cards and notelets.

It was said Mike who served me an excellent and generous coffee while I wrote out a few postcards and listened to the barmaid bantering with Angus, the general factotum.  Mike noticed my tie under my biking gear which gave me the chance do my 'prevents me being taken for a ruffian' gag at long last.

The stove seems as happy to burn logs as peat.  At least, I watched Angus heap up a barrow load of logs next to it, and I presume it wasn't just to dry them out for woodwork classes.

Cry baby

From here on Northwards, it just gets more and more spectacular: along Strath Vagastie, through the hamlet of Altnaharra, alongside Loch Loyal for five miles and more.  At one point, I stopped for a bit of a picnic of those talking pastries from Bonar Bridge.  I had the geological crumple zone of the North West Highlands away to my left, distant snow capped peaks glinting in the sun across the miles of wind-swept moor, cliff-sided Ben Loyal dead ahead, and Ben Kilbreck wearing a snowcloud like a panama hat behind me.  I came pretty close to melting into the peat.

This phone-camera just doesn't do it justice.

Tongue and Talmine

Coming down out of the hills, through the village of Tongue, I crossed the last bridge on my outward journey.  

And I should've taken a separate picture of the bridge.

Then it's a right turn and up a road that goes through a string of tiny villages.  Talmine is the third along. 
Mrs S and I have been here in the camper van.  There's a tiny camp site tucked in to a corner of the bay which was overseen by an extremely shy young woman.  Even Mrs S, with her ability to charm the life story out of a stone, had to settle for monosyllabic answers to her conversational gambits.


My hosts at The Cloisters B&B are much more cheerful - and extremely generous, but I'll say more about that with tomorrow's (i.e. today's) blog.  


The view from the room makes up for not having an Internet connection to update my blog (pictures in next posting).  


While there's no blog, there is a dog.  The fattest old black lab I've ever seen.  The landlady tells me she inherrited the dog from her son, as parents often will.  The original intention was that the dog should stay here only until she had her first pups, but she is now firmly at home here and well past puppy-bearing age.  
Detecting that I am a dog person, she barked outside my room until I came out to make a fuss of her.  While on the phone to Mrs S, I then noticed her sitting on the grass and dragging herself along on her bottom, the way a dog with worms will.  Hm.  This is the dog I just petted and allowed to lick my face.  I hope I won't have passengers for the return journey!