West to Durness

It just keeps getting better. ..   After a few days when I retraced my steps southwards, today's ride took me west along almost the entire North coast of Scotland.   Last night an unexpected bonus: a performance by the Thurso Pipe Band of a dozen pipers and four drummers, in the main street just outside our hostel.  Some wee lasses gave us a demonstration of highland dancing: it proved too much for one of them who ran off back to her mum half way through.

I set off early to beat the expected rain: it was a sweltering 16 º - very humid.  Empty roads on the gently rolling Caithness countryside, and a notable absence of birds, except a few blackbirds.   Very different from Orkney just a few miles away.   A few miles on was Dounreay with the domed reactor, now being decommissioned: a few miles further still and the pretty village of Reay, presumably Up Reay.

Caithness gave way to Sutherland and the hills became more serious.
A very inviting café at Bettyhill was closed on Sundays.  And that was the only café I was aware of on the whole day, so I tightened my belt (in my mind at least) and soldiered bravely on.  I needn't have worried: there was a village shop a mile further on, and then another café, very nice but beset by midges, a bit later near Tongue.   I took a detour by the estuary and missed Tongue, which may have been the only reasonably sized place on the whole route.

The views were opening up with a whole pallette of every shade of green all around, and in the distance some real mountains were emerging from the haze.  I took another gorgeous detour down a secret valley to a little sandy beach at Skerray and wound my way back past picturesque cottages and then over undulating moorland to the main road, which became single track with passing places around here.

After a few more hills I was only four miles from Durness, my destination,  but it was the other side of a big sea loch, Loch Eriboll.  The loch is surrounded by mountains and as I cycled around its three shores a succession of views unfolded.  It has the most stunning scenery I've seen so far.

And on the gentle ascent of the west side, oh joy!  A café.   I was nearly home but the views and desire for cake compelled me to stop.  Then a gently hilly and twisty ascent: more views of beautiful hillsides and beaches with pale sand and aquamarine sea hugged by black rocks.  I was in Durness but almost wished for more miles before I had to stop.  No rain either!

The last photo Iis of Smoo Cave near Durness.   Smoo means Cave in Gaelic, so it's a sort of cave cave, as you can see. Durness Youth Hostel is at the top right.

PS It has come to my notice that the Thurso Pipe Band have an Antipodean look to them. I'll have to fix this when I get home.  Sorry.