Simon's Coastal Adventure, Episode IV - A New Hope

A long time ago, well in 2013,  in a galaxy not far away, I set out from home on a bike ride up the east coast of England.   It was sunny, fairly flat, and the coast is pretty straight.  In two weeks I was able to ride to Inverness in Scotland.    This is all right, I thought: I might do the rest next year.

It's surprising how wiggly the coastline of Scotland is.  And how windy, and hilly.  Especially if you go to some of the islands.    But it's beautiful, even when it sometimes rains.   So I'm going again for the fourth year, after Orkney, Shetland, the top of Scotland and Cape WRATH!!   Last year I made very little progress around the coast but I did visit the Outer Hebrides, which are bigger than they look on the weather forecast.  I chose June last year, to avoid the midge season and the peak holiday season, but it was very cold, so this year I chose July.   And it's been lovely up there all of June - 25 degrees.  Just my luck.

I'm heading for that wiggly bit on the left.

If you're new to the blog - welcome to my ramblings.   Several people seem to gain pleasure from reading about my trip - whether it's as an example of how not to do it, or to make your own holidays seem so much better in comparison; I don't really mind but I hope you will visit again once I start cycling (on Tuesday 12th July), and have something more useful to write about.    This year I'm going back to where I left off - the Isle of Skye, not properly visited or appreciated last year but used as a route to the ferry to the Outer Hebrides.   If you read the posts at the end of last year's trip, rather dry maps and statistics, they don't represent the majority of the blog, so scroll down to the actual cycling if you want to get an idea of the sort of rubbish I normally write.