On the road north from Gairloch, the rowan berries were out in force, which my wife would say heralds a hard winter, and at Ullapool, we sat and drank coffee on the sea wall as we watched the ferry to the Shetlands pull out.
After a year and a half of being enforced hermits, how fine it was to be out in the world, to chat to fellow travellers, dip briefly into their lives, then saddle up and ride on north through stunning scenery to Durness, where John Lennon spent childhood holidays and where in the Fifties Cold War, the RAF built an early warning station to listen out for those nasty Russians.
Never used, the prefab buildings were later rented then sold to arty, crafty hippie types, who in what’s now called Balnakeil Craft Centre live in one end of the buildings and sell their wares at the other end, while Cocoa Mountain makes the best hot chocolate in the known universe – including Planet Zog.
I felt a strange, sad empathy for the place, not just as a pilot because of the RAF link, but because my sisters and I grew up in the back of a Nissen hut while Dad ran his little motorbike garage in the front.
Turning east, we made slow progress along the north coast on more single-track roads, thinking what a gridlock this must be in the summer, and stopped for a break at Bettyhill, whose sole attraction was a mobile cinema passing through town, although sadly not showing Easy Rider.
After the compulsory photo stop at John o’Groats, in the dying sun we rode south to Wick, having done 249 miles that day – not huge by adventuring standards, but slow because at least 50 miles of that had been single-track roads.
Still, it had been a glorious mix of rugged coast, wild moorland, baffled sheep and bleak farmhouses beside lonely lakes crying out for Jessica Lange to come striding across the heather in a scene from Rob Roy to cheer them up a bit.
Instead, we cheered ourselves up with succulent lamb shank washed down with local ales in Mackays Hotel, then went for a walk around Wick the next morning.
It was designed on the elegant lines of Bath, although its charms were lost on Robert Louis Stevenson, who stayed there briefly in 1868, and the years have not been kind to it since, with many of the lovely old buildings empty and its only claims to fame Ebenezer Place, the world’s shortest street at 6ft 9ins, and a shop a few doors with a remarkable collection of whiskies, including a 46-year-old Bunnahabhain for £5,000 a bottle.
South of Wick, Dunbeath was a fine spot for coffee and crab in the sun, beside the little flowerbed dedicated to local author Neil M Gunn, arguably the most influential Scottish fiction writer of the first half of the 20th Century, a periwinkle blue bench dedicated to local woman Jan Wilson, and nearby a plaque to the memory of the crew of the SS Gretafield, a tanker torpedoed off here in 1940, among them Donald Sutherland. Presumably not that one.
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Our final night was at the lovely old Royal Golf Hotel in Dornoch, which has won several awards for it and its golf course, and deserves to for its food.
We were having a drink on the terrace before dinner when a significant helicopter landed and was met by a limo with tinted windows.
“Was that someone important in the helicopter last night?” we asked the waitress at breakfast.
“No, just someone with money,” she said.
Good vibes from Oz
For navigation, I was using the clever system by Australian company Quad Lock for attaching my phone to the bars, complete with case, waterproof cover and vibration damper, since as you may remember, Apple pointed out recently that bike vibrations don’t do phones any good.
It worked perfectly. Highly recommended. The UK website is quadlockcase
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