Cape Wrath

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust
A mountain down and down.
Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,
It’s silver paper crinkled and edged with rust.
My lungs say No;
But down and down this treadmill hill must go.

Parishes dwindle. But my parish is
This stone, that tuft, this stone
And the cramped quarters of my flesh and bone.
I claw that tall horizon down to this;
And suddenly
My shadow jumps huge miles away from me.

Climbing Suilven
Norman MacCaig

Our trip to Scotland has been the butt of our dark humour this past summer. It has been delayed, shortened, edited for a number of dramatic and life affecting reasons and that’s on top of the 2020 ‘norm’. Even with a day to go Oli unfortunately lost his job and as we pedalled into the last metres of Fort William’s 3G radius an email pinged through with news of cancelled projects and a timetable of redundancies at my own. Our feelings of the trip being cursed was confirmed by a dramatic spray of sealant as Oli’s rear wheel jarred uncomfortably into a pothole. All we could do was laugh as dusk yawned good-bye and we scrambled in our badly packed bags for lights and layers. We had cycled all of 50km in 5 hours by the time we gave up looking for a scenic camp spot and unrolled our mats on sleep obstructing ground. 

I’m not sure when the idea of a bike trip to Scotland first got mentioned but we had done a short 3-day trip up to Loch Ericht from Glasgow the year before that had stoked the fires of Scottish adventure. That trip nearly ended with us ‘bivvying’ without much in the way of bivvy kit very close to the doors of Ben Alder Bothy as the late-night map committee had concluded we ‘were at least 6 contour lines away’. Our bike lights by this time were so dim and the fog so thick that we couldn’t make out the reflections from the bothy windows less than 50 metres away. In our best lycra, spds and sparkling white cycling shoes resplendent on our 25mm tyred race bikes we were hilariously and nearly disastrously unprepared for the two-hour midnight bog march. After warming up inside with fire, whisky and half cooked couscous we all agreed that it had been a ‘right propa adventure’ and vowed to return with chunkier tyres and less Castelli.

Of course, a night like that was always going to tinker away with our sense of adventure and gnaw at our 9-5 contentment. By the time a year came around, complete with a good four months of self-regulated house arrest, the trip had spiralled into an eight-day epic where we would ride atop 29-inch wheels to conquer the highlands and reach the mainland’s most north-westerly point; Cape Wrath.

As we shivered wearily out of our bags on the second day, boiled water for coffee and porridge and faffed about till the sun came up we were already a little uneasy about the task ahead. Our over-preparation for this trip had been a natural result of the hours spent inside this year multiplied by our excitement and was therefore quite substantial. Food had been weighed to the gram, our calories calculated into small zip-locked ration bags for the duration of the trip, routes had been double checked and perfected and most importantly all favourite outdoor possessions had been laid out weeks in advance to millimetre precise grids and packed according to a hierarchy of use in colour coordinated dry bags. Even bike maintenance had been carried out to somewhat satisfactory levels given a lack of patience for dealing with the most crucial kit of the trip. Despite all of this it was only till the boredom of a 10-hour train trip set in that we realised we had not checked the MoD timetable up on the north coast. Cape Wrath is one of the only places in the UK where simultaneous exercises between the navy, army and air force can be carried out. For obvious reasons it’s therefore inaccessible to the public for weeks at a time. A quick google search later and we were hastily replanning our trip to cover the 300km of tracks and trails to Durness in two and a half days, the reality of which landed somewhere between the second and third 20% incline mid-morning on day two.

Luckily the adrenalin of urgency outweighed the fatigue and discomfort of pedalling on heavily loaded mountain bikes that neither of us were too accustomed with and we were able to tick of the big days with minimal complaint. Oli had the route on his bike so my mental goals, count downs and ETA predictions were completely at the whim of his mile to kilometre conversions or vice versa depending on how he read it. This usually accumulated to a good three-hour error per day or a four-snicker bar deficit depending on how I had read it but, in the end, it was probably no surprise I hadn’t been granted access to the map given my track record on previous trips together.

Riding forever northwards in this way, from one Glen to the next, the landscape seemingly unravelled. We left the comparatively manicured maintenance of loch side forestry and hunting estate behind and pointed our wheels towards a barren horizon punctuated by a moonscape of dramatic pillars and crags that thrust skywards, ripping free of the expansive curves and sweeping foregrounds of strath and moor. The weather rolled idly but powerfully over this terrain in quick skirmishes of frantic downpour and stinging hail whilst occasional rays would burst free of towering cloud formations to scatter warmth and contrast over the route ahead. From the viewpoint above Loch Shin we had laboured on for the past few hours we could see this spectacle in all its’ drama unfold in every direction towards the glint and shimmer of our destination at the boundary of the North Atlantic.

The scenery rendered more alien and the weather systems grew in confidence with every pedal stroke north, by the time we reached the coast the wind had reached its crescendo making it difficult to steer let alone pedal and the skies which had been swirling and menacing all day began to show their threat. Our plan on day three was to make it to Strabeg bothy, a short ride away from Durness for the ferry on to Cape Wrath the following day but we had chickened out of a potentially costly river crossing and the long way round had put us into darkness long before we’d even found the path. The stage was set, as we laughed to each other, for the now ‘classic’ Ben Alder style bog march. It didn’t disappoint.

By the morning of the fourth day the 185gram freezer bag of porridge had become more of a challenge than a breakfast and tactics had evolved to eat half whilst hot and tackle the remnants after getting ready. Oli was laughing at me gipping into my mug of gruel, streamlining the trip’s nutrition had become his lockdown obsession and the breakfasts came courtesy of a camping blog whose tagline read ‘hunger is the best garnish’, enough said. He was also continuing his consistent performances of being first to pack up camp and stand around picking holes in the logic of the colour coded drybag method that had firmly been in tatters since day one. I did however have the last laugh when, 20 metres from the bothy, Oli realised he’d started the day without any socks on and headed back to retrieve them. Naturally I pressed on.

We started the day in high spirits and the morning’s dose of calories and caffeine filtered through just about the same time we hit a T-junction between bike-wrestling crosswind and rip-roaring tailwind at the head of Loch Eribol. With our speed jumping up by a good 20km/h we laughed and sprinted for road signs as our low geared ratios span out with ease. The morning sun even made an appearance gleaming off the ochre and umber tidal strata of sand, kelp and rock that outlined the headland. Loch Eribol nicknamed ‘loch orrible’ by the British serviceman that were stationed here in the war years has quite a number of interesting historical anecdotes in its Wikipedia entry, most notably it was here where 33 German U-boats formally surrendered in 1945 ending the battle of the Atlantic. As I gazed out at the jagged outlines of storm torn cliffs and the vast heather clad slopes either side of the water I imagined what a strange day that must have been for both the naval commanders lifting their hatches and feeling the fresh Scottish air for the first time and for the few locals looking out that day to see the dark hulking mass of bows emerge from the deep.

We had settled in to some sort of routine by now and as we toiled along the road, we joked about how our days had fallen into a repeating pattern categorised by what Oli had labelled ‘the denial, the reality and joy’ system. He’s an IT software nerd if you hadn’t guessed from his beard so forgive me if this gets too ‘performance analysis’ based for a minute or so . . .

According to the system the ‘denial’ part of the day occupies all the time up until the point where the route and map are truly examined. It is identified by a whimsical attitude to pedalling, an over confidence in the space-time projection of the day and a time-consuming approach to snack eating and photography. The ‘reality’ phase on the other hand comes in response to close examination of the map and the realisation that the pace of cycling in the earlier ‘denial’ phase will not suffice. The pedalling style of a rider in the ‘reality’ phase is much more regular and consistent yet often subdued and carried out in solitary silence, snacks are taken whilst riding and taking pictures gets you left behind. The final stage within this system ‘the joy’ phase occurs only when the time in the ‘reality’ phase has compensated for the previous stage and expectations have been rectified and managed. Enjoyment is allowed back in and chatter and jokes begin again in earnest.

Day four was a good example of Oli’s system-based evaluation of our trip. The road sign sprinting in hindsight had clearly fell under the denial category, as did our ideas of making it to the lighthouse for two o’clock and more importantly that the ferry would even be running at all. The reality phase well and truly clicked into place on realisation that Malcolm the ferry man was in no mood to leave the comfort of his car and that the only alternative was a 15 km hike-a-bike detour around the Kyle of Durness. I can’t quite remember when the ‘Joy’ crept back into this day but the tub of peanut butter consumed on the sands definitely played a part. We reached the lighthouse at around five o’clock where we chewed the fat a while with John the lighthouse keeper over pints of tea and out of date wagon wheels before retiring to Kearvaig bothy for celebratory super noodles and further in-roads into our immense blocks of Parmesan.

By reaching our destination at Cape Wrath without too much incident other than a couple of ‘bonk-royales’ the pressure was off in many regards and it felt we could now relax into a slightly less daunting daily mileage. We had focused the trip around reaching a specific coordinate and our return route was a little less sure and prepared. ‘More flexible’ I argued but admittedly I had taken responsibility for this leg of the journey without much research other than reading MacCaigs anthology of highland verse which, given the terrain, wasn’t too helpful. Without needing to be at a certain line of latitude at a determined date and a shaky route plan to say the least, motivation to cycle for hours on end in the pouring rain quickly began to subside. With Covid regulations making it nigh on impossible to find warm shelter in the sparse pubs and cafes of the west coast and with no B&B vacancies for miles around there was little else for it other than putting one knee in front of the next until we found suitable ground in which to pitch a sodden tent. Even with the fate of our day sealed by these factors it did not stop us from taking a 20km detour to Kinlochbervie to seek warm food and shelter. Nourishment was found in the form of a local spar meal deal consumed on a broken palette under the shelter of a parked lorry trailer but a warm bed eluded us despite rallying to ring every local air bnb owner in a 5-mile radius. In our darkest hour we considered breaking in to a rather promising and abandoned looking static caravan on the outskirts of the town but common decency dragged us back out onto the road we had just ridden down to tick off the minimum distance required in order to ensure the day was not a total defeat. The evening and night were spent in Oli’s tent working out the quickest way home and hoping that the websites recommendation to double tape the seams after purchase was just some kind of hoax. Luckily it held through 18 hours of the worst rain we’ve experienced and we woke late that morning to embrace the feeling of donning our wet gear once again.

Despite having given up on our plans to do a round-trip to Fort William the nearest train station was still a considerable distance away. It also gave us the opportunity to take the scenic coastal road from Kylesku to Lochinver via a painfully spiky topography graph and take the Highland Trail 550 hike-a-bike section round the back of Suilven. This latter section quite unbeknown to me had ‘stretched our friendship to new levels’ and had us both exchanging stories of doomed historic expeditions where a summit or pole was reached only for them to perish on their return. When Oli stepped out of the tent that evening to say ‘he was going outside and may be sometime’ it took me a while to work out that he had taken the trowel and paper with him.

Suilven is one of those mountains that had captured my imagination for some time.  The MacCaig poem I began with had resonated ever since I started researching this trip and I was somewhat fixated on taking our path as close to it as possible. Approaching from the north it towers above all else in ridges and ripples of sandstone armour that glimmer in the faint iridescence of light filtered by fog. As the road grew closer and the perspective revealed its domed mass and the weaknesses and wounds beneath its steely plates, I remembered the final stanza of Norman MacCaig; ‘I claw that tall horizon down to this; And suddenly. My shadow jumps huge miles away from me.’ In this instance after days of expending enormous amounts of energy to draw faint two wheeled marks in Scotland’s mountain paths and peaty bogs, barely scratching at its skylines I felt that humbling gift that only these places can reward. My shadow, my soul, my thoughts had soared far way, it may be a while till they are present again.