Monday, August 27. We have spent the night at an airbnb right in the town of Portree. I get up and delay my leave a little so I can stop in at the local bike shop, Island Cycles. (He also does fishing gear!) My idea is to ride a one track road, the B885, toward Struan and then onto the Talisker Scotch Distillery. But the Island Cycles owner convinces me to instead head north on A855 toward Staffin. His main concern is about the views. I don’t tell him that I intend to ride a second day and so there is no reason to “get the views in today”. But I do take his advise and head off for Staffin. He is also nice enough to allow me to use his pump to top up my tires. I usually ride on 70+ PSI. I was surprised to find my tires at 60 but did not take the time to read the recommened pressure. I just put a little more in and took off. I had a rudimentary understanding of Portree and easily got my ride started.
I had a working phone. I had gotten a vodaphone sim card and installed it in a backup iphone. I had also downloaded maps of Scotland. I was able to use the phone to keep in touch with my wife and daughter in what turned out to the chase car or broom wagon! And I could track my course using the iphone GPS.
I should also spend a sentence or two on Scotish roads. Luckily we had been driving since Thursday and so had gotten some experience. I’ll start off by saying Scotish drivers are WONDERFULLY considerate of bikers. I sometimes felt afraid in tight situations but the drivers always went out of their way to accomodate me. As the owner of Island Cycles said, the ones you really need to work about are the tourists who are driving on what is the wrong side of the road for them and getting too close to the curb.
So, Scottish non-city roads are very very narrow, often not really wide enough for 2 cars and certainly not wide enough for a bike and 2 cars. Single track roads, as the name implies, are only wide enough for 1 car. There are regular pullouts that the drivers use in conjunction with flashing their headlights to navigate in what in effect is alternating single file. I came up with the idea of using single track B855 for my initial ride as I found it easier to just top and get off to the side instead of being caught in the 2 car and a bike situation.
Once out of town, I found the riding easy and enjoyable. The A855 is double track. Cars did everything in their power to avoid the situation where a car is passing me at the same moment a car is coming the other way. They would often hang behind me until oncoming traffic had passed. It did start to rain, first lightly and then more driven. I feel twice, really for the first time in my memory. The first time, the car in front of me had to stop suddenly, I breaked hard and went over the handlebars onto the road. I rolled such that my right knee took the brunt of the fall. I was able to get up quickly. The car that had breaked did not see the event but a van coming the other way made sure I was ok. As often happens with a fall, the knee felt worse the second day but really was never more than an irritation. A while later my broom wagon came by and established visual contact. We then hop scotched up the road, they passing me and then stopping to walk to a highland.
I road into Staffin and realized I was soon out the other side. I turned back to call the broom wagon. At the convenience store I talked to the only other rider I saw! He was doing the same A855 loop, but in the clockwise direction. He may also have used the single track from Uig to Staffin. (I can not find a route number for it anywhere.) He was training for the yearly counter clockwise bike race around this point but felt lazy and wanted to avoid a steep hill, it being more gradual in the clockwise direction. He had to race home to pick up the children from school. I met up with the broom wagon in Staffin and fell again! Came in too fast behind them, put on the breaks too hard and did a this time more slow motion over the handlebars and bike falling left. I now had enough information to deduce that the right front break was grabbing. Turns out I had thrown the break release in order to get the tire back on and then never reset. I have not examined this further, but for some reason the front break grabbed with this toggle in the open position. I set it correctly, was very conscious of using the left rear break as primary and never fell again.
We put down the 2 back seats of the SUV to allow the bike to fit in without removing the front wheel. I just sat on he folded down seat. We tried to eat at Columbus 1400 but they had no alcohol so we proceeded by car to Flodigarry Hotel. Quite a beautiful setting. Good lunch beer and wine. Then onto the Skye Museum of Island Life. I recommend it. Finally I got back on the bike at Uig and took the A87 back to Portree. About 30 miles in all. I was able to stop at the Co-op and pick up some good beer for the house.
On trips like this of unknown duration and activities, I wear a medium back pack. It has a fleece in case I get cold. A book to read. Maybe binoculars. I carry the iphones and a cloth hat in the 3 pockets of my biking jersey. I also have a wind breaker that is either on or in the backpack. My memory is that things were not soaked and we were able to wash and dry the biking cloths in the airbnb machine.