Day 25 – To Dundonnell

Thursday 20th May

Just a few miles and into Gairloch. Parked at the golf club on the far side of town and headed down to the sandy beach, which as ever, was hugely appreciated by the dog.

Several seals provided entertainment at the pier, performing for the occasional fish from the trawler that had just arrived in.

The natural extension of this outing is to head up the Airidh river to its waterfalls. The land is all Gairloch Estate with plenty of signs saying not to stray from the footpaths, or even to take any photographs of the family mansion house. I got talking to a woman on the route and it soon materialised we had a similar background in outdoor education. She, Felicity Martin, now authors guide books for Pathfinder, and was actually researching this path for a forthcoming guidebook on walks on the NC500 route.

We were due some wilder weather but it arrive until late in the day, but by late afternoon the wind had got up.

I decided to stopover at the Dundonnell Hotel, and by the time I got there it was a wild evening. There were just two other vans, one guy a photographer who sat out in very many clothes, taking pictures as the light diminished. The couple in the other van came over to the hotel with me for a couple of beers. She was working for a non profit scientific research project in the Highlands into breast cancer, and he was a sports administrator for Aviemore. We chatted a lot about bikepacking. Dundonnell is stop off point on the Highland 550 bike trail, the race on which begins this coming Saturday.. https://highlandtrail550.weebly.com. 95% is on trails and much of it is pretty tough. There will be a smaller field of entry this year, as it usually attracts many from overseas, still really interesting to follow.

The excellent Bikepacking site has a really good feature on it also… https://bikepacking.com/routes/highland-trail-550/

The Highland Trail 550, Scotland – BIKEPACKING.com

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