Harris, August 2019

15-19th August

As is now customary, we spent several days getting to our final destination, stopping in Crianlarich and the Isle of Skye along the way. The weather on the first few days was spectacular, so while Debbie and the children were eating lunch in Sligachan hotel, I had no choice but to run up the Cuillins. It's been a while, and they're as appealingly rugged as ever, but sadly I didn't have enough time to get up to the ridge proper.

The second day on Skye was wet, and the beginnings of a change to altogether more awesome weather, for all the wrong reasons. Since we were last on Skye, it has become massively more popular: there's now pay and display parking at the Old Man of Stor, at Kilt Rock we got stuck in a traffic jam in the car park, and it wasn't until Quiraing that we managed to get away from the worst of the crowds. Quiraing is an active landslip, and so offers quite a dramatic walking experience with steep drop-offs and long views.

By the time we arrived on Harris, we were confined to eating sandwiches in the car, being rocked by the wind, with the rain hammering down. We arrived at our holiday cottage in Northton, and found that at the end of the drive was a help-yourself (and leave money of course) food stall selling home baked bread, pies, soup, cakes, and all sorts of other lovely stuff, so decent food wasn't going to be an issue.

The roads were pretty good for cycling on, mostly well surfaced, with lots of exciting twists, turns, and undulations, and very little traffic, all threading through the bizarre moonscape and lochs that make up the landscape. Most rides felt pretty epic. The smaller roads were also quiet enough for the kids to cycle on, and the white sandy beaches provided plenty of sandcastle entertainment.