Day 37: Inverness to Cromarty

Ian decided to check the tyre pressures this morning as the bikes were easy to access. It was just as well he did as he discovered a puncture in his front tyre. So our leisurely start to a short day became a frantic scramble to repair the puncture before the 11am checkout time.

We just managed to line our bags up in the doorway of our room as the news channel chimed 11am. The weather was overcast and mild again. We left the hotel, crossed the road and walked down a pedestrian area to the riverside. There were some attractive buildings either side of the water. We took the cycle route to the start of the Kessock Bridge and pedalled over the narrows between Beauly Firth and Moray Firth. This was our third big bridge this trip – we crossed the Bristol Avon on Day 13 and the Firth of Forth on Day 31.

A workman had told us the route to Cromarty was rolling, rather than steep. Ian thought otherwise and, for once, he was right. There were a few steep push-ups and a couple of very long low-gear drags. The second of these was on the A832 which we had chosen because the cycle route followed a much higher and steeper minor road. Near the top Ian remembered about Scotland’s liberal approach to access and realised we could have maintained our hard-earned height and reduced the distance, simply by following a track through the forest. It wasn’t as smooth as the road but it looked much better than yesterday’s track, and it would have been a lot easier than dropping down nearly 100 metres and then climbing back up again.

Anyway, the quiet A road then went downhill all the way to Cromarty, and we arrived at 15:15 despite our late start, but it was quite a short day at 38 kilometres.

The scenery was quite variable. At one point we stopped in a laybay on the left of the road and found ourselves surrounded by pine forest looking out over a panorama of fields with bales of freshly harvested hay to the right of the road. Elsewhere there were long vistas over the Moray Firth.