Field note 20 The Long North
Two weeks of Scotland, with a volcano in the middle of it.
North out of Ayrshire through Glasgow and Edinburgh, into the Highlands at Fort William, over to Applecross and the white sand at Achmelvich, and back down to the Borders. Two weeks of the summer of 2021, with a week in Iceland cut into the middle.From Rodrigo's road archive
Touch or hover a marker on the route to see what is there.
The Long North
Two weeks of Scotland, with a volcano in the middle of it.
North out of Ayrshire through Glasgow and Edinburgh, into the Highlands at Fort William, over to Applecross and the white sand at Achmelvich, and back down to the Borders. Two weeks of the summer of 2021, with a week in Iceland cut into the middle.
- 14 daysAyrshire to the Borders
- 58°NThe turn at Scourie
- TwoRider and dog
20.1Achmelvich, on the far northwest coast. White sand, and water the colour of somewhere else entirely.
20.2Jacko takes the sleeping bag. This is the arrangement, and it is not up for discussion.
20.3A field of cut wheat somewhere south of Stirling, and the whole load still standing upright.
20.4Doune Castle across the stubble. The tower has been Camelot for Monty Python and Castle Leoch for Outlander.
20.5Stirling Castle from the drone, on the crag it has held since the twelfth century.
20.6Glasgow. Officers, vans, and one Chilean motorcycle in the middle of it.
20.7Repairs on the road, done by whoever is there and willing.
20.8Failte don Ghaidhealtachd. Gaelic first, English underneath, and the Highlands from here on.
20.9A stag in the verge, unbothered, on the road north of Inverness.North out of Ayrshire through Glasgow and Edinburgh, into the Highlands at Fort William, over to Applecross and the white sand at Achmelvich, and back down to the Borders. Two weeks of the summer of 2021, with a week in Iceland cut into the middle.
In on the ferry, and straight onto the beach.
The Scottish leg of the second Eurotrip starts on 31 July 2021 on the Ayrshire coast, camped on the grass above the shore with the bike parked alongside the tent and the Firth of Clyde in front of it.
The bike is loaded the way it stays loaded for two years: panniers, a dry bag across the back, the sheepskin over the seat, and a Jack Russell called Jacko riding on top of the luggage.
The tent went up on the first night and kept going up, most nights, all the way to the Borders.
What the road kept
Scotland is not a distance. It is a fortnight.
From the Ayrshire coast to Scourie is under four hundred miles on the map, and it takes as long as you give it. The single track roads on the west coast have passing places rather than lanes, the weather changes every twenty minutes, and the good part is the part where you stop.The two cities, done at motorcycle speed.
Maybole, then Glasgow on the same day, then Edinburgh the next. The photographs from Glasgow show the loaded bike stopped in the street with police vehicles and half a dozen officers around it, Jacko being passed from arm to arm.
What the archive does not record is why they were there. What it does record is that the dog got held by most of them.
20.10The northwest coast keeps producing bays like this one and then saying nothing about them.A castle across a field of cut wheat.
Out of Edinburgh the road goes to Stirling, where the castle sits on a volcanic crag above the carse and has done since the twelfth century, and then a few miles further to Doune.
Doune Castle is the tower in the wheat field in these photographs. It has stood in for Camelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and for Castle Leoch in Outlander, which is why a fourteenth century courtyard in central Scotland has a queue at it.
The aerial photographs on this page were flown with a small drone carried in the panniers for the whole trip.
20.11Looking out over the water near Scourie, the furthest north I took the bike in Scotland.Failte don Ghaidhealtachd.
North of Stirling the country changes quickly. A sign on the roadside reads Failte don Ghaidhealtachd, with Welcome to the Highlands underneath it, and from there the map thins out: Fort William under Ben Nevis on 3 August, then Inverness the same day.
Red deer stand in the verges and do not move for a motorcycle. In one of these photographs the stag stays where it is and Jacko watches it from the top of the luggage, neither of them giving ground.
20.12Camp under a tree. The tent went up most nights.Applecross, and then sand the colour of the Caribbean.
On 4 August the route crosses to Applecross, on the peninsula facing Skye, reached either over the Bealach na Ba, the highest road in Scotland at 626 metres, or the long way round the coast.
Then north to Achmelvich and Scourie, where the beaches are white sand and the water turns turquoise on the one afternoon in the fortnight when the sun is out. Scourie, at 58 degrees north, is the furthest north the bike gets in Scotland.
White sand, turquoise water, and a windchill that tells you exactly which ocean you are looking at.
20.13Loaded bikes meet other loaded bikes, and the road stops for half an hour.Then I left the bike and got on a plane.
The log runs south again fast: Perth, Kinross, and Edinburgh on 5 August. There it stops for a week.
On the same day the record picks up in Iceland, and it does not come back to Scotland until 12 August. The two stories on this site are the two halves of one fortnight.
Back on Scottish ground the last entries are Midlothian on 12 August and the Scottish Borders on 13 August, riding south for the crossing to Ireland and the rest of the summer.
The field archive
50 more frames from the road
Everything else from the folder, in the order it was taken.
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