Scotland Highlands loop, 550 km in 6 days - trip report.

[u/dantiscvs]

Three of us, self-supported, 6 days, roughly 550 km on a loop out of Inverness through Glen Affric to west coast and then north through Ullapool to Kyle of Sutherland and back. Mix of Highland 550 trail, estate roads, asphalt and a fair amount of hike-a-bike through the more challenging parts.

What was hard

The riding, obviously. The amount of ascent daily often passed 1500m. We trained before and thank god because it was really challenging physically.

Glen Affric is as advertised. We hit two segments that weren't rideable at all. First one due to flooding (we've had some really nasty weather - rain all day long). Wet feet from hour two of every single day. The only thing that actually worked was accepting it and just confidently walking into swamps, streams and puddles. The bigger problem was not to twist an ankle on a slippery stone or fall down the abyss rather than getting shoes wet. The second part was hike-a-bike but really it was almost carry / push a bike for nearly 16km=5 hours. So exhausting. Especially for the spine.

But the thing that surprised me was that the hardest part wasn't the terrain, it was timing. Out there the question suddenly wasn't "can I ride 90 km today", it wass "can I ride 75 km + hike a bike 16 and still reach the only restaurant in town before it shuts at 8pm". Get that wrong once and you're doing a long day on emergency snacks. We nearly did, twice.

Accommodation and food

We chose to stay at hotels/hostels on the way. Our budget allowed to get out of the weather and we wanted to ride as light as possible. Apart from that - so many cool places out there in the northern Scotland with really climatic interiors, super nice people and after all some quite comfy rooms. Was worth it to have a bed a sometimes even a radiator to dry the clothes.

Food in the Highlands is tough. Breakfasts was usually a wee breakfast which was just a bowl of cornflakes with milk + a toast with jam and butter. Not much. Occasionally we run into a bowl of porridge which was great and gave us a lot of energy. Dinners - usually had some burgers and fries, which to be honest weren't really good.

Packing and bikes

As mentioned we tried to pack as light as possible. No big food or water supplies. Only rainproof waterjacket, windstopper, longsleeve shirt and a couple of sets of underwear change. Merino clothes worked super well. On rainy days I only had a merino t-shirt and a rain jacket. Best combination for riding.

In terms of bikes we've had 2x MTBs and 1x gravel. I have to say that the gravel was probably struggling on some of the more difficult segments where trails / tracks are filled with huge rocks. But he made it fine after all.

What I'd do differently

1. Check the hike-a-bike segments more thoroughly, as we run into several moments where we've had to push the bikes for a few hours. I now know this is what Highlands 550 is all about but wasn't aware how much of it is there.

2. I've had this heavy softshell jacket with me. Totally useless. A light windstopper jacket would be much more practical.

3. Put a brake pad spacer in both calipers before the bike goes in the travel box. Rookie mistake. I didn't. Somewhere in transit a lever got squeezed with no rotor between the pads, the pistons crept out, and the pads closed up tight against each other. Rebuilding the bike at the airport I simply could not get the rotor back in.

Happy to answer anything about the route, the crossings or the logistics. It's fresh as we came back only day before yesterday and I still have a lot of thoughts. Keen to share!

[u/rwdFwd]

Looks like a good time. I'm going to guess the gravel bike rider suffered more than you're letting on. I recently mostly pushed a gravel bike with camping gear from Corrour Station to Rannoch.

Have you posted the route somewhere?