DAY 4, Monday 30 June

The early departure from Alloa is compromised, partially by our late arrival the previous evening and the resultant late dinner and ensuing chin-wags (George and Margaret are simply wonderful hosts – great food and drink, and lots of entertaining tales to tell, as well as a remarkably effective technique for extracting their visitors’ stories), but also my decision to sort the fuel problem out once and for all.

It’s tank-off, dump all the petrol currenlty in there, along with large dollops of grey sealant material, and re-fuel with a few litres from George’s mower-can; and I’m also forced to tear-off the brass gauze filter around the petrol tap, as this too has become irretrievably clogged with minute particles.

We also take the opportunity to try and sort out the recalcitrant intercoms, eventually being forced to give up in disgust with the realisation that one of the interface cables we’ve been sold is incorrect – it once again emphasises the importance of shake-down trials of EVERYTHING, but time was against us. So, the expensive kit will be useless throughout this trip, so we’ll just have to plan another one for next year to justify the expenditure!!

In the meantime, we’ve settled into a reasonably effective method of silent remote communication, involving me snapping finger and thumb together to show Neil he’s not cancelled his indicators, or flicking a huge imaginary switch in mid-air to suggest he turns his running lights on, and he switches his lights OFF to tell me I’m still blinking un-necessarily, etc – the wonders of modern science, huh?

But what about the ride, you’ll be asking? Well, the rain has continued to hold-off by the skin of its teeth, but it’s been almost universally grey and overcast, with the very occasional spits of precipitation on the visor to remind us of what we could have copped.

But the ride has been wonderful – once clear of Stirling, the roads are great, though the shores of Loch Lomond are inevitably somewhat busy – I’m pleased to see that the shore-side nadgery road through the trees towards the northern end of the loch is still as it’s always been, and not over-engineered into a 6-lane highway, so there’s still a wee bit of the Rob Roy feel to at least part of the ride. Loch Lomond looks beautiful even in the less-than-wonderful dull-grey light, as does the largely wooded haul up towards Rannoch Moor, where we pull above the tree-line before cresting out into the great basin that forms the infamous Moor. It’s not looking its absolute best today in the flat light, there’s no sparkle off the innumerable tarns and lochs, and the heather is a tired brown, rather than the russet the sun brings out from it, but the marsh cotton-grass is in full fruit, in places almost looking like clumps of lower-level snow to complement the occasional patches still hanging on in sheltered north-facing hollows on the higher peaks, still there in late June.

Rannoch Moor – bleak or what?

Glencoe is always impressive, the massive buttresses of the glacier-carved peaks creating a forbidding, intimidating atmosphere even on sunny days – in this gloomy light, it’s even more so, adding a sinister gloss to help remind us of the infamous massacre all those years ago.

The Great Glen has its moments too, but it somewhat pales into insignificance once one has experienced the drop down Glencoe, but the road is a blinder, especially once one’s wended the way up the string of lochs that are now joined by the locking system of the Caledonian Canal to the final loch, Loch Ness, where the road frequently hugs the shore in a series of flowing, fast bends with excellent forward visibility, and no side-roads to endanger rapid progress. The Norton is in its element on these roads, where its natural cruising speed of between 55 and 65 mph is about all one can comfortably maintain regardless of the horse-power at one’s disposal. I certainly don’t seem to be holding Neil up significantly anyway!

In Drumnadrochit, we rdv with fellow NOC member Neville Goldsmith on his immaculate black and silver 750 Commando Interstate – he’s rather shocked at the oily, grubby state of the 99, but he’s soon disabused of its functionality, as he is having to ‘get a bit of a rattle on’ as he puts it, as he joins us for the ride up towards Tain, the road over from Loch Ness to the head of the Beauly Firth proving very much up the Featherbed frame’s street!! He’s come to join us to meet with and offer moral support to some fellow NOC members on their quest, but also to deliver his contribution the Gutjwa Appeal personally, and a very generous one it proves to be too! Thank you very much, Mr and Mrs Goldsmith, for a significant contribution to the £3k+ total now committed.

Peter and Neville Goldsmith and his immaculate Commando

We part company after I’ve stopped to photograph the sadly neglected Easter Ardross farmhouse, where my dear Aunt Ada and son Colin Maclean farmed for several decades, and I regularly spent my boyhood summer holidays. A scene with very fond memories, now tragically closed-up and un-inhabited, having been bought as some wealthy individual’s ambition to recreate the golden (Victorian) days of the Adross Estate, and its fairy-tale castle a further mile down the road.

Peter and Neil at Easter Ardross

We turn around for the final 10 miles of back-road to Tain, a largely single-track but remarkably rapid road that follows the contour of the line of hills separating the Cromarty Firth to the south from the Dornoch Firth to the north, and some 220 miles after leaving Alloa and at bang-on 6 p.m, we find the Carringtons B&B, and a warm welcome from Molly and Ken. A more complete contrast to our rather unhappy B&B experiences at Norton Day would be difficult to find – everything is immaculate and nothing too much trouble, even to extent of getting our smalls washed and dried, but not only that, folded and returned to our room as well.

A quick shower a-piece and we start to walk into town to meet David Sim, another NOC Gutjwa Appeal supporter living in nearby Golspie when a red Audi pulls up, and accuses us of being NOC members!! So it’s a quick lift down the road, a couple of pints and a sizzling dish of Tandoori chicken each, and plenty of chat about Nortons and life in the far north, the abundant wildlife and sparse human interference, then it’s another lift back to Carringtons, and time to crash for a rather earlier start tomorrow, with a 250 mile run up to John o’Groats,, along the north coast to Durness, and then the roller-coaster road south to Ullapool through the Flow Country of Sutherland. The roads will often be slower than today’s but there’s likely to be even less traffic, but there’s a significant threat of rain that will add to our challenges.