DAY 5, Tuesday 1 July

Today is the ‘tipping’ day, when we’ll have gone as far north as we can, and started the journey home – we’ll be over half-distance by the time we get to Ullapool.

Yesterday had proved too good to be true – a whole day sans touching a spanner. Today made up for it!

The day started well enough, with Molly’s excellent English breakfast, but on pitching up to the bikes, a) the clutch was slipping so much I couldn’t kick her over, and b) when reverting to plan B, the dreaded bump-start, we discover a flat back tyre!!

Frantic hand-pumping gets enough air in to bump-start her, which she does immediately, and I limp down the road to the air-line at the local garage – we should have fuelled as well, but we reckon that we’ve enough gas to get to Wick, and that fuelling there will just about get us to Ullapool, our night-stop over on the west coast. Wrong on both counts, as it turns out.

The east-coast road in not a great visual treat, and the grey-skies we’ve become used to continue to impart a flat, dull overlay to any scenic splendours that might exist, so it’s a question of head-down and go for it. Golspie, Brora and Helmdale come up, nice enough wee places in their way, but the great expanse of North Sea they face is not wonderfully attractive to my eyes.

A few miles short of Wick, I’m completely out of fuel, reserve and all. While Neal heads over the 4 or 5 miles in to get me some more petrol, I check the rear tyre, and it’s well down, so more elaborate measures are called for, and I start to take the rear wheel out to fit the spare inner-tube I’ve foreseen to pack. Suffice it to say that there are all manner of complications, some associated with the stainless-steel nuts and bolts I’ve chosen to rebuild XLH495 with being seriously seized, others with the sheer difficulty of wrestling with the tube-change (it’s a spoked wheel, so tubeless is not possible).

Whilst at it, I end up having to remove completely the centre-stand, it having lost one side of the pivot and fixing arrangement, and try and sort out the slipping clutch. Towards the end of these endeavours, we’re joined by Davey from down the road, who’s seen the stopped bikes in the driveway of his friend’s empty house, and ends up opening it up for us to wash our hands once finished – thank you for your help, man!! People up here are very friendly, as we continue to discover throughout the rest of the day.

The tyre-repair works, but the clutch doesn’t, so having made it into Wick, there’s another road-side ‘fix’ attempted, this time more successful, but we have lost shed-loads of time, and the decision is made to abandon the diversion to John o’Groats – I’ve been there previously, Neil has no great desire to see what everyone reinforces to us is a pretty soulless and boring patch of land that just happens to be the most northerly point. So, we chase diagonally over to Thurso, where things start to happen scenically.

Kyle or Eriboll, Sutherland

The first part of the north coast is pleasant enough, more of the reasonably flat agricultural lands that amazingly seem to do quite well so far north, but once past the nuclear reactor at Dounreay, the countryside improves dramatically. The road becomes narrower and twistier across the moorland, and eventually we hit the coast, with views over the fabulous beaches, ringed by the dramatic cliffs of Sutherland.

There’s a fair scatter of tiny settlements, and just short of Tongue we stop for a warming cuppa - it’s not hot, it has to be said, and I have perspired heavily into my leathers with the 3 or 4 hours of work I put in, so I’m suffering from wind-chill, that the wind/waterproof jacket I now put on sorts out for the rest of the day.

There’s a causeway across the Kyle of Tongue, then we cut straight across the peninsula to the Kyle of Eriboll, which forces a long and stunningly scenic ride south along the eastern shore, then back up northwards along the western side, where we spot all manner of bird-like, herons, owls, buzzards, but disappointingly no eagles as yet.

As we hit the coast-proper at the end of this forced diversion, I’m pleased to rediscover the bay Val and I lunched in with the incredibly close company of a pair of Arctic Terns, who then provide us with their mating dance as a thank-you for the crumbs they demanded, some 10 years ago, on our way home from the Orkneys.

By now the roads have been almost exclusively single-track with passing places, but there’s almost no traffic and in many places a car and bike can share the strip anyway, so we’re making good progress, albeit that speed is limited by the terrain and the increasingly vicious winds we’re battling, and we’ve enough time to start to take in the truly amazing mountain scenery that from Durness onwards, as we start to head south for real, takes over from the coast as the dominant attraction.

Kyle or Eriboll, Sutherland

It’s almost a film-set for Lord of the Rings, huge towering peaks, great blocks and bulges of mountains against the sky, and miles of hard, stony pavements, with the usual scattering of small lochs to add to the visual excitement – this is Sutherland, and it is truly magnificent – I later say to Val on our evening-call that it will be one of the first destinations for the next camper-van we acquire. It really epitomises the very best of the Highlands, from its eastern border with Caithness, right the way through to its southern one with Ross.

the Sutherland high peaks – wild, wild country

And the roads are wonderful – they soon improve from single-track to great sweeping swoops down-glen and up-hill, and we’re making good progress, but the fuel is once more running low. By dint of coasting the downhill bits, I eke out the reserve I’ve been switched on to for 25 mile or so, but about 2 miles short of Ullapool, I’m completely dry. Neil manages to find a kind holiday-maker who runs me into town, and eventually we’re safely into the Glendhu B&B of Mrs Fraser; it’s another immaculate place, and she’s completely unfazed by our lateness, finally arriving at 8 p.m. after a 8.30 departure from Tain some 215 miles earlier.

A long shower, a long hands-scrub, and we’re literally 200 yards from the main street, where The Arches pub provides us with the badly-needed pint (my first goes down in under a minute!) and an excellent T-Bone steak, before back to an early bed after a brief run-through the next days schedule – with ferries to catch, we can’t afford another day like today!!