Day 2 Barra Tuesday 28th May 

I slept well and woke to sunny spells but drizzly rain came on. Today we planned to potter around on Barra, but given the forecast (very heavy rain in the afternoon), we weren’t sure how much cycling we’d actually do. 

Day 1 – Out to Barra 27/5/24 

After getting up and checking our touring baggage, and having some breakfast (instant porridge and a pain au raisin), we drove the car (with the tandem etc) down to Stoddarts for storage. We assembled the bike and piled on the luggage. The bike handles really nicely when loaded, so there were no issues riding down to the Caledonian MacBrayne terminal by the harbour. By the time we’d set up the bike, the early drizzle had stopped. 

Day 0 – Arrival in Oban 26/5/24 

As usual we drove north to Oban in stages. On the final drive, we planned to drive up from Edinburgh which is a drive of approximately 3 hours. We woke to rather heavy rain, and loaded up the car with panniers and the tandem in a spell of lighter rain before setting off. It continued to be very wet driving from Edinburgh along the M9 – see the video below, which includes the sight of the famous Kelpies statues. 

Some great albums here, plus some real dogs (in my opinion, obviously). The highlight in this set of albums is London Calling by The Clash, but then that's been a favourite of mine for many years.

I hadn't listened to Orange Juice's Rip it Up much at all over the years, and I kind of appreciated this. So that's the album I'm flagging up here. Devendra Banhart's Rejoicing in the Hands was also interesting. Both these are in my Qobuz favourites for further listening.

We had a rather nice evening for this event (except for the brief rain shower before the event started). I rode the P5 TT bike with the deep front wheel as there was only a very gentle wind throughout. I actually felt pretty good and was riding well above my current estimated FTP for much of the time. This is quite encouraging as I come back from a brief medical hiatus in training.

We were all a little concerned about traffic levels as stationary traffic on the A421 increased the number of vehicles on the course as drivers used the road as a rat run. But by the time we were riding everything seemed to be back to normal. I had a clear run through. 

Though it's still some way off, there were a few things than needed checking before we head north on our cycle tour. Firstly, there was the question of our fitness for several consecutive days of cycling, and more specifically my ability to sit on a bike for long periods. Secondly, we recently replaced our creaky 2014 Ford Focus with a newer 2023 model - would our tandem fit inside, or would we need to sort out roof bars?

Dealing with the second point first: since 2013, our touring tandem has been a Thorn Discovery Raven Twin. Notably, this tandem was specced with S&S couplings which allow the bike to be split into two parts. The rear section is the larger part. The photograph below shows the old car loaded for our 2023 Normandy holiday - including the Thorn tandem and my Cervelo P3C time trial bike.

This event saw my return to club events after a brief hiatus on medical grounds (minor operation), so I was a little apprehensive as to how I'd get on  - while I had done a few turbo sessions, this would be the first time out on the road.

As it turned out, I got on OK, though a bit of the pace I'd have expected on such a nice warm spring evening. I had no real issues other than my usual mucking up the clipping in at the start!

As alluded to in my previous post, planning our 2024 tour has been fairly complicated. But now with route, accommodation and ferries planned, the overall route is shown below.

As usual, we're starting and finishing in Oban - this route is a bit of an outline, there will be extra bits of cycling dependent on the weather, local sights and of course fatigue. The opening leg is principally the ferry crossing from Oban to Castlebay in Barra - a crossing of nearly 5h. In total, we have seven ferries!

Back in the day, and I’m thinking mid 1990s through to maybe 2010, we used to just set off on our trusty touring tandem with no fixed plans, no pre-arranged accommodation* and clutching our Caledonian MacBrayne Island Hopscotch tickets**. And we rarely ran into problems getting on ferries or finding somewhere to stay.

Our last Scottish cycle tour was back in 2017 since our attempt to tour in 2018 foundered due to missing our first ferry in Oban and then having all the ferries cancelled due to a storm. In subsequent years we were unable to tour owing to family circumstances and the Covid pandemic.

Quite a few years ago, I started an exploration of my family’s genealogy. This began as a Christmas holiday project, then became a bit of an obsession until the ‘easy wins’ were all done. While clearing my late father’s house prior to sale, my brother uncovered a bunch of photos that we think were included in my paternal grandmother’s belongings when she died in 2000.

In these photos were three that included men in military uniform. One of these was clearly identifiable by the handwritten inscription on the reverse of the photo. The others are a little more complicated!