Scotland August 2020-Part 2: West coast and Galloway Forest Park

I woke up at 9am, had a quick breakfast, loaded the bike and said goodbye to my Dad, brother Tim and his wife, Jenny. I’d planned a route taking me to Inverary, round the end of Loch Fyne. Then down to Dunoon to catch a ferry. The weather was cool, overcast, and I expected a few showers until midday, then better weather in the afternoon. Once again I set off to Oban, fuelled up the bike, and headed back along the A85. Traffic wasn’t too bad, and I made good time, enjoying the road for the third time in 4 days. At Damally, on the eastern end of Loch Awe, I turned right onto the A819. This is another favourite road in this part of Scotland. Initially, it follows the southern side of Loch Awe, before swinging south to Inverary. I stopped for a drink of water shortly after turning off the A85, took a few pics, then carried on. Again, I was quite lucky with the traffic, only getting stuck behind one lorry for a short while before he indicated for me to overtake. The road passed through low hills, with a lot of trees lining the road. The road surface was in really good condition, and to the south I could see blue sky, so knew that I would soon be in sunshine. I was really enjoying the ride. I passed three bikes going the other way, gave them a nod, but only got one in return. This whole nodding business is pretty weird really. A lot of bikers seem to never nod at Harleys, and on online forums a lot of bikers slag off Harley riders for never nodding at them. I nod at everyone, even scooters with L plates. It costs nothing. People often slag off Harleys for reliability, too, but I passed 40 000 miles on mine on this trip, and the only thing that has ever gone wrong with it is a snapped throttle cable, which happened a quarter mile from home.

It wasn’t long before I was in Inverary. I didn’t stop, heading straight out of town on the A83. I’d wanted to come up to Oban this way, but the A83 had a closed section, which signs now said was being bypassed on the old military road. I’d been told there was a convoy system operating through that section, but today I was turning off onto the A815. I’d not been on the A815 before, and it turned out to be a really lovely road, initially following the southern shore of Loch Fyne, before heading south along the eastern shore of Loch Eck to Dunoon. The road here had some long straights, was well surfaced and marked, so I opened up the bike, scraping on a few corners; you don’t have to lean that far to scrape the footboards on the Slim. Over the years, I have learnt the exact angle where the boards hit the road, and usually leave a bit of leeway. However, I was feeling good, the sun had come out, and I felt like a bit of a blast. I passed a few cars, and one bike. I’d put on my biking playlist, and the sounds of the Talking Heads accompanied me as I swung through the sweeping corners. It didn’t seem long before I arrived in Dunoon, where I headed for the ferry at Hunter’s Quay. The interweb had told me that ferries ran every twenty minutes, and I ended up riding straight onto a ferry when I arrived at the dock. I was waved up to the front, where a couple of cyclists were. Just after me, three guys from Northern Ireland, probably, like me, in their fifties, parked just behind me. Two of them were on Triumph Tigers, the other on a generic pointy plastic thing. I greeted them, but they weren’t friendly, eyeing up the Harley and me as if we’d gatecrashed a party. Apart from telling me they were headed to Stranraer, they seemed more interested in talking among themselves. The ferry took about 20 minutes to reach the dock near Gourock. When I was waved off the ferry, the three Irish bikers followed me, into quite heavy traffic. It was quite warm now, the sun bright, and I filtered through traffic all the way to Inverkip, the Irish bikes slowly dropping back. After Wemyss Bay, where the traffic cleared, I never saw them again.

Shortly, I arrived in Largs. I’d lived here once, and at Fairlie, just down the coast, for a bit longer. It was when I got my first job in the UK after moving back from Botswana, working for Loganair at Glasgow Airport. The flat I’d stayed in in Fairlie with my ex-wife was on the seafront, with a great view of the nuclear power station at Dounray. I wondered if my old friend Mike still lived in these parts? He used to go for midnight swims in the winter, after a skinful at the pub. I though about stopping to see the old view, but didn’t stop. Largs had been surprisingly busy, with lots of people wandering around eating ice cream and driving aimlessly, so I hadn’t stopped there. Largs has a very famous ice cream shop, Nardini’s, which was opened by an Italian immigrant from Tuscany and his wife in 1935. I’m not a huge fan of ice cream, or crowds during a pandemic, so I didn’t stop, but I can vouch from past experience that they have great ice cream. They are situated in an amazing art-deco building, and have been recognised as the finest ice-cream parlour in Scotland.

I followed the coast down to Ardrossan, then the A78 heads a bit inland towards Irvine. It’s now dual carriageway, which it hadn’t been when I lived here. As a consequence, before I knew it, I was past Prestwick, and turned off the A77, which is in effect a continuation of the A78. I joined the B7045 at Minishant, and immediately the road was absolutely gorgeous. Heading across farmland towards Kirkmichael, I realised that all I had to eat with me was a tin of stew, and realised I should probably have stopped at a shop. At Kirkmichael, I carried on straight into the village rather than following the road where it turned right. I immediately saw a sign saying “Kirkmichael Community Shop and Cafe”. Brilliant. I parked up, got my mask out of my pocket, and went inside. On the subject of masks, I have to say that they seem to take it all a lot more seriously north of the border. Everywhere I went into a shop, or a petrol station, masks seemed to be enforced, and everyone wore one, unlike down in NW England, where people seem to regularly walk into shops with signs saying masks must be worn while bare-faced. The shop was a bit odd, as the building it was in was quite large, but it was stocked like a village shop, with essentials only. It was staffed by two older women, who told me they were just closing and could only take contactless payment, which was fine by me. I bought some bread rolls, a couple of frozen burgers, and a tin of beans. I was hoping to find some of those all-in-one coffee sachets, as, stupidly, I’d forgotten to bring the makings of any hot beverages with me, even mate tea, which requires nothing else to make it. I thought about buying more water, but figured that, since I was going to camp next to a loch, and I had a water filter with me, I didn’t need to.

Stocked up, I set off again. I’d been meaning to fill up with petrol, but I realise that was not going to happen after a quick ride through the village. The gauge said I still had 93 miles range, so I figured I would make it through the Galloway Forest and back to civilisation before running out. About 10 km after Kirkmichael, I passed Straiton, where the road becomes single track and ceases to have a number, being called Newton Stewart Road instead. It’s a really beautiful bit of road; threading through farmland initially, you can in some places see for miles. It reminds me somewhat of roads in the Yorkshire Dales. There was very little traffic, and what there was pulled into passing places before me, so I only stopped once myself on he whole road. Rolling hills and farmland gave way to managed forestry, then a bit of open moorland, where I stopped to take in the view. By now it was around 5:30pm, so I wasn’t short of daylight. I chugged along, enjoying the view, the late afternoon sun adding a magical light to the surroundings. Roads like these can’t be hurried. I rode onto the crest of a hill, and stopped for 10 minutes, with a beautiful view looking out across moorland and forest.

Initially, I missed the turning to Loch Moan, because I wasn’t paying attention to the map on my phone. I’d gone a few miles past the turn-off before I realised. I did a U-turn, and found the turn off a few minutes later. I hadn’t been sure what sort of road it was from the satellite view, and it turned out to be a dirt forestry track. It looked OK, so I turned up the track and headed into a forest. The Harley doesn’t have much ground clearance, so I took it slowly, second and third gears, sometimes changing which track I was riding in to get the smoothest ride. After a few hundred metres, I turned left onto another, smaller track, which ran along the edge of a forest on the left, and a huge denuded area where the trees had been harvested on the right. It was just over a mile along the track before I found a tree across the road, and a muddy track down to the loch turning off to the right. I parked the bike, and walked down to the loch to make sure I could get back up it tomorrow. It looked OK, so I went back for the bike, and parked it under some trees next to the loch.

The first thing I noticed about my chosen campsite was that people had been there before. There were two separate areas where people had made fires. Both of these fire-pits were full of rubbish, one of them being covered in broken glass. Why can’t people clean up after themselves? Why go to a beautiful area, and trash it? Total wankers. I cleaned up a bit, and put some of the rubbish in a bag to take with me. The rest I put in a pile with the broken glass. There’s a limit to how much of other people’s crap I can get on the bike. I’d joked with my brother that I was going to have a good moan at Loch Moan, but I hadn’t expected it to be about other peoples rubbish. I picked a campsite a bit away from the rubbish, on an area of grass. It had a bit of a slope, but would have to do. After putting up the tent, a Vango Banshee 200 I’d been using for years, which actually belongs to my stepson, I took a walk along the shore. I picked up a 2 litre plastic Coke bottle near the edge of the loch. The whole shoreline of the loch was really swampy; when I stood on it, my foot would sink slightly, and water would break through the surface. In fact, the whole area seemed a bit swampy, and a line of planted pine trees had been evidently been uprooted by the wind, the ground too soft to hold them. The loch itself looked really beautiful. I filled up my 2 litre collapsible water bottle from the loch. The water was so full of peat, that the water was brown. I took it back to the campsite and ran it through the sawyer water filter. It looked much clearer, but was still brown. Just to make sure, I filtered it again. It was still the colour of whisky, but it tasted fine. Just as well, as I only had a 500ml bottle of water with me….I got my seat out, and sat admiring the loch while I blew up my air mattress. Then I assembled my wood-stove, a cheap Lixada one I’d bought from eBay. It’s an excellent bit of kit, in which you can burn small twigs and branches. I thoroughly recommend it; it; it packs up small, and, on my trip to South America in Jan/Feb this year, I actually used it more for cooking than my gas stove. After finishing setting up camp, I got the drone out. It was a tad windy, so I didn’t fly it too high or too far away. I kept getting wind warnings on the screen, but I managed to get a bit of footage. Then I took the chair down to the shore, and opened the small glass jar of malt whisky my brother Tim had given me. I sat watching the sunset across the loch, swiping at the occasional midges. The temperature was low enough for midges not to be a major problem, as I’d anticipated when I’d looked at the weather forecast the day before. It’s times like these I love the most about motorcycle touring. On my own, in the middle of nowhere, a whisky in my hand, and a beautiful sunset. While I also like travelling with other people, especially with Jackie, I also love solitude. I can quite happily just sit doing nothing, or bumble around the campsite, absorbing the sounds and smells of nature. It’s therapy. Give me a campsite next to a loch over any amount of counselling. The only problem I have with wild camping is actually getting anything done…I sat there for an hour or so, just chilling, watching fish break the surface of the water to grab insects, a group of geese noisily fly past, and mice scuttling about. There seemed to be a lot of mice; I counted 5 in a short space of time. One of them was black with a white nose, a type I’ve never seen before. Subsequently, I’ve found out it must have actually been a young rat….

Just before the light faded, I collected some twigs and got the wood-stove going.  I lit it using a trick I learned from Wiltshire Man, from one of his YouTube videos, cotton wool make-up removal pads covered in Vaseline. I mixed the beans and the stew and heated it over the fire, and ate it with two of the bread rolls. As usual, it tasted far better than you would expect; the combination of the great outdoors and hunger is a wonderful appetiser. I sat eating my dinner, and noticed a barn owl was hunting near me. After I’d finished my dinner, I got out the head torch, and walked along the track I’d ridden in on. The owl kept flying above me, disappearing, then swooping back. I could see it clearly with the head-torch, which didn’t seem to bother the owl at all. For a good ten minutes, it kept flying past, about 20 feet above my head, the suddenly dived down into the area where trees had been felled. I guess it must have caught a mouse, as I didn’t see it again after that. I went back to the tent, climbed into my sleeping bag, plugged my headset, phone and GoPro into the power pack. I then read for a few minutes before falling asleep.

The next morning, I woke around 7:30am. It was really cold. I heated some water on the gas stove, then started packing up. I often see posts debating the merits of different stoves. Mine is a cheap Chinese copy (sold under the brand name Outry), of a Fire Maple stove, which cost me £18 off Amazon. I believe the Fire Maple is in itself a Chinese copy of a more expensive stove. So I have a cheap Chinese copy of a Chinese copy. And it’s served me well, and I have no doubt it will continue to do so for many years. I love finding cheap equipment that works. I also refill camping gas canisters using cheap butane gas, bought from Decathlon, using an adaptor bought off eBay for £3. I always think that money saved on equipment is money that can be spent actually using it. People often say that cheap equipment is a false economy, but I disagree. Some items need to be the best quality, like bike tyres, and a decent sleeping bag and tent. But a lot of camping equipment (and motorcycle accessories) are ridiculously over-priced IMO. I am still using the £8 cookware set I used in Argentina and Chile for 2 months. The dual USB port I bought for my RE Himalayan for £8.67 is still working fine, after more than 10 000 km in all sorts of weather and road conditions. Spend the money on what matters, which, apart from the items mentioned, is the trip itself.

After a cup of hot water, I finished packing up, and set off back down the dirt track to the main road. The firstv10km or so were on the same single-track road, but, after Bargrenna, it got a little wider. It’s a beautiful bit of road, and continued all the way to Newton Stewart, where I filled up with petrol before joining the A75 to Dumfries. The A75 is in itself quite a nice road, the weather was nice again, and I settled in for the long ride home. My original intention had been to divert through the Forest of Bowland, but I soon realised I didn’t have time for this. I was going for dinner with my stepson, his girlfriend and her parents, and I didn’t want to miss it. At Gretna Green, I would join the M6 and head straight home. I stopped for a coffee near Dumfries, and chatted with a guy who was out on a 2 day trip from Birmingham on his GS. He’s been up to Stranraer, had campped and been eaten by midgies, and was now on his way home. He asked me where I’d come from, and I told him about my trip.

“This is a great road, isn’t it?” he remarked as I munched on a sausage roll. I agreed with him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had passed close to one of the best roads I’d ever ridden in the UK. I hadn’t known myself until I went there.