The Highlanding – Making Sense of the Nonsensical

A few weeks later, once the adrenaline had well and truly subsided, I am afraid to say I was feeling a little despondent. Not just because the monotony of normal life was back in full flow, but because I couldn’t help but feel somewhat underwhelmed by what we had done, and I could not for the life of me put my finger on why.

I was on a high for ages after the Wales trip, and told anyone who would listen how amazing it had been. When people asked how Scotland was, and many did, I gladly retorted with similar noises. I knew it had been incredible, there’s no way it could have been anything but, however I really struggled to muster the same conviction as before. It’s a large part of the reason it has taken me so long to write this tale. Yet writing this tale, alongside revisiting the photos and the GoPro footage, turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered, allowing me to understand the one fundamental difference between the two trips, and the source of my mixed emotions. I shall try and explain…

With our Welsh trip I can still tell you exactly what the best roads we went on were called, and the kind of corners and scenery they presented. The B4520, for example, was a smorgasbord of twists and turns, rolling fields appearing and disappearing between tight treelines, whereas the A4059 was an uninterrupted pedal-to-the-metal thrill ride of long open corners and even longer straights. If I try and do the same with Scotland, without any reference material to hand, I need to think long and hard, and even then come out the other end a bit fuzzy headed and stuttering. Perhaps the fact we spent almost double the time navigating the latter compared to the previous doesn’t help the matter, but I honestly feel this is pretty insignificant.

In Wales we had a clear idea of what roads, or bits of road, we were aiming for before we even left. These were generally stretches of 10-15 miles which we linked together with, well… whatever happened to link them together. While some of the inbetweeny bits were great in their own right, a lot of them were simply good, yet a little forgettable. This was fine however, as the headline bits were fantastic.

Compare this to Scotland, and that analogy can almost be reversed. For every half-decent stretch of road there was mile upon mile of exceptional, breath-taking, mind-blowing tarmac. There was a minor amount of averageness, intertwined and overlaid by an inordinate amount of amazingness. Take the third day of our trip as an example; aside from a handful of miles spent escaping from Thurso at the start, I don’t think we touched a single mediocre, let alone boring, stretch of road at all. When you consider we were out and about for a solid 10 hours that day, you should begin to understand how ridiculous this notion is, especially for somebody who has lived his entire life in the heavily populated central swathes of England.

The roads themselves are absolutely vast as well, as I touched on way back in chapter 2 when I described how we spent 70miles traversing the Cairngorms via the Old Military Road. The Top Gear recommended A836, and its adjoining stunt double the A838, we followed for the best part of 40 miles a piece, and Applecross Pass spans a similar distance. We stuck with the A82 for a ludicrous 120 miles, and I don’t even want to think about how much of the A9 we witnessed!

It is because of this that I find picking out highlights all but impossible, like trying to select the most appetising square of chocolate from a whole king-size bar of Dairy Milk. Moreover, trying to process and digest this amount of information in a feeble little human brain is a pretty daunting prospect, hence my initial feelings of uncertainty following the trips end.

7 months have passed, ample time for such processing and digestion to occur, and I can now reminisce with far greater clarity. Although I may still struggle to tell you what individual roads were called and exactly what they were like, I can tell you all with emphatic confidence that the whole adventure was totally and utterly, unequivocally fan-bloody-tastic. One of the best things I have ever done in my life in fact, and I cannot recommend it enough.

I have provided you with a proven route and, with any luck, more than enough motivation to get off your bum and start planning your own Highland adventure as soon as is humanly possible. The only reason I am not doing exactly that is simply due to the desire to level-up…

Western Europe I am coming for you, and you have one hell of an act to follow!

If for some absurd reason you still cannot comprehend what I am waxing so lyrically about… turn up the volume and sink your eyes into the video below.

Thank you so much for reading.