After a nice evening last night it started to rain. Later the wind got up and then the rain increased to torrential. All through the night it continued and by first light it was blowing hard with almost zero visibility and rain battering on the tent. It wasn’t possible to move so I had to sit tight and hope things would improve.

Trying to keep my biked dry during the storm

The steep descnt to Applecross

I waited all morning but the storm continued. I wasn’t happy about losing an entire day of my planned cycle so at mid afternoon I decided to continue. I had to put on full waterproofs and a plastic bag over my saddle. The cloud was very thick when I set off on the long descent to Applecross. Most of the way I had to have my brakes on but the cold and wet meant my hands were soon loosing all sense of feeling. Eventually I descended below the cloud and could see the sea far below. I only saw a few cars on the descent, unlike yesterday with fine weather and many cars and motorbikes.

I was thankful to reach the Applecross turn off but the village was a mile along a cul-de-sac so I continued right to follow the coast road as far as I could. The weather at sea level had started to clear and I could see Skye in the distance. The coast road was surprisingly hilly and there were many steep and thankfully short sections. It was very impressive riding along with magnificent seascapes to the left and wonderful cloudscapes above.

Impressive cloudscapes

across Loch Shieldaig

There were very few cars and I enjoyed my late afternoon ride enormously. If the weather is kind this road must be one of the best bike rides, or car drive, in the UK. I reached Fearnmore and then changed direction to the SE along Loch Torridon. The climbs and descents became more frequent. Far in the distance were the mountains of Torridon and what looked like Liathach in the distance. I was enjoying myself so much that I’d lost my sense of time and glancing at my watch was surprised to see it was 18:30. I then kept an eye open for a suitable place to camp and found a wet patch of grass a couple of miles from Shieldaig.