North Coast 500 Day 1 – Inverness to Lochcarron

North Coast 500 Day 1 – Inverness to Lochcarron

Having spent the previous day travelling up to Inverness, finally the time to begin our North Coast 500 journey had arrived. Unfortunately, it was a wet and windy start to the tour … and this would be one of the themes of the tour. Today we would be making our way from Inverness to Lochcarron.

Ready to begin the North Coast 500

The first of our 500 miles began with us dropping down to the River Ness.

Then over Kessock Bridge.

After crossing the bridge we cycled along the north side of the River Ness.

Leaving the river we headed towards Muir of Ord.

Then on through Contin.

A few miles further up the road, we took a short detour to visit Rogie Falls.

A few more miles up the road we stopped off at Tarvie Services for something to eat. We had previously visited this eatery on our Hebridean tour and enjoyed the food. It was welcome this time too.

Following lunch, we cycled alongside Loch Garve, the first of the many lochs we would pass on the tour.

Just after Garve, we turned off the A835 and joined the A833.

We would now begin cycling into a headwind for the next stretch of the route.

We took a short break by Lake Luichart.

At Achnasheen, we took our second break of the day.

We met our trusty support vehicle, guided by Nicholl. She had already named the vehicle – actually Andy S’s car – Stephen (or is that Steven?)

Another turn of direction took us on to the A890.

After cycling past Loch Dughaill we followed the valley of the River Carron.

Eventually, Loch Carron came into view.

Half way along the Loch was our destination, Lochcarron Hotel.

The views over the loch were spectacular.

For our North Coast 500 Day 1 we had cycled nearly 62 miles today. The wind and rain at times had made this a challenging day of cycling. While the lochs, hills and valleys we had passed through had already offered up an early peak of some of the spectacular scenery we are going to enjoy over the coming days.

You can view our route from Inverness to Lochcarron below:

Tomorrow we off to Applecross including cycling over Bealach-Na-Ba.

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