While North Coast 500 Day 8 had been our longest and hilliest day, our North Coast 500 Day 9 route from Tongue to Melvich today would be considerably shorter – and hopefully with less climbing. That didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be challenging!

We left Tigh-Nan-Ubhal Guest House and Tongue and joined the A836. This was also part of NCN EV12.

We had previously cycled most of today’s route, though in the opposite direction, on the first day of our JOGLE route a number of years back. It looked very different in this direction!

Today, we would mostly be cycling from west to east across the top of Scotland.

The terrain is rather empty up here. It makes for a strange bleak sense of beauty.

There wasn’t much to take note of through the endless heather and gorse scenery.

After 10 miles we crossed the River Naver Bridge and then cycled alongside the river.

The River Naver flows into Torrisdale Bay.

Sitting on the edge of the bay is the village of Bettyhill.

We stopped for lunch at Bettyhill Tourist Information and Cafe at the far end of the village. The cafe is called The Clachan Cafe. It’s all rather quirky since it is two rooms – one with the food counter and the other providing seating and doubling up as the Information Centre.

Following lunch, we set off up the next hill (there’s always a hill to cycle up immediately after eating food isn’t there?!)

We passed Armadale Beach.

Then through Strathy.

We took a few moments out to visit the Marie Curie Cancer Care Field of Hope.

Then a few miles further on we reached the edge of Melvich.

We were staying at Tigh-na-Clash Guest House. As we arrived it started to rain.

We had arrived early. So after checking in we crossed the road and went for an afternoon break at the Halladale Inn. We would return here for our evening meal.

We had largely avoided the rain on the ride, but while resting in the inn it started to tip it down!

After a tough day of cycling yesterday, North Coast 500 Day 9 had been steady and largely uneventful. We were grateful for this.

You can view our North Coast Day 9 route from Tongue, through Bettyhill, and on to Melvich.

Tomorrow we cycle to Brora.