Cycling day 32: Tain to the Crask Inn

Today’s route started out passing through a few small villages. After about 20 miles I reached Lairg, and after that just a small scattering of buildings. I was following the A836 at this point, used by National Cycle Route 1. A little further along this meets with the A838, and from this point the A836 becomes a single track road with passing places every so often. Also from this point I didn’t encounter another building until I reached my accomodation at the Crask Inn, perhaps 9 or 10 miles further along.

En-route on this final stretch I passed four cyclists, two pulling trailers and a young couple with panniers. In the same stretch only 23 motor vehicles passed me. It’s a quiet road; not your typical A-road. I played leapfrog with the couple when I stopped to take photos or let vehicles pass. They stopped at the Crask Inn as well as me and we got chatting. They’re doing their own ambitious journey — a Coast to Coast. In this case a south coast (Eastbourne) to north coast. We chatted about their route and my route and I showed them my detailed route plans and elevation profiles. I also told them about OpenStreetMap and OpenCycleMap.

A little later I got chatting with a woman from the Netherlands who now works at the Crask Inn, and after that chatted with a cyclist who’d stopped at the Crask Inn on his way south. In the early evening a couple doing driving day tours based out of Lairg chatted with me. It turned out that the lady’s father worked for the Ordnance Survey, so we discussed mapping and OpenStreetMap for quite a bit as well as my trip. Approaching dinner I chatted with a couple of motorcyclists that are participating in a rally, with targets hundreds of miles apart. They expect to have completed about 3000 miles on their machines by the time they complete.