Friday July 4, 2014

Happy 4^th July to our American friends.

Another awesome day on the bikes.  We followed NCR Route 7, which kept us away from the A9 until Inverness, then we had to follow the A9 for a while before heading out to Culbockie where our warmshowers hosts live.

Today was a day of bridges.  We passed this lovely bridge in Carrstairs. It was an old pack horse bridge and in the evening it is illuminated.

Then we spotted this tressel bridge in Moy which is the last remaining wooden tressel bridge on the British rail network (Perth to Inverness). It has been reinforced with cement supports, but they do not detract from the original structure.

We saw this smaller viaduct but cannot remember where it was.

The viaduct at Culloden was stunning.

Tomorrow we cross the Cromarty Firth on this bridge (causeway).

The NCR 7 did take us a little off-route, a 15 km diversion to the Clava Cairns, which is an ancient burial site, and to Culloden, which is a much more recent ‘burial’ site.

The cairns and burial site on the winter solstice is lit by the sun, directly into the passage way.

1760 was the Jacobite rebellion – Bonnie Prince Charlie had raised an army to reinstate himself back on the throne of Scotland and England – he had got as far as Derby, but was on the retreat when the Royalist army slaughtered the Jacobites.  The Jacobites were armed with knives, broadswords, and farm implements and leather shields, the Royalists had cannon and used grapeshot.  Bonnie Prince Charlie high-tailed it back to Europe over the sea to Skye.

This small cottage and others around it was surrounded by the government second line forcing the Jacobites to retreat.

After Culloden we went into Inverness to book our vehicle for the trip across Scotland to pick-up the ferry to Ireland.

We were going to take the direct route in from Culloden but decided to follow NCR Route 7 again.  It took us down a green avenue where we spotted dragons, wizards and a gruffalo, all carved out of trees.

As we crossed the river out of Inverness it started to rain!

It did clear up and we were relatively dry by the time we got to our warmshowers house at 4:00.  Iain cycled out to meet us, he hadn’t warned us about the hill up to his house!  We were warmly welcomed by Joy and Iain, their son and daughter-in-law are on the road and suggested that Iain and Joy become a warmshowers host.  We were their first guests.  Iain and Joy are a really nice couple, very interesting to talk to we had a superb dinner with them vegetarian shepherds pie, cabbage from the garden and peas and a wonderful dessert of mixed fruit and nut crumble – the crumble was more of an oatmeal topping and custard – lovely. We checked our route for tomorrow and chatted with Iain and Joy until 10:30, then to bed.