Bike aboot: Scotland – Glasgow to Glencoe (A82)

The West Coast of Scotland always delivers, Ann and I have done this route loads of times before, either by car or bike and we just cannot find words to describe the scenery and surroundings. I mean, we are talking lochs, big hills, wee hills, waterfalls, caves, classic cars, sport cars, pretty people, ugly people, anything you can think of. One of the most scenic roads and best parts of Scotland if you ask me. I have never taken the train from Glasgow to Fort William, but I heard that it is an unbelievable experience, this is something I will do next year.

Anyway back to business. This week’s bike run started in Glasgow. We missed a few weeks of runs, mainly because of illness etc. so I was very excited to get out and about on the bike again. We didn’t have too much excitement like we usually do, the only thing was that Jamie’s onboard video was acting like a teenager that had to get up for school, then it would work, then it wouldn’t work, then we had video, then it stopped again, after pulling and prodding a few wires and bits it just completely stopped working.

Ann on the other hand has brand spanking new Bridgestone Battleaxe O23s on the bike, lightly scrubbed in and I actually did some stuff to clean out her carbs, I used the typical office based approach and bought some carb cleaner and ran two tanks with this stuff mixed in it through the engine.

I seem to be off topic again, anyway we started in Glasgow and headed over the Erskine bridge to Milton for our 1st fuel stop. The queue for petrol was like the M8 on a rainy day, this should have given us a clue that the road might be a wee bit busy, which it WAS.

We headed off past Loch Lomond, turned off at Tarbet, on a road that seemed to be part of the Dakar rally, heading set for Glencoe, yes the road was busy, but this was a great excuse to take in the awesome Scottish countryside, roundtrip of 192 miles.

The three of us were on form this weekend, I tried to get my timing right for overtaking so all of us could get past fairly easily. Apparently I am shit at it as my timing sucked and Jamie was swearing and cursing at me when I only overtook 1 or 2 cars when there was the opportunity to do more. Lesson learnt I wont do that again. Ann drove exceptional, I think it might be the tyres giving the bike a lot more stability in corners and gave her bags more confidence, either that or she is just awesome, I was gonna say lets stick with the tyres, but I might get pummelled with a helmet in my sleep.

The Route:

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Stops:

Milton for petrol

The Real Food Cafe in Tyndrum

The waterfall outside Glencoe, that is what I call it

Glencoe for petrol

King House hotel for some photos

Tarbet to rest the ol’ bottom

Verdict:

The scenery on this route on the west coast of Scotland is just phenomenal, yes we took an up and down approach and came back the same route as we went up on, but the experience coming down was completely different, less traffic etc. We took it very easy, there were just too much to take in, I would strongly recommend doing this route, the road conditions on the other hand was not fantastic, the A82 from Tarbet to Crianlarich was very bumpy with a lot of patchwork and grooves in the road surface, not great but a good excuse to go slow and take in all the awesomeness of Scotland.

Dropping down into Glencoe is just an amazing experience, you are riding down a valley with cliffs on both sides echoing the sound of the bikes giving an artificial feeling of mine is bigger than yours.