LEJOG Day 9 – Glen Coe – Drumnadrochit
Miles: 80 |Climbing 1804ft | 6 hours 43 minutes
After a fantastic night in the hotel we drove back to the previous days drop off point high on Rachoch moor. The good news was that it was downhill all the way, but the conditions were horrendous and we were on the brakes all the way down through crazy amounts of standing water.
The brakes soon become very ineffective in these conditions, I would imagine that the more up to date bikes with disk brakes would be better in these conditions. We were pleased to get off the hill into the relative shelter of the Great Glen, and we followed the Caledonian Canal from Fort William, passing last nights hotel around lunchtime. We passed Loch Lochy and Loch Olch, where we took a welcome break from the road and followed the canal towpath all the way to the south western tip of Loch Ness. Again, not ideal on road bikes but it did save considerable climbing and was a lovely way to enjoy the canal. We continued to the Loch Ness tourist hotspot of Drumnadrochit, but we knew that there was a very steep climb out of the village – the steepest of the entire trip – which we decided to get out of the way instead of having to take on tomorrow. Roshan met us at the top, and we packed up the bikes before returning to the overnight stop. Whilst enjoying more Scottish hospitality in the Fiddlers pub that evening we hatched a plan to make up for the lost time by going for the finish the next day. With 128 miles left to run it would make it the longest day of the trip, but we figured that if we could ride 100 miles we could do 128.