I Get Locked Down

When I returned from my last cycling trip (New Zealand in February), COVID-19 hadn't been invented and the 'Coronavirus' was just a curiosity affecting China.  Real men, such as myself, scoffed at the idea of facemasks and life was good.  Little did I know that I would spend most of my spring unravelling a series of trips to France, Italy and the US and that airlines, hotels and booking sites would become my worst enemy as they attempted to weasel out of meeting their obligation to provide refunds.  Along the way I have to had to learn the whole vocabulary of the 'new normal':

1. New normal

2. Flatten the curve

3. Herd immunity

4. Social distancing

5. Bubble

6. Key worker (who would ever have imagined that the dozy old bat on the checkout at my local Sainsbury would one day be regarded as 'key')

7. Wankers (an old term but now re-purposed to mean 'airlines')

 I have managed a couple of weeks away; one on the canal boat and one in Norfolk (where I experienced 'The New Normal for Norfolk') but the long-distance cycle touring gear has been gathering dust at the back of the garage. Well not any more.... I got locked down but I'm getting up again!

 Going abroad is pretty much a non-starter.  The rules about which countries require quarantine are phd-grade and change more frequently than the weather forecast and, anyway, I am probably now on most airlines' blacklist for calling them wankers.  So......a cycling trip in dear old blighty seems the only option.  Even then things are tricky; the northern 'whippet belt' is in and out of lockdown and the bits of the UK that like to play at self rule delight in adjusting restrictions differently to England just to piss us off.  Anyway, here is my cunning plan.......The Scottish Highlands.

 My hope is that, since the Highlands only has a population of 12, and since the disease-ridden foreigners can't get there, the highlands will be nice, empty and COVID-free.  I have long had a hankering to ride the NC500 (a 500 mile tourist route around the north Scottish coast) and I have devised a route that extends this to create an 875 mile figure of eight, starting and ending at the bottom of Loch Lomond, just beyond the festering masses of Glasgow.  Planning this hasn't been easy because many hotels in the Highlands seem to have just thrown in the towel and closed for the whole of 2020, but I have managed to work-up an itinerary that gets us round in 13 days and looks like this:

 Obviously I will be joined by Plum (who is harder to shake off than a new and persistent cough)  and we set off tomorrow to drive to Balloch, where I have persuaded someone to pretend to store the van for 2 weeks (they will really use it as a mini-cab).  We first head to Fort William then up the Great Glen to Beauly where we follow the NC500 anti-clockwise before returning to Balloch via Inverness and Perth.  You will notice that this cleverly steers us well clear of Aberdeen where the lurgy seems to have had a bit of a toe-hold recently.  Less cleverly our start/end point falls just inside an area of new restrictions centred on Glasgow; I have phoned the hotel and they say they are still open so fingers crossed.

 I'll post an update whenever I find myself with the inclination and a phone signal.