Another Trip South into the Highlands
A nearby friend, Leslie who had recently bought my CBF 600 SA8 asked if I fancied another day trip into Caithness and Sutherland sometime. I'm always up for a ride out and after taking the Honda 350/4 to our annual rally then following that with a trip to our own (very wet!) Dounby Show, I felt that it was the most suitable machine for our proposed trip, so set about fitting a rear rack from David Silver and making brackets to mount my QD top box base plate on it. This would allow me to put the large Honda top box on, hopefully not having to 'rent space' in the panniers and top box on the Les's CBF. I decided that rather than get up at some dark ungodly hour for the 06.30 sailing on the Friday, I would avail myself of the Bed and Breakfast option on the MV Hamnavoe the night before. Leslie would then meet me after breakfast to pair up the intercoms so we could then ride together as soon as the ferry docked at 8 on the Friday morning.
Leaving the ferry we headed out west to take some occasionally well surfaced quiet roads through Forss, south to Westfield, on to Scotscalder and then via Loch Watten across to Wick; I wanted to visit their motorcycle shop, AMS that Les had introduced me to on a previous trip - I was in search of a new waterproof riding jacket. I had quite a specific set of requirements for this new jacket and wasn't really hopeful of finding one but Paul, the proprietor found exactly the thing for me and Les kindly managed to squeeze my original into a pannier. Using the fairly quiet A99 we had a very pleasant ride down to Latheron and made a deliberate detour back north and then via Smerral to join the A9 south at Latheronwheel - the quaint little harbour here has picnic tables overlooking the North Sea, where pods of dolphins can often be seen - well worth a visit if you have time when travelling to and from the North coast.
South now on the A9 to Brora via the Berriedale Braes and Helmsdale, where Leslie informed me that he thought that something had just dropped off the back of my bike, so we pulled into a lay-by and had a look around and he noticed that one of my lower 'half clamps' on the rear rack had disappeared. All entirely my fault as this was a trial run with the new plate attached to the rack, so I hadn't loctited the bolts until I knew it all worked, then they could be tidied up and finish polished - hey ho, that's life! He kindly offered to go back to where he thought it might be whilst I checked all other fastenings and he found the proverbial 'needle in a haystack' in the middle of the road. We pressed on having ascertained that everything was still safe with the remaining brackets and stopped as planned at Harry Gow's in Brora to pick up pies and sticky buns as rumbling tums halted our progress.
Fuelled up (bikes too!) a short time later and heading back north to take the narrow road up through Glen Loth and onto Kinbrace - an area sadly overlooked as most folk just hammer up and down the A9, often in some sort of self-imposed hurry. This road has deteriorated somewhat since I last used it - lots more grass down the middle, favoured by most of the sheep but with care it's still a lovely way to see some great scenery and birdlife. This was the only rain we had all day and as soon as we joined the Helmsdale/Kinbrace, slightly more major road with a better surface devoid of grass, it became dry again - typical!
I wanted to show Les the visitor centre at the Forsinard railway station in the Flow Country so we made a short detour there. This whole area is of great ecological importance in that it is the largest expanse of peat bog in Europe, covering some 1500 square miles, continually capturing carbon from the atmosphere. We struck up a conversation with a couple in a camper van from the Netherlands, also enjoying the impressive visitor centre. From here it was a very enjoyable ride back to the north coast at Melvich and then along the A836 for our to return to Scrabster, even allowing us yet another coffee stop at the Weigh Inn before catching the 7 pm boat back home.
Waiting in the queue for loading, we were joined by a group of Norwegian motorcyclists on modern 'adventure bikes' mostly BMWs and Triumphs and the 350 seemed to grab their interest - one very knowledgable chap had no idea that people in Orkney were even interested in classic bikes! We exchanged details and met up with two of them the following day so that I could take them to a couple of my friends classic collections of Kawasakis, Hondas, BMWs and Triumphs - they were astounded to say the least. One of the friends with Kawasaki triples knew some of the contacts of the Norwegian guys and is also into Vintage tractors, just as they are - small World eh? Leslie seems very pleased with my old CBF, which has only just completed 10,000 miles in its 14 year life and I think the little classic 350 Four is ideally suited to these short one day trips into the fairly unspoilt roads around Sutherland and Caithness and 200 miles is a comfortable distance, allowing time to see many of the areas hidden gems.