Gwilym's Adventure Blog

Early start from Inverness saw us having breakfast at Aviemore. Then it was a great twisty ride round to Braemar for coffee and cake with my cousin Will before more great roads into Pitlochry. We saw a small herd of deer about 20m from the road at Glenshee. From Pitlochry it was down the A9 to Edinburgh where Gary and I said bye to Mark (who is pushing on further south tonight) and found our hostel in the centre of the city.

A misty start along the North coast to Thurso (Breakfast) and then onto John O Groats just as the sun came out. However this was short lived and we got rained on during the ride south to Inverness. We stopped for a coffee (just to use the stove we had been carrying) on route but good to get back to Inverness to dry out. More sun is due tomorrow.

Today was a great ride from Gairloch via Ullapool (Breakfast), Lochinver, Stoer Lighthouse and Durness. Some great unclassified and B roads along the coast (sometimes only a few metres from it). Bend after bend, blind downhill lefts followed by blind summits into tight rights, kept us on our toes all day.

Today was an amazing sun drenched ride from Inverness to Gairloch via Strathcarron, Applecross and Toridon. Even though we grabbed a can of fuel from Inverness, there was no need to use it as more petrol stations than expected. Great roads, great scenery and some pretty good cake.

Yesterday was spent trundling up the motorway to Glasgow where we spent the night. Today was an awesome ride from Glasgow to Inverness mainly on the A82 but a few detours down some of the smaller twisty roads. The weather (as you can see from the pictures is just fantastic) as we headed over Ranoch Moor and down into Glencoe.

It has been a mixed week mainly based around marking college assignments but with a few cycle rides in between and preparing the Tiger for a week on the road. I head up to Glasgow later today and then the tour of Scotland starts tomorrow. Hopefully I will be able to find some wifi and blog some pictures over the next week

Having picked this new Triumph Tiger 800XRx up in July I have now fitted it out for touring with the Givi Outback range of hard Aluminium Cases. Initially I fitted a Givi B47 plastic case I had lying around but I didn't like the look and wanted something bigger as I have some big touring plans coming up. The first job was to fit the Aluminum Base Plate SRA6401 which was easy enough to fit but required me to drill 17mm holes in the plastic of the Tiger tail area. The instructions were clear and the holes are pre marked already. I only had a 16mm bit so this meant a bit of filing after drilling but it all worked well and lined up. The plate looks tidy and has a very secure fit as would be expected as it it motorcycle specific. Fitting time was around 1 hour (but 20mins of this was spent looking for a 17mm drill bit). Next the Givi Trekker Outback 58 ltr  OBK58A arrived. I had dithered over the 42ltr or 58ltr but decided I would later regret it if I bought the smaller one...