Has anyone on here done this route? It has always been on my to do list and this summer will probably give me the best chance of doing it as I no longer have a wife to answer to As I live pretty much slap bang in the middle of the 2 places I'm guessing that if I take all the nice roads rather than the most direct route it will be something like a 2000 mile round trip. I am planning on doing the full route in 5 to 6 days as I want to stop off at a few places on route and also take the chance to visit family and friends where possible. Any tips on which roads are a must do and which ones to avoid etc. and also any good B&B's or Pubs on route. I’m trying to persuade a mate to do this with but he is not so keen. if anyone is doing this and doesn’t mind me tagging along I would be more than happy to do that also if anyone would like to join me then that is ok too.
i would buy the book 'bikers britain by simon weir, and a big ordnance survey map of the uk. The book has some of the best roads in the uk in it. We did a scotland tour last year and put the routes from the book onto the big map with highlighting pen,then tied them together to make up a route. The first bit of road from john o groats is a bit boring to be honest and can be policed quite a bit ,so take it steady through the 30mph villages etc. What we did was get tom tom maps app on our phones which has the excellent "winding roads" feature ,where you can put in max , medium or minimum settings as to how much time you have , this took us off the boring a9 ,down the back roads to aviemore .Then as we left aviemore we went down some brilliant roads that took us south but detoured through where the ski slope villages are in the cairgorms and past balmoral . You just look at where you want to end up, put in several waypoints on the app and let tom tom do the rest. Ultimate add ons make a waterproof phone case that i hardwired to the bike battery and used a telfreizer steering stem hole ram ball mount to mount it where i could see it.
Advertise ahead where you plan to make your stops, Wilbert. I'm sure local members would turn up to wave you on.
Oh forgot to mention, we got a list of hostels (not hotels) from the internet .i was a bit dubious about these as i had never stayed in one , but they are really cheap ,they started at £18 per night. Some of them were out buildings attached to hotels (we stopped in one at durness £20 each for the night or if we had booked into the hotel that was part of it ,it was going to be £169.) We would ride until about 3pm then look to see where we would be by about 6pm ,ring up and book in . We went in september just after the kids had gone back to school and never had any problem getting in one. Three of us went and we never had to share the room with any people we didn't know, some of them even had places to put the bikes inside ,as a lot of mountain bikers use them when travelling around and need somewhere to secure their bikes.
Thanks for the advice, I will have a look for that book and see if I can get a copy. I have driven up the A9 many times and know how many cameras are on it plus the mobile ones and now it has the average speed cameras along large lengths but as bikes don’t have front number plates this is not a problem
