Bikepacking the Scottish Highlands (off-road)

What a sick path this is. Scotland and the Highlands. We've always dreamed of going on a bike trip there. My friends Eric and Benny and me were looking for a wild off-road adventure. And what better place to go than Scotland? It's beautiful right here. The first week took us through the famous Highlands on the mainland and we got to know the lovely Scottish people and the midges. Early in the morning we set off from Freiburg for a 16-hour train ride. We had to change trains in Paris, London and a few other places. So it was quite an exhausting day. Around midnight, we finally arrived in Perth, north of Edinburgh and just rode a few kilometers from the train station. We are ready. We're in Perth, Scotland and tonight we're just gonna ride for like 5-6 kilometers to get outside of the city. And then we're gonna sleep there because it's already past midnight. And down here is a beautiful river. In the morning we had to buy some stuff from an outdoor store and the supermarket and then we were off to the first day. The day was mostly flat and on paved roads, but in the afternoon, we finally hit the off-road part of our Cairngorms loop. We found some water here. Test out, honours only, but I guess, yeah, if it's good enough, it's horrible. Now this is the first off-road part of the trip. We've been riding like 70 kilometers on paved roads up till now. And now, we're getting to the highlands. The land's getting wild. This is so beautiful. Like so wide, open and empty. Highlands. We're in Scotland, baby. Looks like we found a spot for the night. Soft as f***. Next to a river. Beautiful. There's a few insects here that are making this beautiful camp spot a little annoying. This is so, so damn annoying. Like super tiny things that are yeah, in the thousands flying around and annoying us. It's terrible. Dinner in the making. Well, while these insects are eating us alive, it is a pretty nice view. Dinner for the night. It's not quite vegan as there's maybe like 50 to 100 little insects in there. Yeah, we're all sitting in the tent because it is unbearable outside with the insects. Do you have it with you right now? That would be really funny. Three, two, one. We made it. This would have been a really nice evening outside. Perhaps with chocolate. Yo, these f***ing things are still here. We thought they'd be gone in the morning. All this black stuff also on the green sidewall, that's all insects. In comparison from what I'm used to from Scandinavia, normal mosquitoes are kind of limited to a certain number in the tent. But from the midges there are hundreds in the tent. And outside you can even be swarmed by thousands. This was a big bummer for us since it made the mornings and evenings really hard. We hadn't informed ourselves really about them, so we didn't have any spray or other equipment for our protection. This is the first time that we're having to get off the bike because it's all a lot of mud and grass. I can't really ride. Yeah, kind of fun. What a sick path this is. We've been along this lake here. Just a tiny little single trail. It's really hard to stay upright. It's just in the middle of nowhere in the highlands. Lots of rough offroad stuff in the morning today. We're now on this tiny little asphalt road down into the valley. We're probably 30 more kilometers to the next city. This is so beautiful out here. And we're so lucky with the weather as well. Raymond noodles. Reiserbeeren. That grow all over here. Tastes pretty good. This is beautiful right here. And we're having to cross a lot of these rivers. Some of them you can ride through. But yeah, we're getting our feet pretty wet. Yo, what a beautiful gravel road this is. Mountains left and right. Purple heather. So steep. Like in the middle of nowhere. Although we often felt like being in the middle of nowhere, the next time was never far away. Almost every day in the afternoon we passed through the town and took a nice long lunch break. Lunch consisted of bread with baked beans or tomato sauce, crisps and a beer. This was one of our favorite parts of the day. Third night. Third time. But with a sick view. 10 kilometers of single trail. This trail is so tough. There's like every 100-200 meters places like this where you have to get off the bike, carry it or push it. For like 10 kilometers. Finally, it's also nice to have like nowhere to go really or to like not have a strict plan. Yeah, we're just like making the plan day by day. And that's really nice. We are in a traffic jam. We're just taking this as like a connection road. And yeah, these roads are so narrow that there's like lots of trucks on there and they're blocking the way. I guess that's some change of scenery as well. So we decided to put in a night shift so that we could get the train tomorrow in the morning from Fort William to Oban and from there in the afternoon the ferry from Oban to the Hebride Island. And that's why we're riding in the middle of the night which is also really cool. It's like, yeah, I mean almost no cars and the road is great. There's no wind. We are about to board the ferry to the outer Hebrides.