Embrace the Freeze | Cycle Touring the Scottish Highlands in NOVEMBER?!

4,011 kilometers down and the end of our journey was finally on the horizon. The next leg would take us to the remote shores of northern Scotland and eventually the town of Thurso. Everything we'd been through in the last four and a half months had brought us here, to the Scottish Highlands. Almost 700 kilometers of mountains, locks, wind and rain stood between us and our ferry to Shetland, where a movie date at Britain's most remote cinema was waiting for us. So after a couple of nights resting in Oban, we peddled north, bracing ourselves for the relentless climbs and frigid November weather to come. Oh my god, the colours of the leaves. So in the trees there is Tyrion, who has just fallen off his bike. You can see him picking it up there. Wow, this is incredible. This is the world's most conveniently timed ferry, literally just as we arrived. As night fell, we peddled just across the water from Ben Nevis, the UK's highest mountain, passing the occasional cruft, which are small farms up in Scotland. So we knocked on a crafter's door to ask to camp in their field. That's Ben Nevis up there, the highest mountain in the UK. Up here, the saltwater fjords that carve up the coast are called sea locks, and we traced the shores of Loch Linny as we headed further through the mountains. Oh, there's another hill ahead. We're both really, really feeling these hills. We've got one more to do after this one. I think this is like the fifth one like this. You feeling it, Jill? I'm tired. I'd really like to be under a duvet, and instead we're out here sunbathing. Exhausted from the cold and climbs, just as it was getting dark, we stopped off with a warm showers host in Malick, and crashed pretty much immediately, since we'd have an early rise to catch a ferry in the morning. This is lovely. That's one of the big hills that we're going over today. It zigzags up that hill. I don't think it's showing up on here, the actual road, but a 14 percent gradient climb, and it's knackering, but it's the last one of the day. How you doing? Steep, isn't it? Yeah, very steep. Well done. So, this is where we're staying. We're under the roof. It's kind of a barn thing, storage for a tractor. A farmer called Donald has let us camp here. It's really good actually having the shelter, because it's supposed to rain all day. This is where we camped. One of our more intriguing places that we've prepared breakfast. Goodbye barn that we camped in. He's watching us. Incredible. On the way to our B&B. Look how warm and dry we are. Oh man, look at it out there. Grim. Without realising the date, our timing had been lucky. We'd arrived in Akintrad on the 5th of November, bonfire night. After a couple of nights sheltering from the rain, we set off further north, another storm fast approaching. Feeling ready? Ready than ever. We're going to get very wet. Oh, those clouds look foreboding. We're now totally surrounded by rain. All good. Can't even use the camera today. It's too rainy. These downhills up in Scotland have been amazing so far. We've had a few big ones and you get some serious speed on them. God, I love this feeling. So the weather's caught up with us. This is what we were worried we would be caught in. Going quite slowly even though. Wow. I think we're just going to power through, get to our Airbnb, shelter from this, get warmed by a fire. So we made it to just outside Gairloch before dark. Well done. So the weather looks a lot better today and I'm just making some breakfast for us. I think that's a good start because we have a huge hill to cycle today. And down there you can see where we've been staying for the last two nights. This is steep. Today we'll be doing our biggest climb since the Yorkshire Dales. We'll be going up to 1,200 feet. It is crazy looking back and thinking about what we were able to cycle at the start of this trip versus what we're able to cycle now. We've just noticed ourselves getting much, much, much fitter. And now these are a breeze, aren't they, Jill? You don't even notice it. The great replacement for the pain of being absolutely freezing. It's kind of worth it. We were getting further and further into November and things started to get really, really cold. I don't remember ever being this cold before. And with nowhere to shelter from the elements, the only way we could try and stay warm was to keep pedaling. But in the freezing weather, everything was more draining. This is such a long uphill. It goes all the way up along the edge of that mountain around the corner. It's very tiring. And it's getting a little bit dark and gloomy now. So hopefully we'll get over this hill, down the other side, and find a spot to camp before it gets too dark. This is it, the top of the big hill. Well done, despite being absolutely freezing. Just a little bit nerve-wracking in the dark. Well after dark and with another approaching storm, we spotted the lights of a house and knocked on the door to see if we could camp in their garden. And that's how we ended up meeting the Strachan family. Thank you very much for having us, guys. This has been so, so nice and so warm. How are you? So good. We are in the most wonderful little caravan, having just had the most wonderful, spontaneous, unplanned evening with the most wonderful family who invited us in, immediately said like, don't camp, stay in here. We've got a heater, we've got blankets, we've got pillows. We're showered, we're fed. It's one of those evenings where I'm like, I feel really lucky to be able to be doing this. Take your head out more. Jill is making me eat my cheese out in the rain. Yeah, because it's blue cheese. And the smell is going to get trapped in this enclosed space. It's November and Kieran Freedman cannot enjoy a meal indoors. He can't enjoy some blue cheese. That's what this trip has become, ladies and gentlemen. If you have a question, if you ever wonder how we're doing, this is how we're doing. No, stop talking into this. To Ullapool we go. It's the pressure. This hill is so long. Now that we're getting pretty close to Shetland, the closer we get, the more I can feel my body saying, stop, take some time off, have a rest. I'm definitely approaching the maximum of what I can do in terms of how long I can be on the road for without a break. I can really feel the wear and that's both physically and mentally. Jill's handling this last stretch much better than me. I think I just need to get it out of my head that we're going to be mostly done with the cycling in a few days time because the more I picture stopping and resting, the more daunting the next few days of cycling seem to be. I am slow visitor. Good morning. Jill's in charge of breakfast this morning and I'm doing the sandwiches for lunch now because it's raining outside and we don't want to have to make them in the rain. Nice look. Looks like you've got a really deformed head. We made decent progress in the first half of the day but we'd had some personal stuff going on back at home which I won't go into and decided that rather than spending the night out in the cold again, we'd try and hitch a ride 20 minutes up the road so we could stay in a hostel for the Difficult with the bikes but luckily Ian was driving past. Yeah it's it's pretty knackering. All right thank you very much Ian. You take care. Cheers Ian. Thank you. As the sun dipped below the horizon, we pedaled the remainder of the way to the next town. Each kilometre a step closer to Shetland. This is Dennis which is where we've been aiming for the last couple of days. This is close to the northwesternmost point of the UK mainland and with that the last proper northwards leg of our journey was over. Just two more days to get to our ferry to Shetland. Going north, going north and now we're going east. Northwards leg of our journey on the Scottish mainland is over. Wow this is brutal. We have climbed very high up now. Managed to do it almost without stopping apart from once just have a drink of water. That was 15 percent uh incline at the beginning of this climb and we cycled it which would have been unheard of at the start of this trip. Oh there's rain over there what the hell. Cool sign that. We've just found a spot to camp, a little picnic area. Right we're sorted. It is getting mighty cold out here. We've got on the menu, lovingly prepared by Jill and herself, rice, tomato sauce with kidney beans, peanut butter mixed in with the rice and this is our last like wild camping meal. That's kind of sad. That's kind of sad. I hadn't really thought about that. We might not use the camping stove again. Oh it's served us well. It has. So this is it, our last day cycling on the Scottish mainland before we get the ferry to Shetland. We have come a long long way and it's taken a lot longer than expected but we've met some fantastic people and seen some incredible places all on our doorstep really and I think it's left us both with a bit of a newfound appreciation for our home country and the nations that surround it and on top of that the diversity of cultures here. There's just so many different identities and languages and different backgrounds and histories in this small part of the world. Really exploring that has been such an amazing experience and a privilege to be able to do from the back of a bike. Five months on the road and after weeks of being battered by brutal weather and we were on the cusp of reaching the goal that we'd set for ourselves before we pedaled our first kilometre. We'd been going for so long and fallen into such a routine that it had obscured the scale of our journey but actually being here on Scotland's northern shores put it all into perspective. We stayed with another Warm Showers host, John, for a couple of nights who entertained us with a home concert. And if you think we had a lot of stuff on our bikes, for charity he travels around on a tricycle carrying an entire tuba in a trailer. And you can find more about his project at innertuba.org.uk. Thank you very much John, I have the other video, you're frozen. Yeah you're welcome. Good luck with it all, good luck with the documentary mate and we'll see you when you're a bit older possibly. After a well-earned rest, instead of getting the ferry from Thurzo as planned, we took a detour to Aberdeen to catch a family event and so it was from here that we'd leave the UK mainland for the final time on this trip. Over 4,600 kilometres down, just a few more to go.