Inverness to Tomatin

Yesterday, after wasting some time wandering around Inverness's many shopping opportunities, I ended up competing with the locals to look as depressed as possible in the Morrisons' cafe. Looking out into a carpark capped by a beautiful deep blue sky, it was the lack of progress towards my destination that helped me give a commanding performance.

So early this morning, after fighting hundreds of school children for space in the kitchen, it was a relief to leave the youth hostel behind and get on the road again.

Inverness is the fastest growing city in Europe so it was no surprise that it took some time to sneak through the housing estates, some too new for my map, as they enjoyed a lazy Saturday morning. Today General Wade's road was to take me to the distillery village of Tomatin, and it was a pleasant surprise to find a decent signed path through the forest as I left the urban maze behind. In the hundreds of years between the roman and Wade's road building programmes, the road builders learnt the value of following contours instead of the many up and downs of the direct route. My knees were grateful for this.

The route is seeped in history, from the elegant arch of the stone bridge at Faillie to the cairn memorial to the rout of Moy. All of this unseen by the masses speeding through the area on the busy A9. After miles of forestry tracks and a missing footbridge, I climbed up to the location of the rout as the sky darkened and hills grew in stature. I could easily imagine how the local knowledge of a blacksmith and four others and the poor weather conditions of that night in 1746 spooked a detachment of 1500 into panicked retreat.

After a bit of searching I soon learnt the knack of following the old road, now just a depression in the heather. The heavens finally opened as I passed under the railway at Moy and I ducked into a bus shelter for lunch. I left as the band of rain started to move away, feeling suitably smug about my timing. After a short period on a cycle track, I arrived at the B&B too early to check in and the smugness faded as I sat outside and watched the rain sweep down the valley.