I have always wanted to cycle at night in open countryside but I was always too scared. As soon as I heard of this ride, I was in and have no regrets at all! Not sure I'll do it again, as you end up wasting 2 days for just a ride, but sure it's something all cyclists have to do once in their lifetime.
https://www.ridetothesun.co.uk/
We normally spend a week cycling in the Highlands in May, but in between the train strikes and the temperamental weather, I threw the idea of going to sunny Italy and give the Wolf's Lair bikepacking route in the Abbruzzo region a go.
After a long winter it was time to heat up our bones, and we couldn't have chosen a better week...every day since we left we kept getting yellow warning alerts of ice and snow in Edinburgh, never a better timing!
Our adventure in the Alps was still fresh in our memory, and with a few days of holidays waiting for us I came up with the idea of cycling the Badger Divide. I really didn't want to fly to the continent again for just a few days, and the prospect of testing ourselves in a local challenge sounded appealing. We watched a video in youtube about this route, and read a few blogs, but frankly we were not much prepared for what it would involve (I did get the general idea in between the lines though...). It's described as “a 321km off-road route from Inverness to Glasgow that offers big adventure”, doable in 2 to 5 days. We didn't spend much time checking the profile and route description, however we figured we could do it in 4 days. We waited until Thursday for the last weather forecasts and then booked the train ticket to Inverness (still can't believe there was space for the bikes, I have the feeling nobody trusts the trains any more nowadays...) and accommodation. It was a crazy idea but I don't regret it at all (my legs do).
