For our 2011 tour, we had completely failed to make a coherent plan.  Early ideas involved renting a cottage near Ardnamurchan for a week and using that as a base for day rides, but this foundered due to disorganisation.  In the end, we decided to start from Ullapool in the north west of Scotland and play it by ear, with a half-formed idea of revisiting Orkney.  We took camping equipment in case of difficulty in finding B&B accommodation (but didn’t use it).

As it turned out, we had two major mechanical incidents which forced us to completely change what few plans we had…