Adventure Blogs

Taking the bikes for a spin around Scotland. 1000 miles in less than 24 Hours..

"SADDLESORE 1000" The title without explanation conjures all sorts of thoughts. I'll explain: The challenge is to travel by motorcycle a distance of 1000miles within a period of 24 hours.

I'd never heard of such a challenge until Jim approached me two weeks beforehand, said: "How would you like to put some more miles on your recently acquired motorcycle before the dead of winter sets in". Not his exact words, but amounting to the same.

We spent about a week planning this, aiming for a night with a full moon, and conscious that nights were drawing in, we didn't have to pay much attention to the bikes, Jim having recently had his (BMW R1200GS) serviced after a recent Norway trip. Mine (YAMAHA MT-01) having only covered a couple of thousand miles from new, I knew any problems would have appeared by now, so just replaced the worn out Mez tyres with my preferred Bridgestone BT021's.

Scotland is a vast area with little inhabitants when approaching the Highlands. This meant I had to spend some time planning my fuel stops. The fuel tank on my bike wouldn't hold much more than an ants bladder. 24 hour fuel is a not available in the far north west, this meant we would need to be in these areas during day light. We'd be doing this in the first week of November, night time riding in open country would be best avoided, deer and other wildlife could fall victim to being run over by my new tyres... I should also consider that I might not fair to well in a coming together.

"Saddlesore 1000" is a challenge as defined by the IronButt (UK)Association. To have our challenge recognised we have to provide proof of undertaking. To this end as well as collecting petrol receipts and documenting things, our colleague Brian come along and took some photos of us departing.

I'll use this opportunity to thank Brian for getting up and meeting us at the Pelican Petrol Station in Whitehaven for our start at 05h00 on Saturday the 3rd Nov 07.

Here you see Jims topbox, this contains my backup fuel tank, a 10litre Jerry Can, we also had on hand a Priming pump with enough hose connected to transfer fuel from Jims tank.

If it wasn't for the police cars occupant (out of shot) possibility overhearing me tell the petrol attendant that we would be giving it wellie to start with, we wouldn't have had to ride with so much causion up to Carlisle. Anyway we settled down to an enjoyable ride on quite roads, however my unexplained crossing of a couple of lanes for a fox on the M74 gave Jim a wake up call. The wake up calls got better as daylight broke, just north of Glasgow the police had gone to the trouble of parking in the carriageway of the M8 with Blues showing to warn of the large dog that had met its end, another reminder of the potential for animals to wander into our path.

Without prior agreement Jim and I would generally take turns leading after petrol stops this became frequent for me, but worked out well for both of us. We were on schedule as planned, and the weather holding up when we arrived at Ullapool just after noon. We used the opportunity to dig into some sandwiches and get our helmets off (We obviously took our helmets off first). This is when it started to rain.

The weather had determined the date we were to undertake this venture after recent heavy rains and high winds in Scotland, so close monitoring of the Met office website beforehand had prepared us well, and so we were prepared to not let a little rain hamper things.

On leaving Ullapool we were soon confronted with a couple of motorists waving us down!, up the glen a young girl was getting out of her upturned hot hatch, not local! caught out by the unfamiliar highland conditions! we'll never know, but makes for even more caution.

From Ullapool we were really getting into what the highlands are all about; as a motorcyclist we're in the best motorcycling roads, great grip factor, long sweeping bends with good visibility and not many other users. As a lakedistrict resident and keen fell walker, the highlands just beckon you, but that's for another day.

The most north westerly place we got to was Durness, the approach being about 50miles of singletrack road (A-Road!), followed by similar on leaving. The sheep here seamed to be a little more unpredictable to the ones we encounter on our homeland fells. Maybe it's a matter of spending a little more time and getting to know them, you know what i mean..



We generally continue east, although tributary's have to be negotiated by either riding around them or going over large bridges or viaducts, all this added to the pleasurable ride we were on. We were approaching half way now and I found I was continually working out how much time we have in hand for the comfort of knowing if we got tired later that we wouldn't be under pressure to rush things. Up to now we hadn't felt the need to have another coffee break, and we were on schedule, although our average speed had been slightly less than Jims GPS planner had predicted, I can only assume this was because Highland A-Roads are garden paths compared with any other A-roads. Anyway we don't appear to be suffering through sacrificing some rest time on stops as we'd planned.

Past Dounreay, not long before John O'Groats now and they'll be some daylight, unfortunately I had my camera in a handy pouch on the front of my Kriega Rucksack, and water had got to it rendering it useless (it recovered 2 days later), so pics had to be taken using my low res mobile phone. To make things worse the official John O'Groats Sign post had been securely locked away, they must have known we were coming. Anyway we were over half way through the trip and it was all downhill, in the dark. yes it was getting dark, and going to get colder

The thought of heading south now as the cold and dark approached wasn't appealing. After sticking my head in the local watering hole, I got good directions to the next fuel stop, 100 metres away! this explained the puzzled look from the locals, I'm glad i kept my helmet on.

Throughout the journey petrol attendants had cooperated by writing there names on the till receipts, the Iron Butt association might want to make contact with them as part of there audit process to verify our route. At J O'Groats they also volunteered the post office stamp as the petrol station is also the post office, they also appeared to be the local supermarket, unfortunatly they didn't stock highlight bulbs for BWM motorcycles as this is where Jims bulb called it a day, we had a problem.

Jim was quite relaxed about riding without main beam as long as he followed me, I was OK with that except I had no way of knowing If Jim was behind or had fell back or stopped for what ever reason. Anyway we took off, but this wasn't working too well, we eventually found what we were looking for in the town of Wick, thankfully the BMW halogen bulb although small was of the car type and easy to change. This exercise ate into our schedule and put the pressure on.

Most accounts of the Saddlesore 1000 that we'd read about had been undertaken in the USA, where the roads are quite open and good moving averages could be maintained, our route was working against us from a schedule point of view, although in our favour we were unlikely to fall asleep due to the continuous concentration required to negotiate the amount of twisty roads. Travelling down the A9 we were struggling to meet the schedule, and concern was mounting whether we'd make the 24 hours having planned on 21 Hours total, it was surprising how the Stopped time for fuel stops and the bit of messing around had added up, anyway we bashed on to Inverness.

Taking our helmets off for the second time it was now just after 19h30 and we'd sat down to eat in Inverness, what a relief to get some gear off, surprisingly not feeling tired. 2x Fish and chips, 2x mug of tea, 8x bread and butter, yum. With all this food down us, will it send us to sleep?, I was taking no chances, this is where an injection of caffeine through a can of Red Bull was administered, and would be the case from now every 150miles. It had started to get cold, but I was prepared having wired myself up with some new Gerbing heated gloves and heated socks, Jim had his standard heated handlebar grips which didn't need all these wires that I forgot about each time i got off the bike.

Jim suggested that we consider changing our route to keep us on the A-roads, rather than us slowing down again. We'd originally planned to head to the east coast after hitting Edinburgh and follow the A1 down to Newcastle, but were concerned about speed cameras as we'd heard there were lots on that road, not that we would travel above the speed limit, but they might go off for no reason. So instead we agreed to travel towards Glasgow and back down the M74, this meant we'd need to cruise past Carlisle turnoff and take the Penrith turn instead to make up the mileage.

The boredom started to set in a little since being back on the motorway, you become conscious of how hard you seats become over this distance, and how often the visor is misting up, not helped by the drop in temperature, all these little things start to bug me more than normal. I discovered how effective my heated gloves were by unintentionally disconnecting them after standing up on my pegs to stretch my legs, a trick i learnt from Jim; he hasn't shown me how to wheelie yet, may be next trip.

Back on schedule and our moving average moving back up towards 60mph we virtually had this in the bag. Eventually we find an open petrol station in Penrith, if only for the till receipt verifying the route. Jim gets in touch with Brian again and has him on standby for photos of our arrival.

Hard to believe we've done it, less than 22 hours, and still feeling good. The same petrol attendant from the previous morning pleased to see us, issues us our final till receipt's.











We didn't set out to crack any records, it was about generating a workable plan and sticking to it.
This was really enjoyable, I got to preview a part of Scotland that I'll return to at a more leisurely pace. We also got to raise some money from many Shepley Ltd collegues and friends, also M&S and Lakeland Motorcycles for a couple of worthy causes.

I'll present our schedule and actual times/distances in a later blog together with some detail on the preparation made












Go to the Google Map to see our route in detail



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Labels: endurance, ironbutt, long distance, mckerrow, motorcycling, scotland, SS1000, touring