After a night in an excellent AirB&B we set off from Rhiconich which although it looks inland, it is actually on a tidal loch which we cycled past.
There wer 14 straight miles to do to reach the North Atlantic coast at Durness and every one of them was into a blusterey headwind. The first 5 miles had been uphill but even the downhill stretches were hard work !
Durness was a small tourist village with a few shops and as we left town the road swept to the right then after half a mile doubled back on itself and reached the clifftops were there was a zipwire and people were zipping across the beach from the headland.
Next we hit the highlight of the day we reached Loch Eriboll which we had to cycle 14 miles around to end up about 2 miles along the coast but I wouldn't have swapped it if there had been a bridge across - the road had turned downwind, the sun was out, the road was lovely and rolling, with only the occassional stop for traffic at passing places to disturb the serenity.
WE stopped at a croft Tea Room for a soup and coffee and then we rounded the head of the loch before heading back up the other side which had a steep hill at the end to get across to Tongue.
I stopped frequently on the loch and at the viewpoint on the climb there was almost an island which had a small sweeping causeway with white sand beaches connecting it to the shore. There were also old limekilns and the scene was beautiful.
A very tough hill across to Tongue and we reached a cafe and managed to dodge a downpour - we had seen 4 lads cycle past our B&B at 7:30 before breakfast, the had a support van and therefore no panniers - we had managed to catch them as they were in the cafe and they too were doing the NC500 but they were using campsites as they had tents in the van too.
The weather eased to an annoying drizzle for the finish of our ride which headed inland over another hill before turning North