Auto auto!
Pedal Nation tour guide, Lucy Burnett, reflects back on her first tour working for Pedal Nation, riding the spectacular NC500 around northern Scotland, May 2025.
‘If the sun shines, there’s nowhere more beautiful in the world!’
This is what I’ve just told Ivo, one of five Belgian clients who have just arrived in Inverness for Pedal Nation’s NC500 tour around the north of Scotland, as I drive him from the airport to the hotel. Ivo mutters something under his breath that I don’t quite catch, but seems to have more to do with me being biased (being a Scot and all) than believing me. ‘Not that I’ve been everywhere in the world,’ I add. ‘But quite a few places…and many of those by bike. In fact, I’m just back from six months cycling in North and South America, and…!.’ I don’t finish my sentence. Just point off left towards the site of Culloden, a battlefield where the Scots had covered themselves in little glory, as if to balance out my bias a little.
This is to be to my first tour as a guide for Pedal Nation, and I’m super excited that it’s this. It’s here. In the part of the world I love and know best from many a mountaineering, cycling and camping trip. My Garmin is being a big ‘buggy’ on the way out of Inverness, and everybody’s device bleeps to indicate I’ve missed the very first turning. Oops. But once beyond the built up environs of Inverness city, I’ll not be needing any navigation help. For this is home.
Most of the Belgians are members of an Antwerp triathlon club, and are riding alongside Ragbere, who is raising money to repair the roof of his local Sikh temple in Doncaster. And then of course Lindsay, my Pedal Nation co-guide, who the group are later surprised to learn I’d only met a day earlier. You know when sometimes friendships just click? They assumed we’d known each other for years.
The NC500 route certainly isn’t one to be taken on lightly, let alone by Belgian cyclists for whom (they self-confessed) a bridge qualifies as a ‘hill’! Besides significant amounts of climbing, the weather can be infamously unreliable, and the distances aren’t short. Yet a few days in, Ivo admitted over dinner (picture fresh langoustine, haggis if you’re brave, raspberry cranachan, not all at once) that perhaps I’d been right. There is nowhere quite like it if you get the weather. Which we really were getting…
I once spent one whole summer in Scotland climbing mountains, and only saw views from two summits. I’ve sat on beaches in the Outer Hebrides – the set of islands you can see to the north west of the route – and simply watched the weather moving. But this was something else. Day after day of wall-to-wall sunshine and a gentle tailwind. Perfect. Plus those turquoise seas. The skies. The rocky contours of the mountains, rising suddenly from the ‘flow country’. The wildlife. The light which I love so much as a photographer.
Rightly so, the Bealach na Ba, one of the toughest cycling hill climbs in the UK, is a highlight of the tour. Yet this is also a journey that plays with expectations. In many ways, the stunning stretch of coastline north of Applecross to Shieldaig, with its constant ups and downs, is physically tougher, not to mention the winding single-track road north of Lochinver. At the top of the first of two brutally challenging climbs I told the ragged looking group that this was the hardest climb they would do all day. I’m not quite sure why; I knew it wasn’t true. Because they looked like they needed to hear it? I wisely chose to pull back on the upcoming 25% ‘rise’, and when the road levelled out, there was Bart, feet planted wide, hands on hips and a huge grin on his face.
‘You’re a liar! We hate you!’ he exclaimed, before bursting out laughing and shaking his head. Veronique and Anne, the two women on the tour, had smashed it, as they did all of the climbs. Women-power and all. But how could I ever make it up to them? ‘Auto!’ I took to yelling, in my best Flemish accent, whenever a car appeared up ahead or behind. ‘Auto auto!’
The Belgian cyclists were experienced, while Ragbere’s completion of the route was testament to some of most gutsy riding I’ve ever seen. He had completed a handful of challenge cycles, but nothing of this scale, and wasn’t a regular rider. As we rode the final stretch of day 2 into Gairloch, I invited him to tuck in behind me (ok, so that might have been a headwind), from where he kept on telling me to ride faster! Chapeau! I do hope he raised all of the funds he aimed for. Having worked as a guide now on several Pedal Nation tours, one of the best parts of it is always seeing the group pull together and bond – even in the case of the Belgians who already knew each other. Yanko self-proclaimed himself the adoptive son of Veronique and Bart at the start of the trip, and was certainly the youngest; he took quite the liking to Irn Bru!
Routewise, even though it wasn’t as spectacular, I really enjoyed the second last day, as the route cuts south east from Thurso towards Helmsdale, since this was new territory to me, and a wonderful landscape contrast from what had come before. There was definitely a sense of almost-being-there as I ordered coffee #2 after lunch during the café stop, before me and Lindsay were literally gifted the shirts off the Belgians’ backs. I may have asked that morning where I could buy a shirt as a memento; what I hadn’t expected was for Veronique and Yanko to give us their actual shirts, along with honorary membership of Trinity triathlon club. They were duly rewarded for their generosity by some close sightings of herds of deer that afternoon…In the hotel that night, warmed by a big log fire and one or several drams of whisky, I hosted a quiz based on what had gone on during the tour (be warned, it may become a regular feature!) It took Ivo several rounds before he worked out, ‘you’re making this up as you go, aren’t you?’ As if I might have actually planned it! It was by complete coincidence that I arrived back at the guests’ hotel, having run various errands, at the exact right moment to celebrate the group arriving at the hotel in the centre of Inverness the next day. Queue Prosecco, because blimey did they deserve it.
When I arrived in Hook of Holland to lead the Road to Copenhagen tour, I met Bart at the ferry port to hand over some NC500 t-shirts that I’d procured for them. There was Bart waiting, this time not calling me a liar, but offering up a huge hug and a mutual acknowledgement that new friendships had been made, right there, in the most beautiful part of the world. In Scotland. I even learnt that Ivo’s grumbles at the start of the trip was just him struggling to adapt to speaking English, and nothing about doubting Scotland’s beauty after all!
I knew at the end of the trip that I could never lead another tour on the NC500, for this one had been so good. Please do consider signing up to the tours I’m leading in May and August of 2026! Slainte Mhath. Be seeing you in Inverness – BOOK NOW!
