A critical mass of bicycles on the road makes for a safer environment for the cyclist. Statistics and research bear this out; accident figures drop disproportionately, counterintuitively, with increased bike numbers. Segregated lanes, dedicated off-highway routes help further, but only counter the increased auto-populations.  Just check some home driveways to see the two-, three- and four-car households, where one or none would have been the norm three decades ago.  But what is less obvious to the car-bound traveler is the increased girth of vehicles and the decreased width of track.  

We’re riding the Hebridean Way, or at least our version of it.  Ours is a full navigation of Barra, a deviation down any available or enticing dead end Uist track and a long stop to wait for the daily passenger flight to land on the sand.  Much of the route has the largest concentration of single track with passing places left in Scotland.  So we’ve become very aware of the enforced proximity that modern cycle traveller encounters.

The VW Golf is 21% wider than its ’74 ancestor; it’s just a pity that the rural A class Scots road hasn’t expanded in sympathy. Actually, in many instances they’ve shrunk. The second photo is an extreme example of an all too familiar scenario.  The local authority needs to carry out some major pothole patching.  Presumably they considered it more economical to apply a generous topcoat; however, it’s not possible to cover the full existing width. Were they to do so, the new edge would be broken off within weeks.  Send along a three tonne tractor pulling a two tonne trailer loaded with ten tonnes of boxed potatoes and it wouldn’t last a day. (Agricultural tyres are 50% wider than of yore).  The net result of this nice new black coat is a road that can be 150mm(6”) narrower at each side.  Do that with a West Highland single track and the loss is considerable.  

I’ve become quite animated about gordo-cars, roadside gutters, verge precipices, crumbling passing places simply because we’ve visited so many of them.  From Barra to Harris it feels like we’ve stopped in over half of them, to let either the oncoming or overtaking local pass; it is their road, and they obviously believe they have exclusive ownership. Or the terrified camper-vanner who’s just collected their new hire and are encountering their first passing place on a less than corpulent road.  

It might have been comical. 

We’re at the bottom of a hill, I can see four white diamonds denoting four passing places all the way up to the top.  A camper van crests the rise and immediately pulls in, as do we at the bottom. 

They wait.  

We wait.  

Harris Chicken.

We’ve already dumped a dose of momentum, all that kinetic energy, so we might as well wait, we’re going to have to rebuild all that potential again. I’d like to do it slowly.

Still they wait.  

They’ve read their Highway Code, uphill traffic has priority.  

We blink first.

We set off.

Far too fast, and ego won’t let us get off and push, as it’s only going to complicate matters further.  Puce faced, pulse thumping we reach the top and dutifully acknowledge their oh so kind consideration.  We’ve passed so they won’t have been able to lip read The Navigator’s comment.  Inevitably, behind said camper is a beat-up Ford van full of lobster creels who’s in a hurry.  I can see the thought-bubble pop as it scatters grit and rushes off… ‘bloody toorists’.  

Therein lies the grand conundrum.  The narrow road, the passing place, the flower specked verge, the wandering ewe are all part of the Hebridean essence.  A product that is heavily sold to the local economy-generating visitor.  It’s a contrast that suddenly becomes all too obvious when the main road north enters North Harris and Lewis and returns to a two-lane highway. Suddenly, everybody seems to be in a hurry.  No longer do we have to drive for the other road user, so there’s the chance to drift into that Zen moment on that long slow climb, to plod my way to the top, unmolested.  No longer the need for polite consideration, making driving decisions for the other.  It’s a relief, but something has been lost.  That quintessence of island cycling.  Like rounding of a bend to find a tide-graded boulder shore or the cresting of a granite outcrop to discover a primrose-speckled machair.  Spotting a white-throat diver on a lily-dotted lochan whilst watching a rain squall cruise across the Minch.  Or simply speculating on who will reach the next passing place first.

That was the Outer Hebrides, Eilean Siar; we then sailed over the sea to Skye, the island with a bridge and the ‘No Vacancies’ signs. ‘Isle Full’ would be a better title, and with it comes a consequent traffic level and a clutch of ‘honey pots’ that makes the outer isles seem empty and myself ever regretting whinging about camper vans, their occupants and passing places.

Still in catch-up mode.