NC500 - The Bealach Na Ba Pass

Hello.  I hope that you are pleased to note that I am not yet dead.  Nor is London Alan.  

Somehow two ageing gents of late 50’s and very early 60’s vintage have, against a stiff headwind, made it to the top of the Bealach Na Ba pass and have done it without making a gutteral BeeeALAAACH! sound as we threw up our porridge after a full 3 hours of HARD grind in the pedals.  Yes WE DID IT!

The Na Ba boasts the steepest ascent of any road in the UK.  From sea level to just over 2000ft at the summit.  It’s bucket list material for aged racing snakes.  It’s their Valhalla.  I’m half expecting to find the mythical racing snake graveyard at the top of it being that most of the old feckers make their final pilgrimages here when their slippy gland has stopped working.   

For sure its a battle with loads of other traffic.  The Na Ba is a narrow road with infrequent passing places and a magnet for every camper van, hire car, 4x4 ‘i’m an off-roader so i’m not stopping for anyone’ twat, most Germans, fast motor bikers and a slow scooter posse anywhere this side of Inverness with a good mix of vain supercars preening their looks through windscreen mounted go-pro cameras as they howl their way up the pass.  

Riding the hill is like riding an exponential curve.  The first quarter is a relatively nice and gentle 5% or so gradient. One local Scot stops his car to chat.  He eyes my fully loaded bike, looks me up and down several times then with a smile in his voice proceeds to tell me about the number of cyclists he’s seen 'blow up' on the hill.  I’m pretty damn sure he’s placed an odds on bet with his mate that this particular fat man will not make it to the top.  

Then it starts to get mean, throwing occasional steep climbs in our way and increasing to a constant 8-10%.  The third quarter is a continuously hard 10% and more.  The landscape is now brutal.  We’re riding along a thin strip of armco wrapped tarmac draped diagonally up the side of the valley.  I’ve been here several times before on the motorbike and never really seen the majesty of it all.  The almost shear granite / dark metamorphosed limestones and a waterfall cascading down the middle of the Na Ba.  Wow!

It’s now very hard going.  

Many cars / vans / motorbikes have passed us in both directions.  Big smiley faces and wavy hands from all of them.   Some slow, wind windows down, not to yell abuse at us but to say ‘well done!’  I tell them we’re not there yet!  Still 1000ft to go.  With Yeehaws! Whoops and Hollers from the Cherokees and ‘awesomes’ being thrown at us by more than one car full of Americans, up we go.  The kudos of this thing is huge.  There are other bikes on the climb but unlike us most are racing slim with skinny tyres ridden by fit snakes looking for a place called Heaven.  

We’re now thoroughly grinding low and slow to the top.  I’m pulling hard on the oxygen.  My face and eyes are awash with sweat even though it’s on the nippy side of cool.  Double chevrons on the map tell us this bit is bloody steep.  To hell with other vehicles.  We’ll only let them pass at the now meagre passing places.  

Some push with determination to pass others in their urge to get to the other side.  That is until they come across a fat man on a bike riding a five bar gate with tractor tyres carrying the kitchen sink to the top.  No way am I riding at the side of the road as one wrong slip of my arse cheek off my saddle would initiate an uncontrollable wobble and result in me ejecting myself off the mountainside with a Goofy WOO! HOO!  All the way to the bottom.   That almost happened to a motorcyclist near the top of the pass on one of the nadgery bends, read on…  

Finally the hardest section.  Snakeish and all serpentine in its writhe-some mess.  It’s like crawling into a snake pit.  ‘I hate snakes!’, I shout in my bestest Indiana Jones accent.  We’re now in the shadow of the Cobra’s head.  The scenery is massive and erect.  Grind, grind, grind ,up, up, up. The excited budgies under my saddle are horse from shouting and now making gritty tweeting noises.  They’re scared to death as for sure they are in their personal Hell.  

We pass under the shadow of the snakes head.  The wind abates.  We can now see the tail of the serpent.  Just a few more bends.  The gradient abates. The sun streaks through the clouds as though to illuminate our personal Heavens .  I Whoop and Holler!. We hug.  For sure I did not think we would both get here.  The idea that it was doable by 2 fifty / sixty something occasional tourer types on fully loaded bikes was perhaps beyond us when we looked up at it from the cafe at the bottom of the pass.  And my legs still feel good :-)

Myself and London Alan were in a congratulatory photo pose when I heard the scraping of hard plastic on hard tarmac followed by a loud bang.  I looked down the hill to see a motorbike on its side jammed up against the armco barrier but no sign of the rider. Oh My God! He’s ejected himself over the edge! Feck! Feck! Feck!.  I whizz back down the hill on the bike, thinking jeez how to explain this to the 999 call handler.  Is there a mobile signal even?  

With a relieved gasp I see the old boy crawl out from underneath the bike.  I put the five bar gate across the road to block it to traffic and trot back to him.  He's an older gent probably with another 5-10 years on me.  He says he’s OK. He looks remarkably unshaken for what has just happened.  His mate has stopped.  His other now ex-mates have frogged off down the pass no doubt are moaning and waiting for ‘tail end Charlie’ to catch up.   

It appears that he took the tightest of inside lines in a hard switchback bend.  I’d guess he became fixated by the armco barrier on the outside of the bend and in trying to avoid it dropped the bike onto its side.  The bike, once a very shiny and quite new Triumph Tiger 1050 is remarkably unscathed.  The bike and engine has a huge pair of wrap around crash bars which took the brunt of it.  However it’ll take more than a bottle of T-Cut to get the scratches out of its panels.  ‘I’ve already sold it’ he says.  ‘I’m waiting for my new bike to be delivered’.  I reckon he’s part ex’d it with a dealer and I’m pretty sure his discount off the new bike has just disappeared…

We pick the bike up.  I’m telling them to turn the bike to face uphill, put it in first gear to lock the back wheel then we can leave it on its side stand on the slope whilst we check it out.  ‘But i’m riding that way..’ he says pointing down into the steep twisty bits wanting to cock his leg over it and catch up with his mates.  Nah, I think, you’re not going anywhere till we’ve checked the bike as it for sure will be a fast track to your personal biking Valhalla if yer brakes are broken.  And I won't ride back down that incline again to sweep your bits up.  

I hand him some of the plastic i’ve picked up from the road and suggest quite firmly that he stops at the cafe at the bottom of the pass and has a bit of quiet time chatting about what happened with his non-mates until he feels settled again.

It took us 3 hours to get to the top.  We took occasional photo breaks and stops on the way up for it is a sight to behold.  Looking back down the pass is so like the roads at the start of the Italian Job.  Twisty steep and nadgery.  It took us about 20 minutes, with stops, to get back down to sea level again in Applecross.  Alan says he hit 42 MPH on one of the downward stretches.  Believe me.  I kept up with cars ahead of me. Would you believe some stopped to let me past!?  The only quicker way down is to jump off the top and free fall to the bottom.  

We’re in the Applecross Inn for dinner.  We talk of many things.  Two beers in and and I’m reminiscing about Tony and Barry. Barry who always looked forward to that World cruise but never did it.  They're two of my team who died from cancer in their 50’s.  I’m sad.  I wish they were still here with their dreams ahead of them.  Eyes full of wind driven tears streaming down my face try to reappear in the pub.  I fight them back.  

Do not wait too long to do things and do not save them up into a bucket list I say.  My list is alive with me every day.  Do these things when you can.  There is nothing I would add to mine.  One day we will be too old perhaps.  Even with e-bikes the lack of charging points may make such journeys impossible when joints really start to hurt and strong muscles are no more.  

As I write this I must say sorry to Kathryn.  It’s her birthday today, the 25th May and I cannot call to wish a happy one for her.  We’re remote on the west coast of Scotland.  Me and London Alan are in a Bothy.  We’re off grid.  Totally off.  No power.  No mobile signal.  No WIFI.  No email.  Only wood burning stoves and candles.  It’s raining hard.  Millions of drops pinging on the cold tin roof.  

I am sorry Kathryn.  

Happy Birthday x…