Our village

Someone, somewhere, clearly thinks that the village we live in is worth spending a lot of money on. Tarbert is among a small handful of villages that have recently been granted substantial Scottish government funding to help regenerate the 'local infrastructure'.

How did we qualify for this? Well it seems that what we have here is somewhat unique and worth preserving. 

So let us list the attractions...

- Tarbert is a small, self-contained village and a natural harbour, protected by steep hills on either side with a narrow entrance suitable for small sea-going vessels;

- This safe haven has been home to a small fleet of fishing vessels and related businesses that have existed here for many hundreds of years;

- Today we also have a modern marina with facilities for visiting pleasure craft of all sizes. Outside the harbour Loch Fyne provides deep, relatively sheltered waters which connect with the lochs and islands of the Clyde and beyond;

- Tarbert also has a quite famous castle (largely a ruin today) which overlooks the village in a rather dramatic way and which attracts many visitors in its own right;

- Although situated quite remotely the village lies on a main road which leads on to several Hebridean island ferry routes and it is therefore a convenient stopping point on this journey;

- The whole area has a temperate rainforest climate (relatively mild with heavy rainfall) which enables unique types of wild vegetation to grow here. Wooded hills and valleys give this part of Scotland a unique look.

A census in 2001 recorded Tarbert as having a population of around 1,300 people and this remains roughly the same today. Tarbert is classified as a village but we came to live here having previously lived in an even smaller village so in many ways Tarbert feels more like a town to us. The inhabitants do, however, behave like one would expect in a small village - they are friendly, always willing to help and willingly stop for a chat in the street. There is a simple way that we distinguish between a 'local' and a visitor and this is the eye contact followed by a greeting or a smile. This behaviour does not happen with passers by in a city where eye contact is generally avoided and visiting 'townies' will behave this way here since this is what they are most comfortable with.

We have become involved in village life as volunteers in a variety of ways. Beach cleaning sessions can be exhausting but also quite fun and provide an opportunity to visit different places and to meet up with other like-minded locals.

Then there is the castle which is run by a trust and needs volunteers to keep the surroundings tidy and to look after the sheep which live in the castle grounds and whose job it is to stop the grass from growing too high. Sometimes the work parties can be quite physically demanding (this photo is me trimming a hedge in the orchard) but we welcome this so long as we can rest and recover before the next volunteer mission comes around.

I have gone a little further by volunteering to help the setting up of a local 'hub' in an unused building close to the shore, again purchased by a local community trust.

Refurbishment has involved stripping back the existing interior decor so that it can be replaced and then getting the whole place rewired. This has been rather dusty, dirty work at times but with grant money available for some professional help the place is now beginning to look more homely. Currently the volunteers are decorating the walls and the ceiling to make everything look brighter and more cared for. Once we are done the space can be used by local craft businesses who need workshop space. Again much of the pleasure comes from working as a team alongside others and exchanging jokes to make the day pass by more easily.

So what about the downside of living here. Well many people might describe our location as 'remote' in the sense that we are some considerable distance from any major conurbation. The roads leading to and from the village are just wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other and they follow the contours of the land so there are many twists and turns. Our closest dual carriageway road is around sixty miles distant and it is a further twenty miles to the nearest motorway. But Tarbert first became a place to live due to its accessibility from the sea, long before any roads were built on the land so the idea that wide roads should define a location does not seem right to us. What we would like, however, is a few cycle paths away from the busy main roads so that we could ride safely around the lovely area we live in.

Fyne Tyne to Rhine - 6

Our last night away from home had arrived. The hotel receptionist in Dunoon welcomed us in, dripping wet though we were, and was happy for us to bring our bikes into the hotel lobby so they were out of the rain. We quickly organised a meal in the restaurant where we sat with a large group of tourists travelling by coach around Scotland. All that was left was to brace ourselves for the ride home the next day, one we knew would be a tough one.

As soon as we were ready after breakfast we set off along the coast beside Holy Loch. We had the roads almost to ourselves and it was cool and sunny although there were clearly rain clouds threatening in the distance. Our cycling distance for the day was forty seven kilometres but that meant nothing as we were well aware that despite both starting and finishing at sea level we had to cross some major hills on the way. The cycle route is a recognised signposted one which has five hundred and eighty seven metres of ascent (and one less on the descent, strangely) but the steepest part came after we reached the end of Loch Striven. Up to this point our electric motor assisted bikes were managing to cope with the gradients although we still had to pedal quite hard and our legs were beginning to complain despite all the riding we had been doing over the previous weeks. But beyond the loch the road turned a corner and aimed up hill, a small sign warning of a 12% gradient. Our bikes have different power levels but none of these gave our loaded bikes the power they needed so we dismounted and pushed, just like in the days before electric bikes were invented. Soon we were gasping for breath and our leg muscles were complaining loudly. Each corner revealed more of the road ahead which went up and up. The road seemed to get steeper and steeper until we saw another sign, this one pointing down the hill, revealing that the gradient we had just climbed was 20%. We both felt like collapsing but after a series of false summits we finally reached the top. Not that this meant all downhill from there onwards but we had overcome the steepest section of the route.

We stopped for coffee and cake at the Station Cafe, a former police station, then went at it again up another gradient. My strategy of not using brakes on the downhill sections put me some distance ahead and when Portavadie was in sight I wasted no time riding to the ferry terminal. I looked back up the road for Catriona but she was not in sight. Eventually my phone pinged and I read her message: "Chain has come off". This had happened before on a number of occasions as our bikes were getting dirtier each day. I knew she would fix it and was relieved to soon receive another message saying " OK coming now".

Both our bikes were in need of a service and we had almost no battery power left for the final hill up to our house after we had landed from the ferry at Tarbert. But we had done it! Home safe and back to a garden in which everything had gone wild in our absence. We had been away just three weeks during which we had ridden around six hundred and fifty kilometres through three European countries. The whole experience was terrific. We had met so many kind and lovely people we cannot possibly do them justice here and the joy each day of seeing something new as we rode past at our gentle cycling speed can barely be put into words. Roll on the next adventure.

It wasn't until after the third day at home that our bodies felt as if they had returned to normal; two long nights resting in bed, going to bed early and rising late. Our last day of riding hit us hard but there were other things going on in our heads too. There was the clock going back an hour from European time and then there was the increased daylight, a consequence of rapidly moving around four hundred and sixty miles (740 kilometres) northwards from Antwerp to Edinburgh, a place where at this time of year the nights are significantly shorter. Our minds and bodies were struggling to cope with all this. In the space of just two days we had transitioned from a heatwave in Belgium to a cool and wet climate on the west coast of Scotland and the days that followed showed us just how wet it can be here. In the past one could rely upon the month of June being one of the driest of the year but since we returned home something seems to have gone wrong. It serves as a reminder to us that we can no longer take our past weather patterns for granted.

Fyne Tyne to Rhine - 5

So there we were, about to set off on an early return home from our European tour in order to escape one of the fiercest heatwaves ever seen at this time of year. Ending the holiday was a tough decision to make but we knew it was right for us. My own body was shouting at me angrily and showing no sign of improving - the streaming nose seemed to have become a part of my life - and much of the pleasure of riding had therefore been taken away from us. Our luxury stay in Nooz, close to the town of Grobbendonk in Belgium, where we had air conditioning that we could use to cool the room throughout the evening and night showed us that it was indeed the heat that was affecting us because by morning most of my symptoms had disappeared, at least temporarily.

So it was that the next morning we started off on what was to be our penultimate day of European riding, into the centre of the city of Antwerp so that we could catch a train to Schiphol, just outside Amsterdam. Almost immediately after leaving the Nooz hotel we found ourselves riding beside another canal, this one being quite small and much more like what we are used to seeing in Britain. The smooth towpath took us beside a field full of bison along with their young! We left the canal on the outskirts of the city, once again making cycling infrastructure comparisons with the Dutch cities we had been through and regrettably we have to report a number of failings. Some of the bike lanes, alongside busy roads, were quite narrow and we had no real protection from the speeding lorries overtaking us and passing close to our left elbows. But things did improve as we neared the station and then once on the train itself we had plenty of room for us and our bikes.

We had decided to travel by train to Schiphol (home to Holland's international airport) simply because it is quite close to the city of Haarlem where we had arranged to spend our last night in Holland. The train journey took us rapidly northwards and already it seemed the air was slightly cooler, a light breeze helping somewhat.

This made the final ride of the day, another hour of cycling, much more comfortable and when we arrived at our hotel in the centre of Haarlem we once again admired the view from the hotel window which gave us a memorable picture of Dutch roads and cycle paths, just one of the things we will always love about this country. At the hotel our bikes were stored away in a locked shed provided free by the hotel and here we charged up our bike batteries (also free) so they were ready for getting us home once we arrived back in the UK.

The ferry from Ijmuiden departed at five o'clock in the afternoon (local time) so we made a late start the next morning, the terminal being only about an hour's riding away. But to make it more interesting we rode through the forest park along the same cycle paths we had used when we arrived in Holland. This time the air was hot and very humid - thunderstorms were even forecast.

We paused for lunch and met some of the local wildlife who were hoping for a feed from the clients of a small cafe. The birds spent some time hopping around on our bikes, one even leaving a small deposit on my handlebars - thank you bird.

There were very few bicycles in the queue for boarding the ferry but dozens of massive motorbikes, most of which were en route to the Isle of Man for the TT races. However we did meet a lovely Dutch couple, Leew and Mariella, who were about to start a cycling tour of Northern England and Ireland, putting our cycling efforts to shame!

What more can be said about the ferry crossing to Newcastle? The sea was smooth and we slept very well in our tiny cabin, ate our fill at breakfast then walked off the ship onto British soil ready to set off homewards. Little did we know that what lay ahead would turn out to be the most complicated day of the whole holiday.

Our experience last year of having ridden from the ferry terminal at North Shields into the centre of Newcastle to catch a train home had persuaded us to come up with a different plan this time. Cycling up to the station from the quayside cycle path is dangerously difficult on loaded bikes so we thought it made sense to take a detour this time.

We had heard about the Coast and Castles cycle route that runs all the way up the coast between Newcastle and Edinburgh, a properly signed cycle path, so we thought we would try the first part of this and then swerve off to a station a little further up the coast, at a town called Newsham. We had pre-booked our tickets on connecting trains from there to Glasgow and then on to Gourock from where we planned to take a ferry across to Dunoon and spend the night there. From there, the following day, we would cycle westwards across to Portavadie from where we could get another ferry to Tarbert, home. Simple really, although the plan did assume all the ferries and trains would be running on time.

Although our ferry from Holland docked on time the small group of cyclists had to wait for over an hour before we were allowed to disembark. Bookings for travel on trains in England require spaces for bikes to be reserved in advance which meant we had be at Newsham at a specific time to catch our train. We therefore set off at a rush which meant we had little time to admire and appreciate what turned out to be one of the best pieces of cycle infrastructure we had experienced anywhere in Britain. We started riding along a wide path surfaced with smooth red tarmac which was separated from the road and from pedestrians. Later on we shared space with the pedestrians walking on the promenade and there were signs asking cyclists to be courteous, which we were, of course. A gentle 'ping' on the bike bell serves well to catch the attention of the pedestrians in front. In places the route dodged away from the coast then rejoined the promenade later but it was all clearly marked. This was as good as anything we had met in Holland and thankfully we made it to Newsham with time to spare... largely due to the fact that our train was running a little late.

At some point after making all the bookings online we realised that our train No.1 from Newsham would take us back south to Newcastle so that we could board train No.2 for the journey to Edinburgh. But at least we had avoided that horrible bit in the city centre. Our first train running behind time made making the platform change in Newcastle somewhat stressful but we made it, just, and hung up our bikes in the onboard storage cupboard in train No.2 as instructed. It turned out that this train was also running a little late which meant the change to train No.3 in Edinburgh was again somewhat rushed and it was not made easier by the crowds fighting for space alongside us. Train No.4 involved a switch from Glasgow Queen Street station to Glasgow Central, a short walk which put us out onto roads heaving with pedestrians and traffic but by this time we were ahead of the game and we even managed to jump on an earlier train to Gourock, cycle space reservations not being required this time. We knew the ferry across to Dunoon ran until late at night so once on this last train we could finally start to relax and it didn't seem to matter at all that it had started raining just after we boarded the ferry which made the short ride to our hotel a little wet. Looking back on the day we still find it hard to believe we had successfully managed such a complex journey.