Why I can never go to Scotland again... - RISER

Christian is one of our RISER AMBASSADORs and shares his motorcycle experiences with you on the RISER Journal. Follow him in the RISER App, check out his routes and stay up to date on the latest recommendations! Christian took his Indian on a trip to Scotland. The land of whiskeys, kilts, rich green fields and of course rain. Or is it not?

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Why I can never go to Scotland again…

When preparing a motorcycle tour to Scotland the rain gear is usually – you know the clichés – at the top of the packing list, the sun cream at the bottom. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

From Vienna we took the car train overnight to Düsseldorf, from there the first stage led us to Amsterdam – with a stop at Amsterdam’s best burger restaurant (it’s a must), – on the overnight ferry to Newcastle, the northernmost point in the direction to Scotland, which can be easily reached by ferry (this saved us the long boring motorway journeys through central England). There had to be a little motorway section, but this soon became a better country road – and shortly after that less and less road, but more and more mountains all around. You almost had the feeling that Scotland starts exactly with the mountains – flat, flat, flat, BOOM, Scotland

The nice thing about Scotland is that the further north you go, the fewer other road participants you will see. This is a big advantage, especially in the case of the small single-lane roads (which feel like they have an passing bay every 50 metres) that lead into the various valleys, for example. Here it was also shown that the communication by helmet headset is very practical – one drives in front and looks for oncoming traffic, the ones behind can drive for it with more fun and worry-free.

The tour went from Edinburgh via Fort Williams (with a stop at the famous Harry Potter railway viaduct) up to the Isle of Skye to the legendary bar “Saucy Mary’s”, then via Applecross (a great pass road with many hairpin bends!), Loch Ness (very boring, no monster in sight) and Glen Etive (one of the shooting locations for James Bond Skyfall!) back to the south and via the Lake District National Park (beautiful area, really worth seeing!) to London (a visit to the Ace Café and a burger in the Bike Shed was a must!).

Since at that time there was no car train from Düsseldorf to Vienna due to the construction site, the journey home went by motorbike from London with the ferry to Calais and then via Cologne and Stuttgart to Feldkirch and from there with the car train to Vienna.

Back to the headline. Why can’t I ever ride my motorcycle to Scotland again? Quite simple: We had almost the whole tour only sun in Scotland. Since even Scotsmen themselves have testified to me that two weeks of sun at a time are extremely unusual. And so every further motorcycle tour can become actually only a rainy disappointment. ?