The motorcycle gang at the BMW rental shop in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the outset of our trip in July, 2013. Left to right: me, Ted, Tom, and Jeremy.
Tomorrow I will be undergoing spine surgery. My operation has been scheduled for 12:05 PM and may take anywhere from 3-5 hours, possibly longer. I will be checking into the Hilton at 10:00 AM.
For the past week I have been resting at home in Lethbridge in nervous anticipation. To keep myself occupied, I decided to give myself a mega project: to edit 7 hours of helmet cam video footage from our recent motorcycle adventure through the Highlands of Scotland down to something watchable.
Above: You can see the Contour+ 2 helmet camera attached to my helmet (Photo by Tom Smith). This little camera proved capable of some pretty good high definition footage in various conditions. I would reach up while I was riding and slide the switch forward to start recording and then slide it back back to stop. I filled up a lot of SD cards!
I hope you enjoy the results of this labour of love. My intention was to make it feel like riding a motorcycle through Scotland. I would never have had the time to spend a solid week on something like this under normal circumstances. But these are not normal circumstances.
The route we took through Scotland is shown above.
Day 1: Edinburgh to the Isle of Skye with a stop in the James Bond valley from Skyfall.
Day 2: Stunning single track along the west coast to Ullapool.
Day 3: Beautiful highland scenery on the way to John O’ Groats.
Day 4: A surprise visit to Dunrobin castle on the way down the east coast on a day that ended in Pitlochry
Day 5: To Troon to catch the ferry to Larne, Northern Ireland. (The fantastic leg of our trip through Northern Ireland will be subject of another post, time permitting.)
Eilean Donon Castle, Scotland. This was one of many pleasant surprises along our route. Photo by Tom Smith.
Dunrobin Castle, Scotland (Photo by Tom Smith). The sun was strong enough to burn off the morning mist allowing sunlight to bathe the castle, an occurrence that the locals called “Freakish”. This is the castle where Ted attempted a big skid in the parking lot that did not end as he had intended. It was a good one (while it lasted). Luckily Ted and the Nimbus escaped with only minor scratches.
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