CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Stromness it runs 499 km to Stromness; allow about 10 h 39 of riding. The stops in between: Munsary & Shielton, The Flow Country, Skinsdale and back through The Flow Country. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Skara Brae is the oldest house you will ever walk past on a motorbike, or at least the oldest complete set of them. On the Bay of Skaill, on the west coast of Orkney's Mainland, a group of Neolithic stone houses lies half buried in the grassy dunes, built roughly five thousand years ago and lived in for several centuries. A great storm in the winter of 1850 stripped the turf from a mound and exposed the walls, and what was uncovered astonished everyone: stone beds, stone dressers, hearths, and cupboards still in their original places, because the settlers had built with slabs rather than timber, and there was no timber to rot. The site forms part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, along with the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness a few miles away.
Read the complete Skara Brae write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Skara Brae is where the day begins. Next is Munsary & Shielton.
Inland from Wick, in the far north-east of Scotland, the land flattens into a vast, rolling expanse of peat bog, brown and gold, dotted with pools and lochans that reflect the sky. Munsary and Shielton are areas of this blanket bog, part of the Flow Country, which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2024 as the largest expanse of blanket bog in Europe. Here, sphagnum mosses have built up peat over thousands of years, storing vast amounts of carbon, and the bog teems with life: insect-eating sundews, cotton grass waving white in summer, and birds such as golden plover, greenshank and dunlin nesting among the hummocks.
Read the complete Munsary & Shielton write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Munsary & Shielton comes up 63 km in. Next is The Flow Country.
Most people who first see the Flow Country think it is empty. It is not; it is simply flat, wet and enormous, and it takes a while to understand what you are looking at. Spread across Caithness and Sutherland in the far north of Scotland, this is the largest expanse of blanket bog in Europe, a landscape of peat built up over thousands of years, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2024. The surface is a patchwork of sphagnum mosses, cotton grass and heather, studded with countless small pools called dubh lochans that shine like broken mirrors when the sun comes out. Under your feet, the peat holds an extraordinary amount of carbon.
Read the complete The Flow Country write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
126 km in you reach The Flow Country. Next is Skinsdale.
Nobody lives in Skinsdale to speak of, which is more or less the point. The glen lies in the east of Sutherland, an empty fold of moorland and burn between the coast at Brora and Helmsdale and the great open bog country to the north-west, and the nearest towns of any size, Golspie, Brora and Dornoch, are all over twenty kilometres away. A road passes through this part of the country, but the glen itself is a place you look into rather than ride through.
Read the complete Skinsdale write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Skinsdale, about halfway. Next is back through The Flow Country.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Flow Country write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through The Flow Country sits at 251 km, about halfway. Next is back through Munsary & Shielton.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Munsary & Shielton write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Munsary & Shielton comes up 314 km in. Next is Skara Brae.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Skara Brae write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Skara Brae closes the day.
Skara Brae → Munsary & Shielton is 98 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Munsary & Shielton → The Flow Country is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Flow Country → Skinsdale is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Skinsdale → back through The Flow Country is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through The Flow Country → back through Munsary & Shielton is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Munsary & Shielton → Skara Brae is 98 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.