OUT AND ABOUT WITH RALPH: Our adventurer reflects on his bike rides to Dounreay in years gone by, before specialist cycling gear became the norm

Cycling has changed out of all recognition since I first started riding to work 40 years ago. It was an eccentric thing to do then and only a few hardy stalwarts kept going on the road to Dounreay through the storms of a Caithness winter. We used to get things called ice and snow (remember?) and helmets were unknown. Bike lights were flickering torches needing constant maintenance. If you were lucky there was somewhere at the back of a building to rest your bike out of the worst of the sleet, and you could get changed in an office.

Nowadays people are paid to cycle to work, showers and bike sheds are provided, lights are brighter than car headlights and everyone wears luminous yellow. Few cyclists, though, just go for a bike ride: they don specialist cycling clothing and go out for hard exercise, comparing distances and times with others via phone apps. It seems that now, to cycle, you have to be super-fit and dressed for the part. You will see them pushing hard, head down, on any half-decent day.

I’ve never been especially fit or fast on a bike and apart from footwear have never bought any cycle clothing. I still just go for a ride, and everybody else can overtake me. But I used to manage a reasonable speed and could leave home at 6.30am and be at work by eight, having taken the 20-mile route via Halkirk and Broubster. In the dark mornings of December and January it could be a very peaceful ride; sometimes I’d not see a car until turning onto the main road at Achreamie for the last mile into site. It takes a wee bit longer now.

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Without the need to set out in pitch dark, I tend to wait until it’s light – which means I haven’t even set off until well after I used to be in the first meeting at work. (I remember one occasion, after a hard ride in, I was enjoying a cup of tea at my desk and just getting the computer going when there came a phone call: "We’ve got a roomful of people waiting for you…" I’d forgotten to check the diary and had to grab my course notes, leap back onto the bike and cycle through the driving rain across to the training centre on the far side of the site.)

So I was pedalling through Halkirk almost three hours later than I would have done 20 years ago. It was a lovely mild morning, mid-November and not one frost yet this month. Gleams of sun between low cloud illuminated the still-green fields. Several other, Lycra-clad, cyclists were out that morning, mostly going fast and looking strangely at the slow pedaller with a pannier and old clothes.

But I wasn’t training for anything so could just enjoy a relaxing ride, round the south end of Loch Calder, past the empty Brawlbin Farm and up the hill over to Broubster. Ahead, there was low sun on the Shurrery hills. Much of the forestry above Loch Calder was windblown and has now largely been removed. I let a lorry pass, laden high with timber. There’s been some resettlement in the Broubster glen but it’s still a quiet place. Below the road are the leans of Broubster, bordering various lochans. Here are rare floating bogs where you can walk gingerly across a mat of vegetation floating on water of unknown depth. Not recommended.

The road towards Shebster used to be across open moor but has changed completely. Trees and shrubs planted by the road have done well and now it’s a woodland. Many years ago I watched a big hole being dug in a field and filled with water. It was then drained and left empty for more years. Now it’s a very successful pond with islands surrounded by a wood, just a few steps off the road. There’s a semi-circular stone-built seat, a good place for a break and a bite to eat.

Not having to carry on up the steep hill over to Dounreay I turned right, letting the breeze help me speed down to Westfield, doing my best to ignore the towering Baillie wind farm turbines. The Calder road took me back towards Halkirk. The loch below, which I’d kayaked round just a few weeks earlier, was almost smooth in the calm conditions.

A whole morning had gone on a shorter ride than I used to fit in before and after a day’s work. I wonder why that might be?

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