Driving on the roads around Loch Ness is always a pleasure, congestion free and lots of interesting stuff to see every time you go out. Even single track roads can be pleasurable!
Single track roads are common in the Highlands and they too are a pleasure to drive on USUALLY. As locals we get used to driving these roads, but they are not a recipe to get anywhere fast as you have sections of narrow road with short wider bits for passing oncoming cars lorries and bikes.
If you are not in a hurry you can always see a passing place in front that you can pull into to allow the oncoming car pass without much delay, and whoever gets to the passing place first either pulls into it or waits for the oncoming car to go into it depending on which side the lay by has been put.
Driving on single track roads demands a little give and take, a lot of courtesy and sometimes a bit of reversing if you by any chance pass the only passing place.
Here’s a tip for visitors unfamiliar with single track roads and it will help to cut down on potential road rage situations. These passing places not only allow one to pass oncoming vehicles but also allow cars behind to get past you! Use your mirrors they are the annoying little protrusions stuck on you front doors, the mirror at eye level in between the driver and from passenger can also be set so that you can see out of your rear window! Use them to see the convoy of vehicles behind you then pull into a passing place to let them get past you It is courteous and you will get smiles and waves from those drivers when you do pull in to let them go, even if you feel they shouldn’t be going faster than you.
Funny somehow so many drivers from out with the area under estimate the fragile nature of our verges and infuriatingly go tearing along totally oblivious to passing places and simply run up the verges to pass without ever having eased off the accelerator. this sometimes results in them ending up in the loch, in the ditch or in the mud. We have pulled many of these rubbish drivers out of the mire back onto the road and you know what, they ALWAYS tell us someone ran them off the road. Good drivers do not get stuck in ditches, good drivers are never fast drivers, fast drivers always have accidents sooner or later.
Here is an incident that happened today truly. Our home is heated by log burners as so many rural properties are. this weekend we were bringing trailer loads of logs form the forest to our home winter wood store it involves bringing the trailer down fairly steep single track road, the beautiful Farigaig pass. We are near the bottom and a car comes towards us straight past a passing place, the road is narrow I stop, he stops, he decides to pull off the road but he cant get far enough off the road for me to safely pass, i keep beckoning for him to reverse back to the passing place, but he looks like he is getting more and more angry because I am refusing to carve up the primrose and bluebell rich verges. He gets out and tells me to reverse 100 yards with a 2 ton trailer when all that is needed is for him to take his little car back a few yards to the passing place he drove past. it would have been courteous for him to just smile and reverse as any local would have done. (it occurred to me later perhaps he didn't have a reverse gear or perhaps he didn't know he had a reverse gear! its funny how all these things come to you later after an incident you think of all the things you might have said) its sad but it seems so many people these days are set on breaking the rules driving like lunatics on our lovely quiet roads and acting in a socially irresponsible manner with a total absence of common courtesy and so often with a mobile phone stuck to their ear.
Please, please do try to help locals help you to have a nice holiday unhurried and relaxed. We are local we don’t want to see dead squirrels, badgers, pine martens and deer carcasses littering our carved up verges, please slow down, after all that is what most visitors say they come here to do.
