Heading North To The Highlands

 Left Edinburgh early to avoid city traffic—but then the GPS issues started.

All my routes were preplanned, but the GPS didn’t account for road and street construction. I kept getting rerouted from one detour to another. Eventually, I gave up, shut the GPS down, and decided to just head in one direction—north. After about 40 minutes, I re-entered the route. It asked if I wanted to start from my current location. I hit yes.

Once I got out of the city, the fog rolled in thick. I could barely see the vehicle in front of me. I had to stop often just to clean my visor and glasses—it was slow going.

Then the next issue started. The instrument panel on the bike began flashing multiple error codes. But oddly enough, the bike ran fine. Eventually, I rode out of the fog and spotted a roadside restaurant with a sign that said “Motorcyclists Welcome.” I pulled in, grabbed a breakfast sandwich and a coffee, and texted Paul from Celtic Rider.

He replied that he was at a family event but would have a tech call me. I was starting to think it might be a battery issue—maybe a reset would help. I couldn’t figure out how to remove the seat to access the battery, though. At that point, the dash was almost completely blank—just the tachometer and the clock. No speedometer, no fuel gauge, nothing else. Still, the bike kept running.

Paul eventually called back and reassured me: each day’s route was planned to be under one tank of gas. That gave me some peace of mind. The roads began to improve, and I passed through some great little villages—exactly the kind of riding I’d hoped for.

When I finally reached the hotel, I looked up how to remove the seat. With a borrowed screwdriver, I disconnected the battery for about half an hour. After reconnecting it, everything worked fine. The full dash display came back like nothing ever happened.

The hotel had a bottle of free local whisky on the counter, so I gave it a try. I’m guessing it was Scotch—very strong, and definitely not like Ed’s moonshine at BRPR. I couldn’t even finish it. So I wandered over to the local pub for a cold beer, and that’s where I got my first lesson in pub etiquette.
















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