Jude’s with me now and my wife is no slouch. In fact, I’ve had to dig in to catch her after my photography halts.

We left from the seaside village of Plockton — it has palm trees and, in the right light, which we got last night, it looks like a cold Caribbean from certain angles — and got blown over the EU-funded Skye bridge.

(Locals must hate those who voted for Brexit; European cash paid for a great deal of infrastructure around here, from houses to major roads.)

The old road from Broadford to Armadale on Skye is the cycleway beside the straightened, widened A581. The asphalt is intact, as are some of the white thermoplastic road markings, but — with little oversight — nature is taking over the edges. In some stretches, fir trees overhang the route, making it feel like riding through Narnia.

Sadly, the old, narrow, twisty road doesn’t extend all the way to the ferry port of Armadale, but in general there were some great, wide overtakes by the few cars and trucks en route.

The soundtrack of the ferry was an orchestra of car alarms triggered by the boat’s motion.

From Mallaig the A830 road to Fort William was pretty quiet, but we still took the wiggly detour via the silver sands of the Arisaig beaches.

Once back on the A830 it remained sporadically busy (I’ll do an article about platooning at some point — seen a lot of it on Scotland’s mostly empty roads) and, despite the warm sunshine at last, Jude started to flag but we survived until our hotel. Bar meals beckon.