Jane Talbot takes us on her first trip over to the dark side....

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I am not a cyclist – I am a runner who likes to run a long way. Ian, my partner, is not a cyclist either – he is a climber who likes to climb (a long way) and who humours me by floating along effortlessly beside me on my long runs while I am looking nothing like Paula Radcliffe at all. We were both training for an ultra-marathon in Northern Ireland in the middle of June – it’s 52 miles on our feet with a bit of a climb. That’s a long way. We got tired!

We thought that as we were tired we should take a holiday. And so I began fantasising about lying down for very long periods of time. And so Ian (it’s definitely a man thing) began fantasising about some kind of action adventure (no matter how sensitive they appear when you meet them, there seems to be a hidden Bruce Willis in all of them). Hmmm... Lying down and action adventure - unlikely marriage, you may be thinking? Well, you’d be wrong! Our ideal holiday beckoned in the form of a pair of recumbent tricycles; a means of transport that would allow us to lie down for hours at a time while undertaking all sorts of action adventures.

Our first challenge was to find 2 trikes to hire. Our first was found at Walker’s Cycling in Kilmaurs, Ayrshire. Susan was brilliantly helpful, warm-hearted, mindful of our novice status and extremely enthusiastic. Our second was found at Laid-Back Bikes in Edinburgh. David‘s a dynamo on legs, totally passionate about recumbent cycling, passionate about getting people onto bikes and trikes and generous-spirited to boot.

Our second challenge was to fit the 2 of them into the back of a Berlingo – and our camping gear and very heavy panniers (definitely a girl thing). I breathed a sigh of relief as we pulled out of Kilmaurs on Thursday 6th May with our 2 trusty steeds in the back, heading up to Arisaig to camp before catching the ferry from Mallaig to Skye on Friday morning.