We like Scotland. It seems not to matter where we choose to ride; there are always invigorating roads, a chance to get away from the tourists and the speed cameras, and just roam.
Over the years, we have found several routes that bring a smile to our faces every time we ride them, and our favourite roads (so far) can be found on the Free Routes pages.
Yet, with 30,090 square miles (77,910 square kilometres) containing 35,620 miles (57,327 km) of public road, how do we find the next enthralling road to ride?
Thankfully, Scottish motorcycling DNA appears to include a little bit of crazy, or at least in the case of John (JG) Fergusson, it does. He not only rode all over Scotland, but took the time to write it all down in The Motorcyclist’s Guide To Scotland… But I’ll let him tell the story …
The Motorcyclist’s Guide To Scotland
Nobody, given the choice, would set out to research a motorcyclist’s guide to Scotland on a tatty, poorly maintained, forty-year-old BMW airhead. But that was the hand I’d been dealt.
The R100RS was old and temperamental. After a long night on the battery charger, it would sometimes start, and when it did, it was a cracking bike. The problem was that I was never entirely sure that it would get me home again.
She had history – among the highlights were a snapped brake cable on a steep bend in the Lammermuir Hills, and a disconcerting fire near Kirkcudbright after a wiring short ignited the oily speedo cable. Character-building without doubt, but not conducive to relaxing research.
Still, I’d recently left full-time employment, and money was tight. The BMW was cheap to buy, frugal to run and simple to fix. Free road tax was a bonus, too.
The odometer didn’t work, so I’ve no idea how many miles I covered that summer, criss-crossing the south of Scotland to check road surfaces, test full Scottish breakfasts, take photographs and — most importantly — stitch together the region’s finest roads into satisfying circuits.
MotoJoe’s R1200RS
I worked that old bike hard, but I knew I’d need something more dependable for the far north and west. Enter the Dalkeith BMW dealership’s rental and tour department — now called MotoJoe’s — that lent me a wonderful R1200RS from the hire fleet to research the Highlands and Islands.
In three weeks, I covered well over 4,000 miles, rising before the midges and riding until poor light stopped play. Ration packs in a pannier, camera in the tank bag, a song in my heart — it didn’t feel like “work”.
More than 33,000 motorbikes a year cross the border heading north, according to the statisticians.
At the time, I lived near Moffat — biker central in southern Scotland. I’d often watched them slog up the M74 towards Inverness, seemingly oblivious to the glorious roads to the east and west.
Many, no doubt, were fixated on the country’s most famous circuit, forgetting, perhaps, that there’s far more to Scotland than the NC500. Bookshop shelves groan with guidebooks covering everything from wild swimming to campervans, but on this side of the Atlantic at least, you’d be hard pressed to find a proper guidebook written solely for motorcyclists.
As a former BBC Scotland radio journalist and lifelong biker, I thought someone was missing a trick … Then it dawned on me that someone was me.
It took the best part of two years to pull it together — devising routes, riding and re-riding roads, checking details, commissioning maps, sourcing images, clearing copyright, negotiating with printers — all the while wondering whether anyone would buy it.
Thankfully, they did.
Eight Years Later
Eight years and three reprints later, The Motorcyclist’s Guide to Scotland has now been thoroughly refreshed for 2026, with a new design, new photography, more routes and fully updated information.
Revising it proved every bit as intensive as writing it for the first time, but it gave me the perfect excuse to ride those roads again.
From the sweeping A830 between Lochailort and Mallaig (and its shoreline-hugging little sister, the B8008) to the tortuous, corkscrewing unclassified road from Bargrennan to Straiton in the south-west, Scotland is brim-full of brilliant roads. You just have to know where to look.
The Motorcyclist’s Guide to Scotland is published by Tarmap Press. [And a damn fine book it is too ~ Ed.]
£16.99 post free from www.tarmap.co.uk
