Obviously, the whole thing is dependant on the 2011 summer ferry timetable which isn’t available yet, however I was thinking of a traditional 6am start.
A 12 noon start wouldn’t work for slower riders as they could be within time at either Fishnish or Ardgour late at night / early hours but with no ferry service, so 12 noon is definitely a non starter.
Using the winter timetable as a guide there isn’t a ferry from Oban – Craignure before 10am on a Sunday so there would be very little advantage in getting round the first 400 in 17 hrs unless you wanted a very long sleep. I’d expect riders to leave Ballachulish on day 2 around 6.30am in time to catch the 10am ferry in Oban.
A 6am start results in latest finish time of 10pm which ties in nicely with the last Corran Ferry at 9.30pm, but Id need to check the Fishnish – Lochaline link too (winter timetable has one at 16.00 and 16.45 which are within time but would again mean no advantage to fast riders in blasting the 70k from Craignure to Fishnish. It would however make this quite a sociable bike ride, which was the feedback from when the P.N. 200 was run back in 2009.
It would be possible to run this as a “group DIY” and riders could have a free choice of start time, but that comes up against the challenge of the lack of suitable controls as info controls are OK on a calendar event but are verboten on a DIY. Or it could be ridden as a GPS based DIY.
