all this worry about the A82 though, on a Saturday/Sunday when most will hit it ? is it really any worse than the roads I do on my commute daily ?
Depends, what road you commute on...
As I said before, the A82 can be stupid busy or it can be utterly deserted, weather, time of year and time of day are everything to how you experience it.
The whole road came to a grinding halt on Rannoch Muir last winter when everyone tried to go skiing at the back corries on the same day.
From the video I posted (I think it was on the 1200) that was a minging day in the mid-afternoon, it wasn't bad at all; wind forward a year from that photo and on a blistering hot day, that was also a Glasgow holiday Monday and on that same climb at no point did I not have a car on the tail and a load of terrible passes to go with it, it wasn't fun.
The other problem is that these roads follow tourist routes as well as being critical for locals and business getting around the west coast, so there's speed differentials between holidaymakers staring at the surroundings, or crawling because the twisty road scares the crap out of them because they're used to urban roads and motorways and the locals who are absolutely hammering it whenever they can.
The truncated rule for single track roads is as follows:
Red Van - It's a post van, get out the way, the postie knows every little bump on the road
Local Car - Driver will know how to handle the passing places so just roll in and tell them to pass
Tourist - Will put themselves off the road at the sight of anything else on the road, if they stay on the road they are likely to stop suddenly in passing places, on the wrong side or even in a bog that looked like a passing place. Don't expect them to understand the concepts of passing...
This translates into the trunk/primary roads as:
Red Van - Postie, has a speed limiter fitted, expect to have the accelerator floored because it's easier than holding it in the right place. Will use the full width of the available road.
Local - No speed limiter fitter, expect to have the accelerator floored most of the time, use the full width of available road and generally not hang back
Tourists - Moving chicanes for the above
The timings for what I'm expecting to do only indicate that the bit between Ballaculish and Fort Bill may be a bit rubbish; this is also the bit where it's not uncommon for the police and contractors to be fishing wrecked cars out of the embankment vegetation and occasionally the loch...
The road into the Erskine Bridge on the way back is also a bit rubbish from Tarbet down (traffic joins from the A82 and A83 routes); and then turns into a dual carriageway past Alexandria.
I rode from Alexandria up to Arden once and wished I wasn't there, that was early-afternoon in August, I returned the same way and spotted the cycle track which appears to start at Tarbet but also seems to be a bit crap.
I understand it's one of the reasons that the Daylight/Twilight 600 hasn't been run for a few years, and when I mentioned attempting it the first response was along the lines of "start at night (at queensferry), so you get to Crianlarich late enough for a quiet ride up the Muir"
Rather than do that we're planning based on a mild-march so go after the ski season... it'll be deserted as it'll be too snowy on the tops for anyone not owning crampons and there won't be enough ice and snow low down for the ski-ers and ice climbers... or that's the hope.