Highland Trail 550 route map and guide

Applications open and close on Saturday 7 November 2026. You email the organizer a short resume of your bikepacking on tough, off-road, multi-day routes and events, with proof: links to results or Strava rides. Say if you've applied before, and don't attach files, because they won't be opened. Usually far more people apply than there are places, and you only hear back if you're in.

Ten places are kept for riders seriously trying to ride free of single-use plastic, a category that started in 2026. Danni Coffman set its first Plastic Free Time that year, 9 days 12 hours 20 minutes.

There's no entry fee. Once accepted, you secure your place by donating at least ten trees to the Highland Trail grove at Trees for Life, where a tree costs £6. You also need a tracker. Learn how it works before the start, and leave it tracking whenever you're moving.

Ride the whole route under your own power: no drafting and no e-bikes. You can use shops, cafes and hotels that any rider could use, but no support crew, no shared gear, no food caches and nothing arranged in advance, which includes booking a B&B. If you leave the route, you rejoin it at exactly the same spot.

The required kit is a sleeping bag, a tent or bivvy bag, a waterproof jacket, waterproof trousers or shorts, an insulating layer, shoes you can walk in for hours, front and rear lights and a helmet. Navigation is on you. If you don't use a GPS, you need to be good with a map, because the way isn't always obvious.

The bikepacking.com guide calls Fort Augustus, about 100 miles in, the first big resupply, and Contin the stop before the northern loop. Drumbeg's shop and Lochinver's pies come next. In that guide, Ullapool's Tesco had the longest hours on the route and was the place to stock up before Fisherfield; a 2026 rider aimed to reach it before it shut at 22:00. Kinlochewe follows Fisherfield.

Check opening hours before you go. One 2026 rider reached Drumbeg at 07:15, after being told the shop opened at 08:00, and found the owners already up and serving. Carry extra food into the northern loop, Fisherfield, Glen Affric and the last stretch over the Devil's Staircase. The Real Food Cafe in Tyndrum has backed the event since 2019, and riders gathered there before the 2026 start.

The organizer suggests late spring, when the weather is often more settled and the midges may not be out in force yet. Expect four seasons in one day all the same. At Kinlochewe, on the route, May averages a high of 15°C and a low of 6°C, with 118 mm of rain over about 15 wet days (Met Office, 1991 to 2020). In 2026 one rider woke on the third morning to a frozen tent and bike.

You can also ride it on your own at another time, as an individual time trial, and the finisher lists include those rides. The organizer advises against winter and against August to October, the height of the stag stalking season on the private estates the route crosses. People have ridden it in winter anyway: Annie Le in December 2021 and Josh Murphy in January 2025.