​July 1st – A flat?
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73.8 miles – total so far = 933.4
3,019 feet of climbing – total so far = 57,576
Max elevation 1,650 feet
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Pinch punch, blah blah, blah….
Bummer of a start today as on retrieving the bike from its shed outside the hotel, the front tyre was soft. Not completely flat, but definitely down.
Do I change it? Do I just pump it up as tyres do go down over time, maybe I just hadn’t noticed it was on the way down?
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I check the pressure and see that it is down at 25 PSI, that is a puncture not steady deflation so it needs changing.
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First of the ride, and I hope that it isn’t going to start a trend this late in the ride. Makes me wonder again, have I just been storing up the bad luck and from now on it will be a downward spiral?
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Do I just change the wheel to get me on the road, as I have spare wheels for just this eventuality? Really, the wheels were for on the road and certainly if damp to avoid time lost whilst riding. As this is the start of the day, I think I’ll change the inner.
On getting the inner out, check the inside of the tyre, nothing noticeable to have caused a puncture. Pump up the inner a bit and that must have been enough to shoot out the thingy that had caused the problem as it started hissing like a hissy thing. Vindication for the decision to change the inner.
Thinking about it, I am sure that it was the poxy cycle path yesterday, that whilst better than some, donated a thorn or flint that punctured the inner tube. Where at the time I was saying it was ok, it is now a poxy cycle path.
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It would seem that the fish woman in charge of Scotland (reference political set up in 2016 if you don’t know who the fish woman is) isn’t too bothered about cycle paths. Mind you, in balance, Eton boy and his predecessors (reference the political situation in England in 2016) in England have done no better.
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Inner changed, bike now ready to go. Rider, ready to go having done all the other usual stuff. Last call with Gary today. Who will miss it more? One more tomorrow with Peter, and then that’s it, hopefully.
I say the rider was ready to go, the flat tyre had unsettled me, bad karma coming to get me? Most of the riding to the first meeting place were pep talks to self to get the morale back up and contradict the voices in my head saying that this was the start of the B Movie incidents that would prevent me finishing.
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Hard to counter when on your own other than by just eating up the miles. A shame, as I had been upbeat after the lady serving breakfast was after the details of the Just Giving page to donate for us. Said it before, but it always gave us all a lift when we got that kind of boost. Two days on the trot for that.
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The blues were not helped by the fact that the legs did actually feel a bit tired at times today, but every mile covered was ticked off as a significant step along the way.
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The only real climbing was at the outset, up to 1,600 odd feet but steadily. On the way down the other side of this, I did overtake a train on its way to Inverness, but I think a red signal helped me in that race.
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No problems on meeting up before Inverness, quite pleasant day now after some early greyness had gone, and looking back at the Grampians, more snow visible. Come on, it’s now July. Quite breezy, coming from the West so not really helping at the moment, but if it carries on, will be good for the end of the day.
The next bit takes me past Culloden Fields where there had been a bit of a punch up in years gone by. I get confused with these battles between the English and the Scots, Culloden, Bannockburn, Wembley, who won which one now escapes me. And it did then as I went past and it was a detour to go and read the boards which was time I wasn’t willing to give up.
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Then I headed into Inverness. As usual, bit of fun negotiating the bigger city, but no real problems. The fun part was the Kessock Bridge across the end of the Moray Firth.
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Started off crossing this attached to the road, then the cycle path gets its own bit. Fence or barrier either side, not an enormous one, and as I had mentioned earlier, there was a fair bit of wind blowing, and finally, it was actually quite a long way down!
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Also, as mentioned before, the wind was from the West, so at least it was pushing me towards the road, not the water. Even with that, I did find myself speeding up somewhat to get off the sodding bridge as quickly as possible. Glad I didn’t take the big bridge out of Edinburgh, would probably have needed to change the lycra had I done so.
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Shooting off the end of the bridge and I was on ‘The Black Isle’. Had visited this many years before on a driving tour around Scotland. Pretty little place.
Next meeting on The Black Isle, all in order.
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The next section showed that the ride was taking its toll on both rider and support team.
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The support team had finally got a bit bored aside from the singing, and were playing with taking selfies to pass the time.
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Off ‘The Black Isle’, and into Dingwall and then out of Dingwall probably saw me at the closest since Cornwall to walking up a hill. Dingwall had been fun with one way systems, which the Garmin route plotting doesn’t always care about so a bit of looping around, but then out of Dingwall, the A862 was the main road way that would take me to the A9 and all the way to Tain, but I had chosen to avoid the A road and take the ‘Old Evanton Road’.
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Unfortunately, this was up a sodding cliff! It was only about 350 feet of climbing, but it was steep and it was straight. By that I mean that you see it all the way up as you start. Also, it was still in the town, so roads joining and bumps abounded. Also, there were people.
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I had said that the legs were a touch tired, and they did not like this hill, small though it was. Pure stubbornness, even bloody mindedness was the only thing that got me up this hill. I was not fast.
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I do remember that while crawling up the incline (got to find another way of saying the hill), there were a couple of school girls from the local college and after I went past them they kindly gave me some heckling in the form of imitating a squeaky wheel. Cheeky cows. Gave them a wave and crawled on.
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Maybe one thing that I forgot to mention that also helped me get up the bump in the ground, was that just at the bottom before turning off the A862, there was a sign for John O’Groats. The support team also saw this and we were all hugely excited.
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The next stop, 56 miles and in Evanton. Greying up when I got there and the local stone doesn’t always look good in greyness. Bit gloomy again, needed something to chuckle over, and got it.
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The chuckle came from the support team of course. Needless to say, one of the support team, Jenni, needed to use some facilities. The local hotel was shut, so it was the local pub.
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On the same trip in the 80’s when we had visited The Black Isle, we had realised that Scottish pubs differ to English pubs in that they are still very much the domain of the Scottish male.
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How had things changed over the ensuing 30 years? In the pub in Evanton, not much.
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Apparently, heads turned, conversation stopped, jaws dropped, puzzled faces at what appeared to be two females entering the pub. One of the faces was one of those that can best be described as lived in or alternatively, someone who was always in the pub and had ended up with an enormous red bulbous nose with the veins pulsing at that moment in shock. Bit like Rudolf.
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Proud to say that Jenni promptly greeted the upturned faces with a breezy hello and wished them all the best, got a drink, had a wee and ran like crazy before they started slaughtering the innocent. That last bit may be a bit over the top, but I wasn’t one of the ladies being intimidated, or not as it turned out, but I think it was still a bit un-nerving.
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All this was relayed to me at this stop and it was not with sadness that we moved on out of Evanton. First picture on this page is me riding out of Evanton. Solitary yellow blob in the distance. Also, note the puddles, not a dry day....
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Last stop of the day to come up, and this was a real psychological stop in that it was only 8 miles from the end of the day.
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Think this was where Jenni had been making friends with the local cows.
Sometimes you moo at a cow and get no reaction, today the cow was fixated and stared and stared.
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Then it started shuffling, zombie like towards the girls.
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The zombie cow was joined by other cows shuffling towards the fence all in a zombie walkie stylie, and the fence was only a flimsy wire type fence,
Heading 6
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It was when the bull also joined the group that Ruth started the engine and moved down the road to the next field, depriving the zombies of their fresh flesh for that day.
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It probably took them longer to tell me all that than it did for me to wolf down the obligatory slice of Geoff’s Bakewell Tart (yep, still plenty left), have a drink and eat a banana.
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8 miles to Tain. Where it had only spotted with rain up to now, with 3 ½ miles to go it pissed down. This didn’t matter. The earlier blues had gone, and I was feeling excited at the fact that there were only 3 ½ miles to go today and then there was just one more day to go. The waterproof did its work and I arrived at the B&B none too wet and after a quick clean and dry up, popped the bike into its latest shed.
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There’s only one day to go!!! One more sleep ‘til Christmas and all that stuff. Ah, The Muppet Christmas Carol, a great movie, but now have the tune stuck in my head for the day.
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Before we get to that though, have to describe the B&B and Tain, as although it had rained, we were all happy at the moment, excited and unaware of what a wonderful evening lay ahead of us.
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Very well appointed place to stay tonight, and for the last time we have the line of items charging up. We won’t have to do this tomorrow.
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Wander towards town, the owner had advised us it may be busy as there was a gala on. To us, with the kids history, a gala meant hours on end in a hot swimming pool watching swimming, but what we were to find was something quite different.
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Dinner in The Saint was good, and then we thought we would just go a bit further in to see what was going on. How lucky that we did as we were greatly entertained by pipers and Scottish dancing. All done as part of the festival and gala that was going on that we had known nothing about.
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It was a brilliant thing to find unexpectedly happening on our penultimate days riding with the sun now shining on a glorious evening. As we are north, the sun is up seemingly forever.
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Having finished the dancing and playing, the performers all mingled in with their friends an family in the crowd. This was a local event, principally for locals and was all the better for it.
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Tain charmed me, and I think us in the way that Edinburgh had failed to do. Absolutely brilliant place.
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Back to the B&B, set alarms and sleep.
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One more day……
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ONE MORE DAY!!!!!