Bingo we made it!

Nuff said

Woke up this morning to sunshine, yippee!

Last night we looked at today’s route and decided not to go
via Inverness. As the site we were staying on had wireless we re-planned the
route and dropped the gpx files onto our Garmins, the extra only added another
4 miles to the journey.

We had two climbs to get over today. The first leading to
Bonar Bridge allowed us to stop and take some pictures of the stunning views
before heading off at warp speed
this off course left us with the second climb up towards Altnaharra. It was a
steady climb and was broken up with dinner in Lairg at a garage (quality
sandwiches NOT!) Louise and Alex had just passed us in the van and offered
dinner, should have accepted the offer .
We left Lairg climbing again and were passed by Lyn. The road had narrowed at
this point to single track with passing points. I bet it would be quite bleak
up here in the winter as there is not a lot around.

We climbed up to 300m above sea level and then started the 6
mile descent to Altnaharra, this was great and a good rest from climbing. The
route I had planned took us to Altnaharra only so Gerry dug out the
instructions; turned out the campsite was 3 miles further, just what we needed
after 76 miles riding.

The campsite was located right by the side of a loch and had
brilliant views, it was a bit breezy but the plus side of this was the midges
were not out, this changed later as the wind dropped and we all retreated to
our vans (I got 5 bites just putting the chairs away!)

Only 70 miles to do tomorrow and the epic journey is all over,
legs and bottom will be pleased of a rest!

Jim

Yipee no rain this morning, makes a change!

The trip up to Inverness was set to be fairly straight forward, mainly A roads with a small deviation towards the end just to get in a big climb!
All was going well and the pace was quite quick untill I noticed the back tyre feeling a bit spongey, we stopped to put some more air in it and then did the same pretty much every 4 miles untill met up with Lyn, I replaced the inner tube at this point.

Riding up the side of Loch Ness provided some stunning scenary but I didn’t get a glimse of the monster.

We cut the top corner off to get away from the main road and also give us a nice climb 15% for 3/4 of a mile although it felt like much longer! the benefit being what goes up must come down and it surely did pretty much all the way down to the site. A welcome relief after 70 odd miles.

Jim

Today started off very wet, it had rained all night and was showing no signs of clearing. We rode up the side of Loch Lomand getting steadily wetter towards Glencoe on the A82.
It was a long climb up to Glencoe, so we stopped off for a sarnie. Fortunately Lyn was driving past and stopped to make us a sarnie. That done we were off again climbing and climbing. Louise shot past in the motor home beeping the horn, she stopped off a bit later to get some shots of Gerry and I in pain.
After Glencoe it was all down hill a nice steady 30mph for 6 miles.
We got to the site for just after 3 – 75 miles in just over 5 hours, not a bad pace considering.

Jim

View from our pitch