Author: Tony

We’re in Abington at a motorway service inn.  Incongruous cyclists among long distance lorry drivers.    We’re now closer to Chippenham than to John O’Groats, which is odd since we’re still 50 miles north of the England border.

We stayed in an odd hotel in East Kilbride last night.  As we left this morning there was woman in the underground parking trying to find her way out.    Perhaps Scotland’s Hotel California.

We’re in Conon Bridge, a small village 10 miles from Inverness.   Yesterday was quite the ride.  We were out in a big wind and rain storm for 7 hours as we came up and over the highlands.   Fortunately the wind was behind us the whole time or we would not have made it.  That’s when we discovered that our pannier covers are water resistant, but not waterproof.   However, today was dry and most of our damp stuff has dried out.

The b&bs seem to be populated with fat blokes on motorcycles or retired fat blokes and their wives doing the grand tour by car.   That doesn’t stop them providing gratuitous armchair advice – this is the route you should take, this is how long the journey should take, this is what you should wear.   Thanks mate.  Just don’t run us over while you’re fiddling with your in-car climate control.

Our first real day.   42 miles to Armadale west of Thurso.    And we zoomed along almost effortlessly.   All our diligent pre-trip training was clearly paying off.  Until we realised it was a strong tailwind pushing us along.   An arthritic granny on a penny-farthing could have gone as fast.    No matter – we’re here now and steeling ourselves for our longest ride of the trip tomorrow.   We go to Lairg over a tiny highland road, made all the more exciting by forecasts of heavy rain and gale force winds throughout the day.   A dour Scotswoman warned us of possibly terrible consequences if we proceed.   It was like something out of Macbeth.

There are a lot of sheep and lambs in Scotland.   Pass the mint sauce.   (Comment not approved Margaret 🙂

 

 

This morning we were driven the 100 miles from Inverness to John O’Groats.  A couple of photos and we were off on our trip, biking the short distance to our first B&B, passing herds of wild haggis roaming across the coastal plains of Scotland, and with Margaret flying the flags of Scotland, Canada and BC from the back of her bike.

Just arrived in the nick of time, the heavens opening up 5 minutes after we got in.   Forecast is for torrential rain with a few sunny breaks in late October.   Good thing our bike shoes have fins.

The good news is that our bikes made it to Inverness and are being transformed from box shaped back to bike shaped.    The bad news is that the box with all our cycling stuff hasn’t arrived so far.   Fingers crossed it will turn up.   Otherwise we’ll be on a shopping spree in Inverness on Saturday.   We arrive Saturday morning via Easyjet, then get transport up to JOG on Sunday.

In the meantime, we’ve been to the pub 🙂

Lots of men (and some women) dressed in funny clothes with hankies, garlands and sticks, and dancing in public with accompaniment from squeezeboxes, fiddles and flutes.    Must be Morris dancers.   Which means we must be at an English folk festival.   We were assured by a woman in a health foods shop that the Chippenham Folk Festival is the largest in the country.    It didn’t seem all that big, but there were lots of happy folk types all over the place, and we did see an excellent fiddle player and singer named Nancy Kerr in the evening.

On cycling matters, our bikes made it to Chippenham with us, and have now been dispatched to Scotland by courier.    Very exciting.

 

Time to stuff the bikes into their boxes for the big trip.      Our local bike shop gave us the boxes and we studiously watched a video showing how to disassemble the bikes and get them ready to travel.    Looked dead easy.   Piece of cake.    The man on the video appeared to take less than 8 minutes to do the whole thing.

So this morning we got started in the drive way unscrewing things, taking off bits, twisting things around, pulling things out, zip-tying things to other things, and generally making the bikes less bike shaped and more box shaped.

The general idea is that the front wheel and handle bars are taken off and jammed against the frame.    Also, you have to take off the pedals, seat, and any other sticky-out bits.

After an hour I was about ready to neatly drop my bike into its box and retire for a well-earned cup of coffee.     Unfortunately I discovered that the bike was still too long, wide and tall.    Those boxes really don’t leave much any wiggle room.    So it was back to disconnecting, rearranging, twisting, imploring and cajoling.    Second time around, the bike went in the box, but the rack stuck out of the top.    Off came the rack, which I zip tied under one of the wheels.    Third time lucky, and in went the bike.

Margaret had even more trouble than me, so in the end it took us over 3 hours to stuff the bikes into their boxes, ready for their excellent adventure.

I really hope that next time we see them, they’ll still be recognizable as bikes and able to be reassembled.

 

Initially we were going to do the route south to north (LEJOG), but ended up choosing JOGLE because it’s easier to say and it’s downhill it was easier to organize.    (If anything JOGLE is supposedly a bit harder because the prevailing winds go south to north.   But, both of us being weedy, we think we’ll offer only a slim wind profile.)

We thought about renting bikes, buying bikes, 3D printing bikes, but in the end decided it best (and almost cheapest) to take our own bikes.

So, the game plan is as follows:

• We’ll box our bikes (a non-trivial task) for the flight to England
• They’ll be couriered from Chippenham up to Inverness, where they’ll be reassembled.    The move will take about 5 days, during which time we’ll be diligently carb-loading in The Quarrymans Arms.
• We’ll take Easyjet to Inverness and be reunited with our bikes.    We’ll then take a bike transport service up to JOG to start our trip.

At least, that’s the plan right now.