I saw a picture a while back, under “Britain’s Best Cycling Routes”, somewhere up in the wilds of Scotland.
It’s supposed to be the UK’s toughest ascent, and just look at the roads! Empty, sweeping, awesome.
Sadly it’s in the middle of nowhere, the holiday accommodation I could find was either fully booked or rich people only, and when I asked a native it seems the pictures are totally misleading, it’s famous and a mecca for caravans and such. Imagine wobbling up a couple of miles of leg burning ascent while caravans and mobile homes are trying to pass you and each other!
Anyway, nowhere to stay, so no. But the seed had been planted. Top of Scotland, hills, great roads, sparsely populated, little traffic.
I tried a bunch of places but they were all booked, finally got a caravan in Nairn. Great. Booked it.
Where’s Nairn?
Oh.
6½ hours drive away. Way, way, up in the Highlands.
That was our last stay in a caravan. We got up there and it was sunny and warm, as you could hope in June, then it started raining and turned cold.
It turns out we’ve been to that neck of the woods twice previously, so we’d already seen the tourist sites.
I feel bad for Wendy. She says it was alright, but the only thing for her to do there was walk and eat. And huddle by the fire.
I had a good training session. Killer hills, gorgeous, empty, back roads, great running and cycling.
Poor Wendy, though.
Next holiday is somewhere that’s got holiday stuff to do. And has brick walls and double glazing.
Here’s a few snaps.
And look at this, Microsoft have finally dumbed their photo editing thing down enough that I can use it!
Pole ruining snap, then gone!
Voodoo, I tell you! Still not the best of pics, but the tech impresses me greatly.
And here’s a video of Wendy down on the farm. 4 hours in Scotland and she went native.
The video of her ploughing fields in her high heeled, slingback wellies didn’t load.
That’s about it.
Great training, rubbish holiday for Wendy. *sad face*
Next time.
Later,
Buck.
PS, Wendy started feeling ill on Friday afternoon, said she was going to pack her kit for the morning drive home in case she didn’t feel good enough later. If we were doing nothing, why waste all of Saturday driving back? We had the idea at 16.30, 17.02 we were packed, caravan cleaned, car loaded, bike stripped and bagged, and out of there. And it lashed it down all the way home. Started to aquaplane twice, bit of focusing trip back. (Should mention that Wendy started to feel OK again as soon as we hit the road.) Which meant today I was free to pick up my bike panel from the spray painter, cut the hole in it and fit it, with crash bungs. My bike looks groovy again.
All the bottom red panel had snapped off below and in front of the crash bung. so all that black sideways V and the grey fins were missing. The panel I sourced was purple, so he’s done a good job of matching the colour.