The Bike Ride
LEJOG - Land's End to John o' Groats
12-28th May 2006

Day 15 - Friday 26th May - The journey to…

Written by Steve

With another day of Scottish showers forecast, we left the B&B in a somewhat unenthusiastic state of mind.

Cycling out along the banks of Loch Ness (not a monster in sight), we turned off the main road to head north into Beauly.

We immediately hit a 15% gradient hill. Anthony, having read the small print on the sign (3/4 mile), wisely dismounted a third of the way up. I, having missed this important piece of information, continued pedalling towards three consecutive false summits.

I eventually made it to the top, feeling light-headed and suffering chest pains. It took me the remainder of the day and some Ibuprofen to recover.

After a long rest, we continued in the torrential rain, eventually making it into Beauly for lunch. Sitting down with a pair of fellow End-to-Enders, we discussed in length the appalling weather and our cycling experiences.

The Scots are not only the most accommodating of hosts, but also the most honest - an old lady came up and interrupted our conversation to inform us that the weather was some of the worst she had ever seen, and that she had been to John o' Groats once and described it as being the end of the world.

Thanking her for her honesty, we headed off towards Bonar Bridge and its only hotel. I use the word 'hotel' loosely.

On arrival, the landlord informed us that they had recently suffered an arson attack and that the arsonist was still at large.

Ensuring that we were aware of our nearest fire exits, we checked into our room and ventured to the bar for yet another evening of 80s music (if you ever wanted to know where all the 80s music went, it's all alive and kicking here), tonight sung live by the lovely Marjie and her backing tapes.

We've been joined tonight by Ant's old friend Tim, on a jaunt up from Edinburgh. He's helping to ease the cabin fever, and brings with him an understanding and tolerance of local customs, not to mention bike reservations for the journey home.

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

InvermoristonBettyhill