Long Distance Cycling Ordinary People

We didn’t understand the scale of the trip until we drove past some of the places we went!   Got the van Got the tandem! 347 (more) miles to go! Onward Passing by places we pedalled Castles Stirling Castle Scotland is flooded.  If we had been a few days later, we wouldn’t have been able to get through! Inverness The River Ness hadn’t flooded its banks  Whole flooded valleys We pedalled by this castle, think we would have paddled now Right over the banks Even south of Glasgow, flooding And finally, home! Cheers! A celebratory Negroni Misty evening Already getting ready for Thanksgiving  Commemorative!  A bit peaty, but good! Ahhhh, a home-cooked meal! Loved it all and glad to be home!

I think we’re even more excited about competing the trip today than we were yesterday!  Yesterday was a bit of a flurry with getting to JOG, dropping the bikes off, taxiing to Wick, etc., today there is a more relaxed feeling of accomplishment!  So happy to have done it!!! The pedalling is done, but the trip anctually isn’t over until we get home!  Today we take the train from Wick to Inverness.  It’s the only train today and there’s flooding all over Scotland so I think we’ll get there early so we don’t miss it (and 🤞🤞🤞 that it runs!)!  Besides there’s not an over abundance of things to do in Wick - we walked back to the B&B last night (Saturday night) and didn’t see a soul!l We’re staying at the Royal Highland Hotel in Inverness tonight, right next to the train station.  Train station hotels have been an ongoing joke throughout our marriage since Steve booked one early on and we admired the view…of the tracks 😂.  Actually hotels next to train...

And it’s the very last day!  Thurso to John O’Groats, 21 miles, a whopping 775 feet of climbing.  We’ll be reflecting on the whole experience over the next few days, but in a nutshell it’s been one of the hardest and best experiences of both our lives. We’re having a leisurely get up and breakfast at a decadent 8:00.  There’s a lot of sore muscles (that has never stopped on the whole trip) and bruised bits (a recent development) this morning. Didn’t do any laundry last night - more decadence!  Going to be a headwind from the east, but 10-15mph - that will be a VERY nice change from yesterday!  Cold, 47 / 8 degrees and rainy.   We left Thurso in the cold, grey and rainy mid morning and pedalled uphill out of town.  Had to go over a narrow bridge first, over the river, dodging people as we went.  The day’s route was mainly long, long, slow climbs.  It looked like Roman roads, straight for miles into the distance, but Steve tells me the Romans d...