So my plans to write a blight every night have fallen apart! Most evenings I've either been too tired, or phone battery has been too low (we have a charging area at every camp but with 600 people trying to plug in phones and other gadgets there's not really enough room for everyone) or we've been in the middle of nowhere with no decent 3G reception.
We've covered so much ground in the last 4 days it's hard to remember where we've been, but to summarise, it's gone something like this:
Day 4: Ludlow to haydock. Nothing much to tell - fairly straightforward day across the cheshire plains. Nice and flat but that meant nite much scenery to look at (see previous post about areas of outstanding beauty and big hills). Camped at haydock racecourse near Manchester - nice.
Day 5: Haydock to Penrith. Day started badly with torrential downpours and a 2 hour ride through urban sprawl. Like riding in commuter traffic, except my usual commute takes me past Westminster and the London eye, not through the centre of Preston (which as far as i can tell has no redeeming features). Weather improved slightly once we hit cumbria where we claimed Shap Fell, but came over the top into a massive headwind which made going down almost as hard as going up. Arrived at camp only to discover that heavy rain had turned it into a mudbath. Not nice.
Highlight of the day: seeing the Tour of Britain go past in kendall and getting high fives from school kids who mistook us for pros (easy mistake to make).
Day 6: Penrith to Glasgow. Everyone happy to escape the mud and get back in the tarmac. Our usual riding group of me, Victoria, Tom and Steve joined forces with some others and we raced across the border into Scotland in a big train. After the first pitstop though people started dropping off and by lunchtime it was just me and Steve ploughing on along the rough Scottish roads (what dies the Scottish government send all its money on?? Obviously not road maintenance). Arrived into Hamilton racecourse outside Glasgow at 2.15 - our earliest finish and fastest once so far.
Day 7: Glasgow to Fort William. The epic day. At our nightly briefing we'd been told that through route was being extended from 127 miles (already by far the longest day) to 135 due to a diversion to avoid a landslide. To make matters worse, gale force winds were picking up across the west of Scotland, making for an interrupted night's sleep as my tent felt like it.might take off!
Come this morning, the weather wasn't quite as apocalyptic as predicted but still cold, damp and pretty windy. We set off in our usual group and picked up a few more riders early on. The first section was ok with only a few climbs. The poor roads and wind made it hard going though and after about 90 miles people were cold and tired. Then we reached Glencoe where the wind was so strong that we were going downhill, all pedalling hard and still struggling to get above 12mph (on sections where you would expect to do double that speed).
Finally we reached the bottom and turned for Fort William, onto a flat stretch sheltered from the wind. Despite saying we would roll home at an easy pace, the excitement of being so near the end obviously produced some adrenaline because the pace picked up and up until we were in a group sprint for the finish. Unfortunately we misjudged the distance to the end and had to keep the pace up for about a mile and a half! Finally got in at 5 after nice than 9 and a half hours of riding. Truly exhausted!!
But now the end is in sight! 2 more days to go. I'm amazed it's gone so quickly and almost sad that it's nearly over...but have never been so excited about staying anywhere as i am about getting to the Holiday Inn in Inverness. Camping in the rain in muddy fields and surviving on about 6 hours of not very peaceful sleep a.night when you're cycling over 100 miles a day is not great...can't wait to have a hot bath and a real bed.
Have barely taken any photos the last few days but here are a couple from when we stopped to see the Tour of Britain...
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