Melvich Hotel Thurso

It rains on and off all night and I awake to a sodden tent and a damp sleeping bag where I must have rolled into the side. Great! Luckily the rain clears and the skies brighten, enabling me to dry my tent off on the outside of my pack.

Today's trek down the A99 is painfully slow. The landscape is quite bleak out here and the flow of traffic, much of it large lorries and motor homes, means jumping on and off the ...

... Helmsdale scare me.

Worrying isn't going to help though and I'll just have to take each day as it comes - there aren't any shortcuts! Inspired by a friend who cycled across America and who talked about having specific milestones for every day (alarm going off, getting on the road etc), I decide that as well as milestones I'm going to focus on what makes me smile each day - anything from a silly placename ...

... Scottish (church of Scotland) rule- now any church can hold a service there) until the 1400's when they were given to Scotland as part of a dowry for Queen Margaret of Norway. The flag of the Oarkneys is very similar to the Norwegain flag (yellow stripe instead of white around the cross) and they don't speak Galic/Celtic.

After seeing the cathedral at Kirkwall we then headed off to Stromeness, a very picturesque old town which has ...

... suburbs of Edinburgh the rest of Scotland is surprisingly sparsely populated, with lots of little towns along the way. The towns here tend to have one high street, or main street, along the "highway" here and that's about it. Some of them are downright adorable like Creif with it's little flags and hanging baskets of flowers. The natural scenery is also amazing, with awe inspiring bens and glens. We hit what we think is the edge of the ...

... the cold?? Till that day, we suffer. One Wednesday afternoon we trekked on the train to Tynemouth; the conditions were especially cold and ******. Having reached the beach one rather irreverent northerner retorted:

“Surfing here? Are yous joking mate?”

We smile back with naïve enthusiasm. The conditions weren’t perfect but I wanted to go out anyway…a full 15 minutes later I paddled in - afflicted with what I’d describe as severe ...

There's something amazing about knowing that you have everything you need to survive with you. I have clothes, food, shelter and transport. What more do I need?

There's something a little bit less amazing about having all that stuff with you when you try to get it on and off several busy trains. Why did I bring so much stuff??

Train ride up was fairly uneventful, it just took a long time. I always thought that Inverness was a long way North ...

... had a barbeque and played in the sea. Just the perfect temperature to cool race legs. These Scots still keep wimping out saying it's cold or something. Tan nicely topped up. Wednesday 20th. 8.4 miles running past our cottage which is very close to the ferry to Cape Wrath. This was more hilly than yesterday but was a tour around the town. At last I've found a use for golf course, excellent springy ground to run over (tee hee!) I loved the whole run but Audrey struggled. I'm ...

OK, so I was loving the SatNav system, so much so, I was considering getting it just for walking, and I trusted it to get me to the cool looking converted train carriage hostel. I was driving for ages, when it finally said "you have reached your destination, on the right". I looked to my right and replied "I don't think so" to the disembodied voice coming from the dashboard. I was literally in the middle of nowhere, with highland mountains to each side, and ...

... banner and flags up the two big hills at Helmsdale and Berridale. Rain all day until mid afternoon when it cleared. Got quite tired after the two hills and with fifty miles still to go stopped for half an hour for a rest. The last fifty miles were more hilly than I had expected but managed to press on and arrived in sunshine at John o'Groats at 7.50pm welcomed by Sue and the children with the ...

... After lots of brews and making sure we had everything we needed and that all our electronics managed to communicate with each other we enjoyed our last shower in a nice warm house for a bit and got packed up ready for the cycle into Edinburgh. Call this 1st day giddiness cause we could have got the train from a mile up the road but instead cycled 15 miles into the town centre. It was worth it though ...