Up down, up down, up down and the Czech's
Trip Start
Jul 08, 2008
1
4
16
Trip End
Jul 25, 2008
Fort Augustus,
Scotland,
United Kingdom
Saturday, July 12, 2008
We got to Allness before the other boys and spotted a massive Morrisons and everyone knows Morrisons spells Scotch Pie butties so immediately stocked up and filled our boots. The other guys arrived and were in fine fettle so we set off to Dingwall on a fine road. We then had to cross the hills to Drumnadrochit on the Great Glen
Phil's signpost fetish...
. And what a set of hills it was, 15% incline is not what we needed at this stage. Especially when you are putting in everything you have and some geyser with thighs out of Gladiator whisks past you with his solar powered ipod on his way to completing John O'Groats to Lands End in 7 days...that puts fitness into context. The worst thing about the whole climb was getting to the top and finding that the decent was actually too steep to make use of all that painful climbing. The climb itself was pure mind over matter stuff...every time I do it I remember Iain telling me about the guy in the Tour D'France who managed to take all the enamel off his teeth by gritting them so much.We waited in Drumnadrochit for the others to catch up. This wasn't so bad as the café had free internet so we were able to get the first few days blogs up to date..sitting outside in the rain in cycling shorts and waterproofs writing on a computer was a bit weird I have to say. After Drumnadrochit we just had a simple run down the Great Glen to Fort Augustus...at least that's what we thought. In the end it was a relentless up and down 20 miles at the end of the day...the final curses being reserved for Fort Augustus where they had tactfully placed the welcome sign before one last hill...and then placed the campsite behind yet another hill.
The Loch Ness monster...
Fort Augustus was lovely and gave us our first sample of real civilization for a few days. The campsite even had a toaster so we went and bought a load of crumpets before tucking into a Haggis Supper (deep fried, battered haggis and chips). The strange thing about Fort Augustus was that the population no longer seemed Scottish and indeed on closer examination it turned out that nearly everyone was Czech. Apparently they were all working on a new hydroelectric dam.
After a couple of pints of heavy we got our heads down for a nice nights sleep...rather different to a normal Friday night in Manc...
Day 3
Tain to Fort Augustus
Miles 70.95
Average 14.1
Hours on bike 5.2
Max speed 33
Total distance 212.31
70.95 14.1 5.2 33 212.31
