Monday 26th and I'm off to Inverness.
Woke up with no bad effects from yesterday's monster long ride. The kindly lady at the Belgrave packed me up a bacon and egg sandwich for my mid-morning break and then I was off. Nice steady pace in the morning and made quite good time. Lovely sunny morning to start with. Stopped for my bacon butty in Golspie and then onwards. There is a particular stretch of road that I remembered from the LEJOG of 3 years ago near Skelbo castle - this time headed uphill but the gradient is kindly and the view is lovely.
Unfortunately the traffic was heavier today being a weekday. The A9 is not the nicest of roads to be cycling along, especially when there isn't a hard shoulder equivalent to be cycling in whereby the lorries behind you can get past without brushing the panniers. Head down and keep the pedals turning.
Today turned out to be quite a tough one as I was feeling quite sick and also had some nasty period pain - decided against taking any painkillers as they can make me a bit woozy which is not what you need when on a bike with cars whizzing past you at 70 miles an hour in places. At one point was singing '10 green bottles' as a means just to keep myself focused. You know it isn't a good sign when you have to stop singing to remember what number comes before 7, and then does 5 come before or after 6... just keep pedalling, just keep pedalling, just keep pedalling...
Cake break in Tain - chance to read a newspaper and catch up on what has been happening in the world. Crossed the Cromarty Road bridge and then a long uphil slog on the Black Isle. Into Tore before the hellish A9 road into Inverness. Luckily there is a cycle/pedestrian path behind a barrier on both sides of the Moray Firth bridge - quite breezy up there so it was good to know I would only wobble into a barrier rather than an truck!
Into Inverness (rather feeble hurrah at this point). Found my way through to the Tourist information centre, where a very patient young man attempted to find me somewhere to stay for the night. There were no single rooms, or even reasonable double rooms available from his list. His advice was to go and try some of the B&Bs in the area as not all of them would on the Tourist centre list. Luckily the seond place I tried had a room (ah its better to be born lucky than rich) and I didn't really care how much it cost so long as I could get myself a bed and somewhere to park up Lightning. After a restorative biscuit and cup of tea I deposited a large bag of very smelly, damp, sweaty clothes with the landlady for washing. I think my clothes bag rucksack liner must have got a leak as everything was a bit damp. Headed into town for dinner and to update the blog. Came home in time to watch Panorama, an interesting muse on how we look after elderly people. Must remember to check how much my pension payments are...
Sleep. Oh yeah, that's the ticket.
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