Day 10

Day 10

Wednesday 13th August 2008

St Catherines to Noth Ballachulish.

77 miles. The plan was to meet at the van at 7am, have breakfast at 7.30am and leave at 8am. However breakfast took longer than expected but it was such an experience and we all seemed to be drifting off with the gentle sound of Scottish tunes playing from the hi-fi, it was amazing we got away at 8.30am.

We all agreed that the Thistle House was a great place to stay and defiantly in the top 3 so far. It is worth mentioning the trouble Mike and Gillian took to book all the nights accommodation and so far the vast majority of them have been good, all different and all appropriate for the type of clients for who they usually cater.

The Band B in Wrexham was mainly catering for construction workers and was set up like a travelling mans business hotel, very functional, but not like a home. If you compare it to somewhere like the Thistle which was very homely and full of personal touches. Both were good quality, just different clients in mind.

Once on the road we travelled 16 miles to be a mile from where we started the journey from St Catherines to Inveraray by Road. After an hours cycling we were able to look across the water to see last nights home, the only serious climb from Invereray up to Taynuit which basically goes over a watershed between 2 Lochs. The rest of the days ride was basically following the various Lochs. Today the weather was superb, and coupled with the fantastic scenery it really was a special day to cycle. The only slight negative was the northerly wind that was blowing in our faces but even this was not very strong. We had lunch in Connell by the side of the loch watching the occasional light aircraft land at Oban Airport.

From lunch we only had 28 miles to go so we set off at a steady pace and had our last stop with Gillian with only 15 miles left while Mike and Rob were discussing location of our stop for the night Ness and Ian sped off towards the finish line. For the next 10 miles we had the break away being chased by the pellition. Eventually we regrouped and rode into North Balachulish together. As we approached Ian realised that we could either cycle our bikes for an extra mile or so around the link to the bridge we had to cross or we could hike the bikes up the steps to the bridge which we did (we discovered that carrying tandems up stairs is not an easy thing to do but still quicker than cycling an extra mile. Once over the bridge it was a simple one mile ride to the B & B and who was there to guide us? Well apart from Gillian there as Mairi, ‘lollypop 2’, who had agreed to step into Phil’s big shoes, and so far has not put a foot wrong. We look forward to see how she performs over the next few days.

Thank you Mairi for stepping into the breach.

Mileage : 76Miles

Time : 5 hours 20 mins

Total : 753Miles

Beer of the day: 80/-

Overnight : Tom-na-Creige