http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2290816
To paraphrase some sports commentators it was a day of two halves. This morning we set off fairly early from Fort William and made good early progress. The first town we came to was Spean Bridge which is where my Uncle Peter (a different one from the day 2 blog) and Auntie Kath lived when I was very young, I can remember visiting them and vomiting in Peter's car. Spean Bridge offers an outstanding view of the Nevis mountain range, or at least it would do if it wasn't so foggy. At one point a road sign read 'viewpoint 300 yards,' 300 yards seemed optimistic to me.
As we rode down the hill into the village of Fort Augustus (named after the Roman god of September) I was surprised to see aforementioned Uncle stood in the road taking our picture. This was surprising as he now lives quite some way from Spean Bridge and indeed anywhere near Fort Augustus. This meeting coincided with our coffee stop which was good because he could get the coffee in for Clare and I.
Following coffee we crossed the road to have a quick look at Loch Ness, it was a worthwhile detour as it looked really quite stunning. No sign of any monsters mind you.
After that detour we rode on a bit to Drumandochit scene of the nastiest climb of the trip, almost a mile at a 15% gradient, luckily I chose to ride with Clare which meant I was not under any pressure to compete. I am still glad of this. Of course after every up hill there is a down hill section, in this case several miles of smooth tarmac on which I achieved a new all time personal bike speed record of 46.1mph, I don't want to go faster than that again it was scary.
During today's ride I had a bit of time to reflect on the ruined state of my backside following almost 900 miles in the saddle. Readers of Viz magazine will be familiar with the cartoon 'Nobby's Piles' in which Nobby has killer piles and is looking for somewhere comfortable to sit down and ends up sitting on a spike, or similar. Point being I now have some empathy with Nobby:
Following a brief lunch stop by our support van we rode on to Tain. The main thing to note about that section of the ride is it was wet and cold and miserable. It did dry out towards the end and I was happy to see that the road the hotel is on had been renamed in my honour:
Tain is our home for the next two nights, after we finish tomorrow we will be bussed back to Tain to begin our final night celebrations and more importantly to watch the opening game of the Rugby World Cup (I am sure Tain is home to many England supporters so it will be easy to find a place showing the game).
Can't wait to cross the line tomorrow, it has been a tough 9 days so far.
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