Day 12 - it's all over....

Sept 25th, 20:18: Well, that's that then.

Nice early start today – for once we actually left pretty much when we said we would. Before that though, a cracking breakfast at the Golspie B&B we stayed at last night. I was treated, again, to my own room and had had a fantastic night’s kip (the 2 pints of scrumpy with last night’s meal might’ve helped).

And at 08:45, we were off. The weather was glorious, all blue skies & sunshine; not particularly what you’d expect from this part of Scotland at this time of the year. Our pace was good and then we hit Berriedale.

This was the large hill Mark has been talking about for the last couple of days. And, a bit like Shap, it turned out to be a lot of fuss over nothing. Everyone managed to get up it – even Eddie with his dodgy knee – and once over the top we stopped for a coffee break.

Unfortunately, once we set off again, a second hill snuck up out of nowhere in particular and plonked itself in the road. It wasn’t as long as the previous one but has a vicious little hairpin bend in it, the apex of which was virtually a cliff face, albeit only a five foot high one. Ouch. But again, everyone rose to the challenge and there were no walkers.

From there it was plain sailing – we were joined about 20 miles from the end by both Becks & John from Skill, and eventually rocked up at John o’Groats a smidgeon after 15:00. And that was it. There’s nothing there to speak of, so after the photos we grabbed a coffee and bundled the bikes and ourselves back into the van & cars to head back to Inverness (which saves about 120 miles of driving tomorrow)

Final stats:
Distance: 69.91 miles
Ave speed: 15.35 mph
Ride time: 4h 33m 15s
Max speed: 49.77 mph (fab and fecking scary downhill!!!)

Keith