Monday 14th July, Inverness to Leicht Pass

58 miles

For the first time since we left John O’Groats we managed to leave on time and were on the road at 8.30am. Our plan at the start of the day was to travel 51 miles.

Five miles into the day’s ride we stopped  at Culloden  battlefield to do some filming. Becca was feeling quite cold. I had got up with a dodgy tummy  – no I hadn’t had curry or beer last night.

When we had finished filming, we  cycled on to some backroads towards the Grampians. It wasn’t long before the roads became difficult to navigate. I spent my time between making sure that BBC Look North’s Harry Gration was on the right road and Becca, who was behind, was ok. Becca’s eyes were swelling like a prize fighter who had just finished 15 rounds. It was her hayfever causing her problems.

But Harry was keen with his new bike and with a sense of increasing strength pedalled off into the distance. Unfortunately he was taking the route that none of the rest of us were and ended up going 18 miles in the wrong direction. This slowed the rest of us down and as we sat atop a field muttering “Where’s Harry?” in a chivalrous tone we all decided it was every man for himself, and Harry was on his own .

The remaining four of us headed on as quickly as possible to Grantown on Spey. Luckily our support driver picked Harry up in Nairn and drove him to the lunchtime stop  where Harry decided this would be a good time to not cycle further. Strangely enough the afternoon consisted of a series of torturous hills. Did Harry go in the wrong direction?

With us all strong we got to Tomintoul and decided that we would carry on for a further six miles to the Leicht Pass summit at 2,000ft, just so that we can start tomorrow going downhill.

Mike.

Some snaps from the last couple of days:

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This entry was posted by Mike Tomlinson on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 10:16 am and is tagged with Jane's Appeal and is posted in the category Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.