Where Our Narrator And His Partner In Crime Are Seduced, And They Visit The Green Welly Once More.
It was a struggle getting up, but I like to feel that after nearly 31 years of doing so that I am a bit of a pro at it. Still, it hurt. Hannah tried a few words of encouragement, and then resorted to pushing me onto the floor with her foot while she snuggled deeper in the duvet. I will not repeat the thoughts crossed my mind regarding my wife as I sat in a daze hugging my pillow to my chest; needless to say, not many of them were flattering.
As had become my ritual for the last few days, I splashed cold water on face and then wearily tried to stretch the tightness from my legs. Also, I applied some antiseptic to my now excitingly sensitive saddle sores, and dressed for breakfast. A quick look in the mirror showed a tanned / weathered face looking back with a stunning t-shirt tan developing, and I looked a tad too healthy for how I was feeling.
Breakfast in Dunire was good with cereal and a cooked breakfast available, delivered by our bustling host who managed to feed 15 of us or so in as many minutes. I choked my way through Weetabix and a couple of slices of bacon with some toast, all washed down with water, coffee and grapefruit juice. Ray was once more tucking into about 3 courses of food, and I’ll admit that as I looked at him filling his skinny frame with more food than I could manage in two sittings I was somewhat envious.
I was keen to get going, but had run out of GoGo Juice the day before and needed to mix some more Lucozade with water in my Camelpak. I packed quickly, dressed into my now dry cycle gear, freed the Manly Steed from the garage and pedalled carefully over the gravel driveway to the road, and then down to the petrol station 500 yards away.
It was a phenomenal day. The sky seemed to arch overhead in a brilliant blue canopy, and the sun was climbing into the heavens unimpeded by a single cloud. The mountains looked close enough to touch, and it felt like the pain was made worthwhile to have been able to reach this point and be stood gazing around at such splendour and majesty.
The petrol station had no Lucozade, but they did have Gatorade which promised to be thirst quenching, and so in that went and was duly mixed with about a litre of water. I also bought a couple of blocks of tablet which is a sweet made entirely in Scotland and that resembles a kind of crystalline fudge. Basically, it is sugar. Lots and lots of sugar.
Ray met me as I pedalled up the road to the guesthouse, and the car was packed and ready to go. I clipped my pannier on, applied some suntan cream liberally to the exposed parts, and then we took our leave of Han and Mike with a commitment to meet them in Tyndrum for lunch. It was 10:00am.
Glencoe village is at sea level. The top of Rannoch Moor (the highest point of our day, if not the high point) is at 1144 feet. We had about 10 miles to get there, which may not seem like a lot, but 10 miles uphill is still 10 miles pedalling up a hill. With this in mind, we gently headed off south, with Ray leading for the first few miles until I got as comfortable as I could on the Manly Steed and my legs warmed up properly.
The road led us towards the mouth of Glencoe and we pedalled our way steadily onwards, stopping frequently to take photographs of the vistas that opened up around us. It was fairly hard going, but it seemed that with so much to look at I could ignore the exertion and goggle at the view as we cycled our way past a smallish loch and up a long curving section of road. We passed a car park on our right full of people and coaches all waiting patiently for the piper to come out of his caravan and to play the bagpipes (which happens every hour on the hour, I believe) and pulled in a half mile or so onward for a breather and to snap a few more pictures. As we did so, the sound of bagpipes came to us across the still air as the piper set to down below, and I swear that there is nothing as atmospheric as the sound of bagpipes echoing off the mountains and ridges.
Leaving the Plaid Piper behind us, we pedalled on passing various mountains including The Three Sisters and the White Corries, and pulled in to rest beside a sign for the Kingshouse Hotel. We took some pictures of Buachaille Etive Mor with its distinctive pyramid shape, and took a moment to call George, an old friend of ours, to tell him that we were looking at it.
George Darling is one of those irascible Scotsmen who is growing old disgracefully but with style. He is an artist of incredible talent who used to walk the hills with Ray and me in our younger days and he had just turned 70 in the February of 2008. We had (over and after a bottle of particularly expensive and fine Glenfiddich single malt) decided that Ray and I would walk with George up one last mountain before he was over the hill, obviously with no pun intended, and we had settled on Buachaille Etive Mor as he had never done it before, and it wasn’t so difficult that Ray and I would be unable to climb it.
That done, we carried on and passed the sign post for Rannoch Moor stating the we had climbed those 1144 feet. With the scenery around us, the smell of heather in our nostrils, and the sun shining in a deep blue sky I have to say that this was the high point of my ride: if we had got no further then I would have been a happy man. Well, fairly happy. You see, we were both beginning to understand why seemingly normal and balanced people go away with their bikes for holidays rather than to a beach with a bar.
We were becoming seduced by the sly minx of long-distance cycling as she pedalled just ahead and always out of reach, occasionally batting her eyelids at us coquettishly; believe me when I say that her Lycra-clad figure was alluring enough to get even the attention of a knackered couple of JOGLErs like Ray and me.
“Wow, I can’t believe the weather we’re having,” I said. “It’s fantastic!!”
Ray looked horrified, as Fate suddenly looked up from what he was doing away to the south of us, in the part of the country hit by Severe Weather Warnings.
“Bugger! I didn’t mean it!!” I shouted. Fate smiled, and not in a good way.
The sun continued to shine as we pedalled onwards, and the landscape opened out around us as we passed Loch Ba on our left, and Loch Nah-Achlaise on our right. We rested in a car park overlooking Loch Tulla and The Black Mount (which, by the way, looked nothing like the only real black mount in my opinion, the Manly Steed) and tried to avoid buying horrific souvenirs of tartan hats with bright orange hair sticking out from underneath. Then it was ever onwards, and soon we reached Bridge of Orchy, and we were only 5 miles or so from lunch, which was becoming sorely needed.
Thanks to my earlier faux pas regarding Fate and the weather, the clouds rolled in and we cycled the last few miles into Tyndrum under low hanging clouds and into a headwind. The final mile or two was up a long grinding gradient with some road works giving us great lungs-full of steaming tarmac steam which we both had to cough out after we cleared them. Ray said that that the smell reminded him of being a child, and I wondered just why he had been allowed to play with roadwork gangs at such a tender age. We freewheeled down a pleasant hill into Tyndrum and met Mike and Han outside the Green Welly Stop having done 30 miles or so.
The Green Welly is one of those places which carry everything you could ever want, but nothing which you actually need. It has a grocery / petrol station where I bought Hannah a 2009 Calendar of Highland Cows (she was yet to see any this trip – we couldn’t move for them it seemed) and an outdoor clothing section where we looked at torches which just couldn’t be broken, apparently. It took a half-nelson to get Ray out of there without one, but he forgave me later when we discussed how heavy it would be to carry.
Lunch was had in the pub next door, and we were dive-bombed constantly by about a dozen wasps as we ate. The sun came out, and briefly we were hot again. Mike and Hannah listened in awed silence as I regaled them with tales of long ago nights spent in this very pub, of how Ray had raced the locals in a drinking game involving no common sense and nine shots of whiskey, and how I had carried him back to our bunkhouse only for him to be noisily sick out of the window for the rest of night.
Ah – good times.
We mounted up with a straightforward 22 miles left for the day, turned left back onto the A82, and headed for Crianlarich and points south. We passed a sign as we left Tyndrum saying “Heavy rain and flooding forecast – drive with care.” I was not as happy about that as you would think, but since the sun was shining and frankly we had no other option we carried on.
Crianlarich is pretty, and we stopped for a chat when we saw Mark on the side of the road having a breather. He had taken a wrong turn that morning and cycled into Kinlochleven by mistake, thereby adding at least another 15 miles to his journey as it was back north. We didn’t laugh, but merely smiled sympathetically.
We left Mark to continue onwards, and then freewheeled for about five minutes down the longest hill we’d seen so far passing several LEJOGers on their way up. “It gets easier ahead!” I shouted as we flew past, and Ray came alongside to ask me just where it got easier. “Well,” I said. “Rannoch Moor is flat once you’re up there...”
We pedalled through Inverarnan and then down to Ardlui on the shore of Loch Lomond, and continued along the rolling road towards Tarbet passing an accident where a car coming northwards had lost its front wheels and driven into a wall. Han and Mike got caught in the traffic jam that built up around it, and were convinced that Ray and I had come a cropper. The Manly Steed snorted at this disdainfully when I told it later.
The clouds rolled in over the loch and the wind rose, and we reached Tarbet just as the first drops of rain fell. We called our B&B and cycled up to ‘Aye Servus’ to be met by the lovely Maria who ran it. The house had a fantastic view over the loch, and if it wasn’t for the hissing (yes – that is hissing) rain we could have spent hours looking down towards Alexandria and our route for tomorrow.
Mike and Hannah arrived fifteen minutes after us; we stabled the Manly Steed and its counterpart in the garage, showered and then headed up the A83 in the car through Arrochar to the Loch Fyne Oyster Restaurant. This is a chain of restaurants which has sprung up through London, and this I believe is the original, and very fine it was too, no pun intended.
After sausage and mash (the thought of a bad bit of seafood with 650 miles of riding still to go was too much) and a pleasant evening we headed back to the accommodation and then Ray and I had to go through our stuff and pack properly for the first time. Our time with a support car was at an end as Mike and Han were driving back south the next day, and it was an unpleasant feeling not to have the safety blanket of someone only half an hour away if something went wrong.
I ruthlessly cut my gear down to the absolute minimum determined to take only one pannier, and then went through to force Ray to cut his down as well.
“No, we don’t need those pliers. Or the spanner set. Motorcycle gloves? Really? No, dump ‘em. What else are you hiding in here...?”
We decided to take a load of pages out of our roadmap and navigate with that going forward as I was unconvinced of the Garmin’s accuracy, and so into the bag it went.
We climbed into bed (well – Hannah and I did – Ray was next door. I just want to be clear in case of any confusion, but time on the road can change a man...) to the sound of the rain outside and we set our alarms to wake us at 06:30am. Neither of us was happy at the prospect of leaving each other for a week, but we knew it had to happen. I was really glad that Han had been able to see us achieving the first four days as I think it made her feel a part of the trip – there’s nothing worse than being a cycling-widow. Well, there is, but don’t get me started on Cliff Richard...
I fell asleep aching both inside and out, and the alarm woke me once more the following morning. Day 5 had begun, the rain was still pouring, Hannah and Mike were leaving us on our own, and Fate was laughing quite hard.
Will’s Lesson Number Four: Never, Ever, Ever Tempt Fate. Ever. Fate is ALWAYS Listening.
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