Day 12 Fort William to Beauly near Inverness (66 miles) with Lee Wardle, Steven Oates and Matt Garrod for Chubbs Cycle Challenge Long post alert, but please read! I cannot believe that today is day 12! How can this journey be almost over? What will I do once this challenge is completed? These are just a few of the questions flying around in my head right now! However, we still have 2 days to go, so on with the business of day 12 blog! In many ways today day began the night before when we checked in to our accommodation. This was our second youth hostel of our journey. From the outside things looked quite promising. A rather large house stood before us overlooking the loch, beautiful. As we walked in we were greeted by a very friendly French manager, who proceeded to tell us the rules of the establishment. He also told us that tea, coffee and hot chocolate were completely free, result! We were then shown to our room. As I opened the door with my expectations high, I noticed 8 beds, not 4! Then a small Scottish voice, soft in nature said “Heloooo” in a wee Scottish accent, not dissimilar to Mrs. Doubtfire. The voice came from an elderly gent, who was occupying one of the beds. A quick check of my watch, and yes, it was still only 4pm! Still, maybe like us he had had a hard day. He slowly popped out of bed, got dressed and began to make conversation, very, very slowly. Now resembling Forrest Gump, but with a Scottish accent. Leaving Lee in the room, I went to get my luggage. It was at this point that Tom, our new softly and slowly spoken Scottish guy began talking to Lee about his time in the oil trade. He explained that they had a song they would proudly sing each day. He walked over to Lee, and from a distance of no more than 6 inches began to sing Lee this sweet song, much like softly sung lullaby! After going out to eat, our room had filled to capacity. It dawned on us that tonight we would be sharing sleeping space with 4 strangers! The idea perhaps should have filled me with the excitement of new acquaintances! But rather, it filled us with a sense of dread! Time soon came round for sleeping, and within half an hour the rhythmic sound of soft snoring filled the room, and hard metal springs from a inadequate mattress pressed in to my back! Joy of joys! Suffice it to say, we got very little sleep last night, except for Matt who slept like a baby! The next morning, I spoke to the friendly French man to explain that the mattresses could do with replacing! I felt it was my duty to let him know! Then came the quote of the whole 12 days so far, and I will quote exactly his response. Feel free to superimpose a French accent on his words, as he replied; “Well it’s hardly surprising, the mattresses were shit when we bought them” At this point all I could do was laugh and accept that not much was going to change in this establishment! We began our journey obviously quite tired! It would have been lovely to see Ben Nevis, but sadly by far the majority of it was shrouded in cloud, so, on we rode. After about 30 miles we had our first encounter with Loch Ness, which we then followed for most of our route. Several photo opportunities later and still no sign of Nessie! Then, at last whilst I was taking a photo of Steve and Lee, to our amazement, Nessie photo bombed us, putting her face neatly between Lee and Steve and giving the friendliest of smiles. This photo will earn me... I mean us a fortune were the words that crossed my mind. I was eager to check the photo, but sadly in the excitement my thumb had popped over the lens and all I have to show for our encounter is my finger print! The world will just have to take my word for it, it was a beautiful moment! Leaving Loch Ness, to make our final bid for home for the night and we had no idea what lay ahead. Blindly cycling on, feeling somewhat proud that we had kept going despite our sheer exhaustion from the night before, when Boom! There she lay, a hill that put all other hills so far to shame, and we had to climb it. In our exhausted state, this was going t be a challenge. Ok, best foot forward and here goes, we are not giving up now. A little over a mile later and a climb that peaked at 26%, seriously, 26% that is crazy cycling right there. I am pleased to say that with my heart pounding and virtually jumping out of my chest, I made it. It was the toughest part of the challenge by a long way. It would be tough on a normal day, but at the end of our ride, with no sleep the previous night, it was doubly hard. All of us made it to the top, where we met a smiling Matt who had clearly found the entire thing very funny from his comfortable cab! He later told me that even the van struggled to climb the hill. This was something to be proud of, all of us quite rightly congratulated each other on our success! Then on to our accommodation for the night, which is thank goodness poles apart from the past 2 nights. Tonight we relax like kings in our rather plush hotel. Check out the pics below! So that’s day 12, let’s see what our penultimate day tomorrow will bring! Thanks for reading, please support our challenge by sharing and commenting below. Roy
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 19:20:38 +0000
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