Day 28 -> Glenfinnan.

I apologise for the late running of this blog.

So, Scot and I were getting ready to leave at the start of Day 28...
... when we were joined by a pair of brothers called (I think) Neil and Dave. (I'm sure about the Dave one... but Scot thinks that Neil was called Alan.)
They stayed with us up until Acharacle - about 25 miles in - no mean feat given they were riding mountain bikes which will always be slower on roads.

The weather was constantly changing so the views were changing dramatically too.



But somehow we seemed to have the knack of avoiding the worst of the rain.

There was a nice lunch stop at Acharacle and a nice tea stop with Olivia and the camper van where Scit drew our route so far. I was getting confused because no matter what direction we went in we seemed to be heading alongside a seawater loch.



It was pretty close to the route that Mapmyride.com came up with later when I plugged my Garmin in:




It was a long ride - my third challenging ride in a row - and while we weren't dealing with a headwind this time I could definitely feel myself suffering a calorie deficit from the past two days. Scot's a far more experienced cyclist than me and he reckoned that the ride to Ardnamurchan had been one of his toughest rides. I concur. Rides of far greater distances have been far less physically draining.

I was certainly happy when I saw the welcome to Glenfinnan sign eventually show up...


And even more so when we reached the finishing line - at what is surely the strangest venue on the tour - a railway dining car at Glenfinnan Station:




A short trip from the fabulous Glenfinnan Viaduct:



I believe both locations are considered quite exciting by Harry Potter fans... they're certainly both very impressive in their own way.

It's probably one of the strangest "dressing rooms" I'll ever have as well:
Although it was nice to find that uppity downity charts have been used for years:
Here's mine:
I've generally avoided blogging about the shows for fear of it becoming a procession of "nice gig tonight" blandness - but it's worth mentioning this one because of its oddness. It was in a railway dining car. That means that half the audience are facing one way and the other half the other. There's no stage. There's no obvious focus. But what happened felt really special. Instead of trying to force a 3 gallon show in to a pint pot I tried to turn it into a pint pot shaped show. Everyone there was up for it because it was different and entered into the spirit wonderfully. It doesn't feel like a gig that I did and they watched, it feels like an experience that the 33 of us shared. I'll never do another gig like it and I liked it for that very reason.