Day 30 -> Inverness

Hang on... that isn't a bicycle.

I've not really mentioned much of the extra-curricular activity but this is what we - my tour manager Ed and me - got up to this morning. A powerboat trip on Loch Ness. We saw no monster.
Here I am before the trip...

... and here's Ed during.

A big thanks to Marcus - who was in last night's audience - and who organised the trip for us... and also to Tony who piloted the boat. Ace.

Meanwhile back at the bike ride, here I am outside Fort Augustus Public Hall with my Human Sat Nav for the day, Toby - on the left - and his friend, Colin.
And this is the route we took. We took the south/east side of the loch... It's slightly longer but means we could avoid the take-your-life-in-your-hands A82.
As you can see from the U-D chart, the hard work was all at the start of the ride. But it got a lot easier.
We stopped off to take a look at the Falls of Foyer...
... and also at Dores where this man lives in a converted mobile-library, hoping to spot the monster that doesn't exist. Ah.
Nice views...
And here we are at the end of the ride. Dry, unrained on and happy after a jolly day out. After the last few days, at 33 miles it was, dare I say it... easy.

Day 29 -> Fort Augustus

I was preparing to do this ride alone. Scot - my guide for the past couple of days - had given me some good advice for the journey and I was pretty sure I could find my way as a result. But as it happened, when I was chatting with the audience after the show in the train carriage one of them said, "I suppose you've got someone to show you the way tomorrow?"... I explained that I hadn't and so... step forward, my short-notice Human Sat Nav, Campbell:


As you can see we were both in our waterproofs from the get-go... it was raining pretty heavily from the start. It never really cleared up. And most of the 44 mile ride was off-road - we started on the A380 for a while, used a bit of the A82 - but spent most of the time on the Great Glen Way or the Caledonian Canal towpath which made it a muddy affair:







We made it to Fort Augustus Public Hall in a wet and sodden state:


It had taken us just over four hours and given how rough and muddy much of our route had been I reckon that's a pretty decent pace. Impressive guiding, Campbell.

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.

Glenfinnan

I've got an internet connection... but not much of a one. Not enough to upload any photos or work out any maps. Nor do I really have time.

So I'll just say that last night's gig - in a 32 seat, railway dining car was one of the loveliest night's of my professional life. It had a unique atmosphere and worked against all the odds. I can't quite believe it happened.

I'll update more fully another time.

The Westernmost Point!

I'm really very, very happy right now. I've finally made it to the westernmost point: Ardnamurchan.

I met my Human Sat Nav, Scot, this morning at Fired Art in Fort William, the starting point for Day 27:


The nature of my journey - between the four corners - means that sometimes I have no choice but to retread some parts of it. This morning was a great example because I had to start by heading south on the A82, the same road that had carried me north the day before.

But it took us down to the Corran Ferry and a trip across Loch Linnhe. Scot was an amazing guide - he's a marine biologist, so knows his wildlife and was able to point out all sorts of creatures and geological features along the way. We saw porpoises playing in the water before the ferry journey. Ace.



The landscape on the headland was so varied as we scooted around the edge of the sea loch, Loch Sunart. As was the weather. It was hot and humid, cold and rainy, windswept and everything in between.



Our first tea stop came in Strontian, courtesy of Olivia, Scot's wife who caught up with us in their campervan. Ace fruit cake too.

I think this was one of the toughest rides of the lot. As well as some stiff climbs...

we also seemed to be heading into an energy sapping headwind for huge chunks of the ride.
By the time we made it to a great little visitor centre (with a grape vine sprouting out of the floor and all over the window) we were in dire need of some calories.



The hills kept on coming and the wind kept on hurting us but eventually we passed the Sonachan Hotel - and the barn out the back which would be my venue for the night - and continued for another three miles out to the westernmost point and the Ardnamurchan Lighthouse.

Here I am with Scot...

and here I am with my bike as far west as it was possible to put it...


I wish the day's cycling had ended there but of course we had to go back over those last three miles to get back to the venue where our journey ended some eight and a quarter hours after it had begun...


It meant I was arriving at the venue at 6.30 and with this one being an earlier-than-normal 7.30 show there was very little time to prepare... but, I managed to do an interview for Radio 4' Front Row, shower, change and eat before hitting the stage on time. I don't think I've ever played a barn before but I'm very glad to have done so tonight.



I can't believe I've got this far. It's been an incident packed 28 days that have taken me from the southernmost point to the easternmost point to the westernmost... and now the end is in sight. Just 5 more shows and 6 more rides and I'll be at the northernmost point.

I hope tomorrow's guide is as good as today's. Oh, hang on. It will be. Scot's taking me to Glenfinnan as well...

Day 25 & 26... To Ardlui & Fort William.

There was an imbalance between these two days. The first of them was an easy, flat 30 mile ride while the second was a rugged 60 miles with plenty of climbing and effort required. If I was setting this up again knowing what I know now I'd have probably done things differently and stopped at Tyndrum instead of Ardlui making it two rides of roughly the same difference.

Oh well. Live and learn.

Here I am at the start of Day 25 in Dumbarton. The chap on the left is Chris - he was my Human Sat Nav for the day. The other chap is Mark. He was in the audience the night before. We chatted after the show and he decided to come along too.


I was quietly dreading this ride because it looked to me like I'd end up having to cycle most of the way on the A82. It's a busy road and traffic makes any ride less fun. But as it was, between them, Chris and Mark showed me a network of cycle paths that took us all the way to Tarbet... so we only ended up doing the last section on the 82.


As you can see, much of it was hugging the bank of Loch Lomond... which means we were pretty flat too.


Ardlui is a strange place. In that it's not really a place. There's a hotel there... and that's pretty much it. There isn't anything resembling an actual village that I could see. Quite how it's got a place name all to itself I dont really know... still the gig wound up being fun.


We made a couple of stops, including one in Luss...
and somehow every stop seemed to work to our advantage weatherwise. We saw a lot of rain but I didn't really get wet much. We also saw patches of sunshine and because there was a bit of everything that means we also saw quite a few rainbows. There were at least four along the way. They seemed so vivid in real life... they definitely lose something in a photo.



Here we all are at the end of the ride:


I was there again for the start of Day 26:


As you can see... I was on my own. This was the first day that I didn't have a Human Sat Nav. I can see why... I mean, nobody actually seems to live in Ardlui so how was I ever going to find a local to guide me. Not that I needed guiding... there is only one way from Ardlui to Fort William. The A82.


As you can see, it involved some climbing:


It was a wet and wild day... especially once I'd climbed up on to Rannoch Moor...




You'd think the downhill that followed would be really exciting... and in good weather it might well have been. As it was the wind was so strong that I could't really freewheel as I came down into Glencoe. Oh well. Here's what most of today looked like:


The finishing line: