Thursday July 10, 2014

When you think of Ireland you think whitewashed houses and green fields – the Emerald Island. Ireland is pink!  We cycled through towns and villages that were decked out in pink – pink bunting, pink houses, pink park benches, and pink bikes.  The last one may have given you a clue.

The Giro D’Italia cycled through N.Ireland, the communities went all out to welcome them and the route today was spectacular.  We have no idea why the Giro D’Italia came to Ireland, but it did.

The Coastal Route was a great cycle route.  For the first 30 ks it followed the coast, through small towns and villages. It was incredibly beautiful and the car drivers were very patient.

If you don\’t want to ride this road, it is a great road to drive.

The morning started of a little grey with a few showers, it wasn\’t too cool, but cool enough to put the windbreakers on, then the sun came out and it made a beautiful ride, stunning.

We had one hill to climb – 315 metres of climbing over a 5 kilometre stretch, so very manageable and incredible beautiful.

At the top of the hill, we noticed this controlled burn – you don\’t see it very often.

We came into one village and chatted to Frances who was tending the garden displays.  The village is competing in the Ulster in Blooms competition and the Britain in Bloom competition.  The way it looked today I think it should win.  Frances told us about the fish and chip shop in Ballycastle (Moreton\’s).

We also were told by Frances that this area is a huge area for limestone.  There was a tunnel where the limestone came from and shipped to the harbour on \’puffers\’.  The garden society have created a garden around the entrance to the old tunnel.

I don’t think we passed one person today who didn’t say good morning or gave a little nod of the head.  The cyclists all wave at you as well.

We passed a training camp for hurling – the sport of Ireland.  It is played with a stick that looks like a flattened hockey stick.  It is a fast game and quite rough, similar to lacrosse only no net on the stick.  It would be neat if we could see a game being played.

We arrived in Ballycastle and stopped in at the Information Centre, again they were really helpful.  The only campsite in Ballycastle is the one we passed on the road down to the Town Centre – about 2 ks out of Town, so we back-tracked to the campsite near the old friary.

The campsite today is small and the facilities are a little dingy – two toilets and a shower, we do have power. We cycled into Town for dinner, we ate at Moreton\’s Fish & Chip Shop – they were lovely.

We are right next to the water, once again we are hearing the sound of surf gently washing against the beach, lulling us to sleep.

Tomorrow we are having a short riding day as there is a lot to see on our route.

Wednesday July 9, 2014

Surprisingly even with very little light coming into the van, I was awake as usual at 6:00.  We got up, I had a “wet wipe” wash and got ready to face the day.  Last night we had bought our breakfast so we ate dried muesli buns, juice and a yogurt – not one of our better breakfasts, but it kept us going for our bike ride back to Troon.

We dropped the van of without any problems and jumped on our bikes and headed for Troon.  At first we were on the A77, then spotted NCR 7 to take us to Prestwick and Troon.  The route looked fairly good – crushed gravel.  I asked a lady if this trail was good, “Aye” she said “you won’t ha nae problems.”  I asked if it was crushed gravel all the way “Aye, if fact I think it goes to pavement later on” “ you won’t ha nae problems”  Now I am sure you can tell by this we did have problems within about a kilometer the trail changed to a narrow track and then to grass and eventually we were pushing two loaded touring bikes through sand dunes.  “Nae Problem”, my arse.

We spotted a parallel road, over the fence and down a hill.  After another 500 metres, we decided to manhandle the bikes over the fence and down the grassy hill to a very nice crushed gravel path, which then miraculously turned into a lovely paved NCR7.  The worst thing that happened on this ride was that I caught my pannier on a nail and it has torn a 3inch  gash in my pannier, fortunately it is only on the pocket, we can patch that, but I was annoyed about it.

We arrived at the ferry terminal at about 9:15 am, picked up our tickets and went into the waiting room, where we met two other couples – one couple was from Australia (Sarah and Scott) on a 4 year round the world trip and the other couple from Germany (Juliaue and Patrick) on a 6 month trip.

Sarah and Scott have just started their trip and asked for advice from “seasoned” tourers!  I don’t really feel that we have been on the road long enough to be classed as seasoned tourers, but I did say always be honest on how you are feeling, if you are not enjoying the day – say so.  There are days when you really don’t want to be cycling, but it is not a rest day and you have to do it, be honest with your partner on how you are feeling it is much easier on them if they know you are just having a bad day and it is nothing to do with them.

One of the things that touring cyclists do when they meet is compare what we are carrying (the weight and size).  We are actually carrying less than the other couples, Sara and Scott were next heaviest and Juliaue and Patrick were the heaviest at 40 kgs each.  That is the disadvantage of carrying your stuff in a trailer, you keep loading it up.

We arrived in Larne at 1:15 and found our campsite straight away.  We had decided to stay the night in Larne, pick-up maps and plan the next couple of days ride.  People are friendly in N.Ireland, they smile at you and greet you. I am really looking forward to cycling here.

The Information Centre was really helpful, even though we had our campsite, we popped in to check out maps and possible cycle routes. We picked up a great map of Northern Ireland that shows camp sites and a couple of brochures regarding cycle routes.

The warden at the camp site told us about the big bonfire that is being built for the parades on Saturday.  Celebrations of the Battle of the Boyne – William of Orange.  I am glad we won’t be in Belfast on Saturday.

Sarah and Scott decided to stay at the same camp and are heading into Belfast tomorrow.  We gave them a heads up about the parades. Juliaue and Patrick headed straight for Belfast today.

The park next to our campsite had this statue which is dedicated to the memory of the first Ulster emigrants that sailed from Larne in 1717, bound for Boston – the first of many.

Tuesday July 8, 2014

We had a lovely breakfast at our B&B and headed to the train station at 8:00am.  We had reserved our bikes on the train and were surprised to discover another bike already on the train.  Franz a German touring cyclist who had also cycled LeJog was already on the train with his bike.  There was only room for two bikes!

We got Ralf’s bike in place and then manhandled mine to fit behind the seat near the luggage area.  The train guard came through and said you can’t leave that there.  We explained we had all reserved places for our bikes – yes he said there is room in the other carriage.  My bike then got moved to the other carriage.

The train journey was 4.5 hours long and we chatted to Franz for the majority of the journey.  He has done several long touring rides in Europe including one through Poland and into Russia.  The last three trips have been for a charity to raise money for children in institutions in Romania.

The train had to stop for 8 minutes in Invergordon.  This has to be one of the nicest railway stations in Scotland.

We got our bikes of the train in Inverness without incident and cycled to the car rental place to pick up our van.  We thought we were getting a small van but it ended up being quite a big van.  Both bikes fitted in with the panniers left on and room to spare.

It was a rather hair-raising drive.  Ralf tended to hug the white line on my side and often their was no shoulder or the kerb would drop away.  I mentioned to him a couple of times that he was over the white line, he commented better that way than being hit by the vehicle coming in the opposite direction.  The roads were rather narrow in places.  We took the A82 all the way to Fort William, we drove along Loch Ness – didn’t spot Nessie.

We went through Ben Nevis and  the Trossachs, along Loch Lomond, it was a beautiful drive with spectacular scenery.  We stopped as often as we could to take photos.

We stopped at this area to take a better photo of Ben Nevis and surrounding mountains and came across this monument for the Commandos who trained in this area.

It so much better by bike, you really feel the scenery. In a car I felt a little detached from it, very beautiful, but not really connected to my surroundings.

We arrived in Troon at about 7:30, we checked out the ferry terminal and I spoke to someone to see if we could get tickets for tomorrows crossing to Larne.  He didn’t think there would be a problem, but to arrive at 9:15a.m.  if possible.

We drove over to Ayr where we had to drop of the van and got something to eat.  We had already decided to sleep in the van, save some money and be at the car rental place as soon as it opened.  That way, we would be able to cycle the 12.5 ks back to Troon in plenty of time to get tickets and the ferry.

While we were rolling out our sleeping mats and sleeping bags, a security guard came around and asked us what we were doing.  We explained we were too late to drop the van of, and we needed to be back in Troon for the ferry, so were were going to sleep in the van.  “Na’e problem, we have had a problem with fly tipping (illegal dumping) I just had to check uuu oot – be careful g’neat”

We were settled in and asleep late (11:00)

Monday July 7, 2014

We made it, not that there was any doubt, we arrived in John O’Groats at 10:15ish this morning. We cycled a total of 1,665 ks (1,034 miles).

We had a lovely cooked Scottish breakfast (which includes black pudding, if you want it), Ralf did, blugh!

We left the B&B at 8:30 and motored to John O’Groats, we had a great tail wind and covered the 27 odd ks in less than 1.5 hours, which doesn’t seem too fast but on loaded touring bikes it is pretty quick.  I had a big grin on my face all the way.  The scenery was lovely, but the grin was due to the fact that LeJog was almost done.

We could see a rain storm on the horizon but fortunately the wind was strong and kept blowing it ahead of us.  That is the way we like it.

As we headed to John O’Groats about 6 kms short of the end we passed two German touring cyclist who cheerfully told us we had 6ks to go.  They had finished their End to End yesterday.

We arrived at John O’Groats and took photos, as usual we offered to take photos of a couple who were taking separate photos of each other, he reciprocated for us and took some really good photos.

We stopped in the café and had a coffee and bought a little bottle of Pulteney 12 year old Malt Whiskey to celebrate. (Pultenay distillery is in Wick).  At 10:40 we were drinking whiskey, the family on the table next to us noticed us celebrating and then chatted to us about our End to End and our journey.  Lovely family.

Of course on the way back, we hit the tailwind which became a full on headwind, Ralf took the lead and I had a lovely ride back to Wick drafting Ralf all the way. Thanks my love.

The scenery in this area is lovely with Broch\’s, and coastal views.

We settled into our B&B (the Netherby) and had a lovely shower.  We needed to do a load of washing before heading to Ireland and as we had plenty of time, I asked Alison (our host) if there was a Laundromat in town – she offered to do the washing for us.  We went for a wander around Wick and by the time we came back our laundry was clean, folded and outside our room – Thank you Alison.

Wick is a contrast of dowdy grey buildings and a pretty harbor.  I am not sure how to describe Wick, the initial view of Wick is a dowdy grey town.  The downtown is not a pretty site, a lot of closed stores and very dysfunctional.  We couldn’t find the Tourist Information centre and the railway station is hidden. However, if you look behind the main street we found a pretty harbor, a floral clock, and a couple of walks, but they are well hidden.

Ebenezer Street is listed in the Guinness World Book of Records as the smallest street in the world. It was constructed in 1883, when the 1 Ebenezer Place building was built. This building was a hotel at that time, and the owner was asked by the town council to print a name on the shortest side of Mackay’s Hotel. He did so, and the world’s shortest ‘street’ was born, although not officially approved as a street for four years because it took that long to get the required Ebenezer Place door in place. Today, Ebenezer Place contains only a single address because there is no room for another and No 1. Bistro remains part of MacKay’s Hotel.

Tomorrow we leave Wick by train to Inverness and then drive to Ayr ready for Leg 4 – Ireland.

Sunday July 6, 2014

I woke up early (5:00) and dozed until 6:00 when we started our morning routine of packing up the tent.  We had a good breakfast of scrambled eggs, fruit and yogurt and left the campsite by 8:15.

I knew we had some hills to climb today, but I was feeling good.  The sun was out and warm.  We had one fairly steady climb into the village of Hemsdale.

Ralf was taking a few photos from the bridge as we entered Hemsdale and spotted this monument to the Emigrants.

In the late 18th century well into the 19th century, Highland estates moved from arable and mixed farming, which supported a large tenant population, to the more profitable sheep-farming. Surplus tenants were ‘cleared’ off the estates from about 1780; and the Clearances were ongoing nearly 70 years later at the time of the potato famine in 1846.

Not all clearances were brutal, but some were. Nor were they confined to the Highlands. But the Highland experience was the most traumatic. The Highland Clearances devastated Gaelic culture and clan society, driving people from the land their families had called home for centuries. This monument was to remember the emigrants that went far and wide to new countries including Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

I chatted to another end to ender a fella from Liverpool who had decided to do a triple – Lands End to John O’Groats – John O’Groat to Lands End and back again – now that is crazy.  He had finished his first leg in 9 days – of course he is supported and is staying at B&Bs.  He turned to his support driver and said this is the way it should be done.  I’m not so sure, if we could afford to do it B&B I think we would.

The hill out of Hemsdale wasn’t too bad, but the one after that was 13%.  It was a tough long climb.  After that it was a dipsy doodle kind of ride up and down, for the most part we had a tail wind.

Lunch time we stopped in a small village with very bazaar parking rules.  Actually I don’t think they had any rules at all, everyone seemed to park where they wanted to parallel, angle parking, double parking and even triple parking.  We were very careful leaving the village.

After lunch the weather changed the temperature dropped from 23 degrees to 16 degrees and the wind changed direction from a tail wind to head wind – that just isn’t fair.

When we arrived in Wick it was raining and cold, we couldn’t find the Information Centre but I asked how much it was to stay in the hotel – 100 pounds!!  She told me about other guest houses and B&Bs.  We are staying at a very nice guest house – we got a deal for cash, still expensive at 70 pounds but at least we are dry and warm and the blog is updated.  Tomorrow we are staying at another B&B, because we have to be at the train station for 7:45, train leaves at 8:15 for Inverness.  The campsite is 2 miles out of town.  We deserve to spoil ourselves after this ride.

Tomorrow we ride to John O’Groats and back again 55ks with photos and a dram of whiskey to prove it.

Saturday July 5, 2014

Had a bit of a lie-in this morning (7:00) and on the road by 9:00.  I felt good as we started off, but at some stage my legs left me behind and I had no energy for about 15 kms.  Sometimes your mind starts arguing with you – I knew we had about a 75 k ride to do, I looked at a traffic sign and did the calculations in my head from miles to kilometres and realized I had to cycle 80 ks – now usually 5 ks is nothing, but for some reason I was also calculating how far we had cycled, the time it had taken and how much longer I had to be cycling that day.  Mind games, sometimes you have to ignore them other times you cannot.  That was my problem this morning.

On the opposite side of the Firth from our warmshowers host house is Invergordon.  It is an industrial town with the prime industry being the repair of oil rigs.

After lunch the legs came back and I finished the ride feeling strong.  At our lunch stop was this Scottish air ambulance, raising money and awareness of the work that they do.  It turned for this perfect side view shot before flying away.

It rained on and off during the morning, maybe that was part of my problem as well – I am definitely solar powered. As we came down one hill the road sign said watch out for otters. Unfortunately, we don\’t usually stop to take photos when we are hurtling down a hill, especially if you can use the momentum to get halfway up the other side.  Ralf on the other hand couldn\’t resist taking a photo of this dam, not far from where the otter sign was – he didn\’t see any otters.

This was the first road sign that we have seen with John O\’Groats on it – we are going in the right direction.

I didn\’t know Scotland had a county called Sutherland.

We arrived in Brora and stopped to pick up some provisions for dinner.  A fella stopped to talk to us who was from Toronto.  We carried on to our campsite just outside of Brora where it started to rain, we chatted to the owner and I had an ice-cream, by the time I had finished my ice-cream it had stopped and was a lovely evening.  After setting up the tent we went for a walk.  We crossed a golf course and there was a lovely quiet beach.  In Australia the golf hazards were kangaroos, in Scotland the golf hazards are cows and sheep.

The last time we camped next to the sea was in Australia.  We went to sleep listening to the surf.

Early to bed tonight 8:30 pm.

Friday July 4, 2014

Happy 4^th July to our American friends.

Another awesome day on the bikes.  We followed NCR Route 7, which kept us away from the A9 until Inverness, then we had to follow the A9 for a while before heading out to Culbockie where our warmshowers hosts live.

Today was a day of bridges.  We passed this lovely bridge in Carrstairs. It was an old pack horse bridge and in the evening it is illuminated.

Then we spotted this tressel bridge in Moy which is the last remaining wooden tressel bridge on the British rail network (Perth to Inverness). It has been reinforced with cement supports, but they do not detract from the original structure.

We saw this smaller viaduct but cannot remember where it was.

The viaduct at Culloden was stunning.

Tomorrow we cross the Cromarty Firth on this bridge (causeway).

The NCR 7 did take us a little off-route, a 15 km diversion to the Clava Cairns, which is an ancient burial site, and to Culloden, which is a much more recent ‘burial’ site.

The cairns and burial site on the winter solstice is lit by the sun, directly into the passage way.

1760 was the Jacobite rebellion – Bonnie Prince Charlie had raised an army to reinstate himself back on the throne of Scotland and England – he had got as far as Derby, but was on the retreat when the Royalist army slaughtered the Jacobites.  The Jacobites were armed with knives, broadswords, and farm implements and leather shields, the Royalists had cannon and used grapeshot.  Bonnie Prince Charlie high-tailed it back to Europe over the sea to Skye.

This small cottage and others around it was surrounded by the government second line forcing the Jacobites to retreat.

After Culloden we went into Inverness to book our vehicle for the trip across Scotland to pick-up the ferry to Ireland.

We were going to take the direct route in from Culloden but decided to follow NCR Route 7 again.  It took us down a green avenue where we spotted dragons, wizards and a gruffalo, all carved out of trees.

As we crossed the river out of Inverness it started to rain!

It did clear up and we were relatively dry by the time we got to our warmshowers house at 4:00.  Iain cycled out to meet us, he hadn’t warned us about the hill up to his house!  We were warmly welcomed by Joy and Iain, their son and daughter-in-law are on the road and suggested that Iain and Joy become a warmshowers host.  We were their first guests.  Iain and Joy are a really nice couple, very interesting to talk to we had a superb dinner with them vegetarian shepherds pie, cabbage from the garden and peas and a wonderful dessert of mixed fruit and nut crumble – the crumble was more of an oatmeal topping and custard – lovely. We checked our route for tomorrow and chatted with Iain and Joy until 10:30, then to bed.

Thursday July 3, 2014

Ralf took his bike to the local bike shop at 9:30 am.  They were able to fit the bike in for repair and replaced the spokes by 2:00 pm.  We had decided to stay another night at the YHA, and get an early start tomorrow.  Our wamshowers host has very generously offered to host us tomorrow night.

As we walked into Town we noticed an old train pulling into the station – would you believe it was the Royal Scotsman.  It is now a tourist train that arrived in Aviemore from Inverness.  Apparently the cost for a ticket is about 1,000 pounds per person, which includes the meals and champagne.  Beautiful dining car, silver service all the way.  The romantic age of train travel recreated.

After the Scotsman pulled out a second steam train pulled in.  This one was much cheaper to travel on and did a short trip up the rail and back.

We got a lot organized today.  We popped into the outdoor stores and bought the seam grip we need and some tech wash for the jackets.  We booked the train from Wick to Inverness and have found out about hiring a van to take us from Inverness to Troon our departure port to Ireland.  We also checked on campsites in Troon and Larne.  I feel happier knowing that things are semi-arranged for our trip to Ireland.

There are a lot of rabbits in Aviemore and we saw a red squirrel, but these two kissing rabbits were cute.

Apparently it snowed in June on the Cairngorms – it is summer !!

I also washed our jackets in the Tech Wash.  However, for some reason it over-frothed and the washing machine was full of suds.  I opened the door of the washing machine and all the suds spilled out – fortunately I had a bucket underneath the door, but it took me 15 minutes to clean the suds from the washing machine.  What a mess.  Ralf had done something similar when we stayed with Joy and he used regular washing up liquid in her dish-washing machine and ended up washing the floor.

It is always nice staying in a hostel where they have a kitchen that we can use, we made a lovely dinner and are going to have an early night.

Wednesday July 2, 2014

What a great day, I had the biggest grin on my face all day.  The route that the fella told us about today was awesome. Turn left at the white arch, he said.  This was the start of an awesome route, but no indication on this stone that it was part of Route 7.

We left the campsite at 8:15 under sunny, but cool skies.  It got cloudier and cooler during the day but it was an amazing ride. The route was easy to follow and ranged from single lane road to limestone trail and then back on to a single lane road.  We followed the old A9 which was adopted by Sustrans for Route 7 of the National Cycle Route.  It was amazing, no cars at all, although we paralleled the A9 almost all day.

The route took us through forest, glen and hills.  We climbed out of Blair Atholl to a height of 462 metres, but it was easy, gradual climbing.  As soon as we crested the summit of the hill, the wind picked-up and we had the best tail wind for the next 40 kms!

The scenery was stunning, we saw Scottish heather, babbling burns, lochs and snow on the hills.  A perfect day of cycling.

We got to Aviemore just after 2:00 and decided to stay in the YHA, because of the wind.  After we had showered, it started to drizzle and continued for most of the afternoon and evening.  Aviemore is a big climbing and walking area, almost every other store is an outdoor store.

The only thing that marred a perfect day was Ralf had a flat tire, which turned out to be a broken spoke.  Hopefully we can get it fixed tomorrow and be on the road later in the day.  We have a warmshowers just north of Inverness tomorrow night.

Tuesday July 1, 2014

Happy Canada Day.

The clouds were grey and overcast this morning, and it was a little cool.  I put my socks on and we both wore our wind breakers for the first 10 kms.  We had to backtrack into Perth this morning from our camp site at the Perth Raceway camp site.  We made it through Perth and headed up the A9.  It wasn’t a bad route for the first 20 kms, then it got busier and became a dual carriageway. There are often traffic signs which are very strange.  Both of these signs let motorists know whether there is police presence or not.

We had come of the A90 briefly to follow another National Cycle Route, but we seemed to be wandering all over the place again, so we got back on to the A9.  Ralf was behind me shouting out transports, but they weren’t too bad.  The busy A roads are so noisy all I can concentrate on is the road.  About 5 miles from Pitlochry we were passed by a Highway Maintenance lorry who pulled into the lay-by ahead of us.  He waved us into the lay-by.  I thought oh no we are in trouble.  No, the kind man said “I bet you’re not enjoying this are ye?”  We agreed that is wasn’t much fun.  He told us where to get off to follow a more direct rural road into Pitlochry and even better told us of the old A9 that we could follow tomorrow all the way to Aviemore.  Thank you – a road angel.

We found our campsite, and settled in.  I did a load of laundry, the sun came out this afternoon and this campsite actually has a place to hang the washing.

While I was waiting for the washing to get done I ‘planned’ a route for Ireland.  Now we just have to work out how to get there.  15 hours on a train with 5 changes ! or rent another vehicle!

There are going to be a few things we have to check out when we are in Inverness. Trains, planes and automobiles and ferries to Ireland.

Ralf was in a bit of fug this afternoon.  He has been struggling with the lack of customer service and today he didn’t get a hot shower – luke warm at best.  Then he discovered we had to pay to wash our dishes – 0.20p for hot water.  The camp site was cheaper, 11.50 for the night, I think that is because we now realize we can ask for a backpackers pitch.

We also discovered today that there are campsites for the remaining days of our trip – Aviemore, (warmshowers near Inverness), Brora, Wick and 2 at John O’Groats.