beautiful wil'durness'

Hope - Durness 20miles

Thursday saw us heading up North to Durness. I had a text from Speedy early on to say he was taking advantage of the weather and cycling the whole way up........unfortunately some of us had to work or i would have done the same....

As we were driving up we got a phone call to say he had a puncture, so we sped up and met him just north of Lairg.  We drove for a while with the bikes on the back........ when we got to Hope we got on our bikes and rode the last 20 miles to Durness in the beautiful evening sunshine.

When you think of the North coast of Scotland you don't associate it with white sands, sunshine and aqua waters.... but honestly these beaches were stunning.....who needs the Carribean anyway  ?......Its safe to say I've fallen back in love with the Highlands...And this from the girl, who for the last decade, felt she had to travel half way around the world on holiday to find beauty, I'm totally converted... i don't think I'll be clocking up any air miles for a while ............

Anyway, we rode into Durness and made our way to our accommodation (hillside b&b), where we were given an extremely warm welcome. Tony (one of the hosts) even gave us a spare tyre and inner tube to take on our onward journey, which came in very handy........  That evening we headed to the local for some carbs, a few shandy's and a really poor game of pool...... i thought i was bad, Speedy and Mark were even worse !!! Don't give up your day jobs boys ........

Friday arrives and we say goodbye to our lovely hosts, we stop for a few photos and then get on our way......

Durness - Ullapool - 70 VERY windy and VERY hilly miles

On Friday the sun was shining, boy was it windy but at least it was warm. The landscape was breathtaking but the wind was so noisy at times we had to shout to each other...we passed horses running wild a herd of deer and a the odd cow, i felt like i was cycling through a safari park at one point.

After a long 20ish miles it started to get pretty hilly..... what i do sometimes when we're out and about is ask Richard how hard a ride is compared to one we've done before, this time when i asked he didn't say much, which left me feeling a little apprehensive....The hills were tough but the wind was the biggest challenge and at one point i got blown of my bike, thankfully i wasn't going very fast, in fact i was just about going backwards at the time ;-) On we slowly pedalled, when the wind died down for the odd minute and we go like the clappers to make up some time....i even managed to come down a hill at 42mph....that's super fast for me.....

Then oh oh ....Second puncture of the weekend.....thanks again for that inner tube Tony.

So we stopped at Kylesku bridge for a breather, water, kendal mint cake, jelly babies, snickers, bananas and pretty much anything we could get our hands on to give us an energy boost.

A few miles after the bridge i saw a sign saying 28 miles to Ullapool, i thought to myself that's ok, 28 miles is fine even in this wind ...ha ha the hills hadn't even started !!! Up down, up down, up down, up down and so it went on, ............... just like other windy days before, you don't get much of a recovery when you have to pedal into your descent...then i remember Speedy saying 'lou get your climbing legs on for a couple of miles' we turned a corner and oh my word !! there in front of me was indeed one heck of a climb, these next few photos don't really show the scale of the hills, trust me if you could see the sweat coming of me you would understand the effort involved...

Eventually after what felt like forever, we turned right towards Ullapool ....10 miles to go..... the wind dropped and we managed to take on the last ten miles a bit faster, two more big hills then we dropped down into the town. Wind swept, exhausted, sunburnt and hungry i had just ridden the hardest 70 miles so far since i started training. Hard but ace ...a big huge pat on the back for both of us !!  I think I'm ready for Applecross now ;-) We arrived at our b&b , had a quick shower then straight to the pub to have a blether about the days achievements....

Saturday Ullapool - Beauly 50 fast and furious miles.

Saturday arrived and so did another fab ride. We left Ullapool about 9am and headed to Beauly, the wind was quite strong to start with but after the first hour it calmed right down. Although a lot cooler than Friday as the morning went on the riding conditions became perfect. With our heads down we cycled home as fast as our legs could carry us, not for any other reason but because it was so nice to pick up some speed after yesterday wind.
Ullapool to Beauly 3hrs 5 mins ......

Fab weekend of cycling but a few niggles are starting to cause problems so another trip to the Inverness Therapy Clinic is called for http://www.invernesstherapyclinic.com/ ...............