Day 13 – Nessie’s not seen!

With the forecast much the same as yesterday we bundled up for cold, rain and wind.  Thankfully, only the wind and cold were around, and they were not as bad as they could have been!  We were set for an flat-ish day with a sharp hill at the end of Loch Ness.  Actually we made good time and the 52 miles looked liked being beat around lunch, depending on stops. But before we left we said hello to the B&B’s friendly Highland cattle, more smiley than their owners in actual fact! 
 With the imminent wind in mind, we started drafting first thing, which put us in good stead for the whole day.  Jackie was well pleased with her newly sorted gears, and coped really withh with a new saddle as her old one finally went terminal.  Hat’s off to you Jackie, that’s a serious bit of kit to be changing at this point in the journey.  

We stopped after 20 miles just before Loch Ness for a coffee/hot chocolate stop, watched while the lock gates let boats down the river toward the Loch and then set off for the long cycle along Loch Ness.  It reminded me a bit of my pub crawl in Berkeley as we gathered the bikes together to lock them when we stopped.  Less boozy and amazingly less hilly-well so far anyway.

A bundle o'bikes.

  
At some point today, and I can’t quite remember when, we passed by a beautiful bridge -Invermoriston bridge – where we stopped for a drink stop and a photo op. 

Looking across from Invermoriston Bridge.

Loch Ness is a huge Loch and you can see where if you stared long enough you might see some sea creature or other….we did not see anything much, aside lots of water and a strange building on the far banks that Alex thought might be Nessie’s own private hotel!  Unlike Loch Lomond we couldn’t see a lot of Ness, there were too many trees in the way.  There were some spectacular forests, some of stately firs where you might spot a red squirrel, and some of grand oaks.  As ever we were treated to a stunning surroundings and pleasantly dry weather.  Sunny for the most part in fact. 

Loch Ness.

It was amazing how long it took us to ride the length of the Loch, and then we turned inland to our final stop before home.  Drumnadrochit is a pretty little touristy town where we stopped for a coffee/chocolate.  We were steeling ourselves for the big hill ahead which we were hoping coach John had ‘bigged up’. 
We turned out of town toward Beauly, our stop for the night.  Immidiately we started up a hill and I thought, for a moment, that John had been having us on about the severity of our last big hill.
It turned out he wasn’t having us on and he hadn’t bigged it up.  We turned right into a side road to Beauly and I saw the sign. 

Ok, so this was the down one - but there was one on the way up too!

Oh my – 15 %  We went into poley poley mode very quickly, but even then it was hard, hard work.  We had to stop just over half way to catch our breath, and Alex had a fight with his bike around this point.  But re-gathered and breath back we continued to the top.  We felt elated, or I did anyway, to have conquered it.  Then we were treated to 12 miles mostly downhill, hurrah, to our resting place for the night.  We got in about 3:20 covering 51 miles,  (740 in all) averaging 11mph.   The town is small but bustling, and we enjoyed an evening with John and Jackie’s friends and new baby.  As they were leaving we we treated to a pipe band marching down the High Street.  Later I went to watch them in the square. It was great. 

Sorry some of you in and around Maplehurst won’t get to see this until they find the rotter who stole the brass cable that feeds the phone lines round there.  I look forward to welcoming you back soon.  I can’t believe it will really take them a week to fix it.  What do they want to do- find the origional brass bits??
Thank you as always to those who have left comments….carry on the good work.

Just to prove we’re in the depths of Scotland, I’ll leave you with a picture of Gavin our bartender tonight.   I’ll check in tomorrow, wi-fi permitting, take care,

Beth xx