716 Miles / 1152 km
Today was gonna be a struggle!
I slept terribly last night, and I knew it would make for a rough day on the bike today.
My couch surfing host was great last night though. Made good food, we drank some beer and had some great conversations. We talked about travel stories, mountains, and a lot about couchsurfing. It’s always interesting getting other peoples perspectives of the platform.
One conversation we had was about the UK mountains, and how they don’t get enough respect from say… Canadians. Canadians who have hiked in the Rockies and think the UK mountains – The Scottish highlands in particular are nothing in comparison. And boy did that ring true. I’d been calling the 3 peaks challenge, the 3 hill challenge. I was totally naive about these mountains. Which is evident on my Snowdon hike. I’ve hiked some pretty insane mountains in the Rockies but I had never experienced weather like I did up at snowdon. I defiantly learnt that the Mountains here are as serious as anywhere in the World and no matter how good you think you are, or how skilled you are the Mountain is always better, and you will never win against it if you’re an idiot. They’ve earnt their status and you have to respect that. More on this later…
Thank you Tom for a wonderful stay!
Today I was breaking the ride up, and stopping in Sanquhar to see the ‘Craswick Multiverse’ A fun little ‘unique’ excursion I came across on one of my favourite travel blogs (www.atlasobscura.com) and to also see the oldest running Post Office in the UK (haha – I’m a nerd)
The ride to Craswick was easy, despite the long up and downhill at the start. The fog was heavy this morning and didnt clear till around 11am! My ride was slow… it was really slow. My body was tired, my body was exhausted. It didn’t want to be on the road today. My mind was also drained. I think I’ve slowly come to the realisation that I might not be able to hike Ben Nevis, not just because of my ankle and the pain thats giving me but because of the impeding forecast. That didn’t help my mental state – Im currently on my way to Fort William detouring from a quicker route to John O Groats to get up Ben Nevis. I guess you could say I’m feeling a little defeated and dissapointed.
Anyway, a stop at Craswick Multiverse was cool, from the outside you saw nothing until you hiked over the first hill to see this wonderful landscape, made from rocks excavated from the ground here. The story behind the installations was interested and it made me feel like I was in a different world. It was crazy having this tucked away in a little countryside village here in Scotland! I stayed here for an hour, tried to reset my mindset before another 2 hour on the bike to get to my airbnb for the night.
The afternoon ride was again pretty flat and smooth sailing. With the fog lifted the weather had actually turned out quite nice! My body still was cooperating as much as I wanted it to and I was biking slow. But I wasn’t really in any rush. I know the next 2 days are gonna be long and hilly so there’s no point pushing myself today.
I got to my AirBnB at 4pm, showered, ate and fell asleep around 5. Knocked out for a few hours! I really was tired. At 8 I woke up briefly, to take some melatonin in the hopes of a better long sleep!
Tomorrow I bike to Loch Lomond. Send all your energy this way please!
