Longest Day Up

From pitstop five at Haggis Tours to the quayside at John o'Groats it's 119 miles. There's a petrol station just after we leave P5 in the middle of Inverness and it would almost be impossible to get the navigation wrong to the very far north easterly point of mainland Great Britain. I'm pretty certain that this leg will be one of the hardest though. Nick and I bid farewell to everyone at the final pitstop just after half past two on Thursday morning. After brimming the tanks we headed out of Inverness, over the Kessock Bridge which I remembered well from the cycle ride a decade ago, just as it was starting to get lighter again. Half an hour later and there are signs for Nigg Energy Park where I've joined and left countless ships over the years I've worked offshore. Looking down on the Cromarty Firth I try to see if there are any ships I recognise tied up alongside but it seems quiet. We keep pushing on, Nick's bike struggles on the steeper hills but he's...

The ferry crossing took about twenty minutes so just before half nine we were being waved up the slipway at Dunoon ahead of most of the cars. As it would be a long run to Inverness and with concerns about availability of fuel at Fort William we trundled along the waterfront to the BP garage to top up our tanks and for both Nick and I to fill up our spare cans too. I wasn't going to risk putting the cheap petrol into the bike as the Chinese carb diaphragms I'd bought are known to split when faced with too much ethanol, so I waited patiently for the chap with the Yamaha to finish refuelling and use the one pump that was selling Super Unleaded. As it happened I was idly watching Nick as he didn't properly deploy his Honda's side stand and ended up keeling right over on the deck with a loud bang.  It took me half a second to register what I'd just seen, then I ran over to him and lifted the bike from where it was trapping his left leg on the floor. Th...

Onwards, onwards. Always pushing north. Leaving Preston at 3pm I'd been on the go for eleven hours and covered 436 miles, but I wasn't half way yet and unfortunately I was well aware of that. The scenery between Exeter and Preston had rarely been exciting, the odd pretty building aside. To keep me from getting too bored I sung to myself over the sound of the engine. With no natural talent or even a vague ability to carry tune in a bag it's probably for the best I'm inside a helmet. My bike had started to make suspiciously loud noises since Liverpool so helpfully it drowns out the racket I'm making. It's funny what will set you off, a shop window displaying the words Want More? has me singing(ish) Freed From Desire . A fish sticker on the back of a car that's doing 40 in a 60* has me yelling Take Me To The Church Of The KLF . I know less than half the words to the songs I sing, but if anything it just encourages me. I've got rhythm though, stacks of the s...

Sometimes, with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight it's obvious where the seeds of your own downfall were planted. Whilst some of the problems that I experienced wouldn't exactly be considered a downfall per se , they certainly stopped me from getting into bed an hour or two earlier, and at four in the morning that certainly feels like a rapid descent from height... Leaving the Prees Heath services I know the next leg is going to be short in distance but also the most awkward one in terms of navigation. Getting to Liverpool I assumed would be easy enough, getting out the other side shouldn't be too difficult, no? If I have any problems I'll just follow the ample road signs. Hopefully... A few weeks before we set off JM had published the final route instructions. One of the other riders very kindly took all of the instructions, plotted them into a navigation system and made six route files which I and many others then downloaded. My little Beeline nav device gives you an arr...