Goodbye Wednesday, Hello Thursday

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. Thankfully it was a light bike but even still, especially as I was the only one doing the lifting... Nick seemed ok, despite having taken a cut to his right eye socket from the mirror stalk as it snapped, thankfully it had missed his eye through the open helmet visor. The spill had also destroyed his clutch lever perch without which he had no way of changing into or out of first gear or neutral. Whilst I was filling up the other two riders helped with gaffer tape and cable ties to get the lever functioning in a fashion. It wasn't perfect but for now he was able to start the bike and just about get it into first without stalling, so off we set for the final pitstop in Inverness some 180 miles, and according to google maps, over 4h away.

Not long after we left Dunoon we were riding alongside Loch Eck. It was past 2200h by now and whilst not dark, the skies were brooding and what little light came from above made the loch look beautiful. I was at the back of the group and stopped to try and get a photo with little success, my phone camera was having trouble focussing in the low light. I rode on a little more to a spot further out of the trees and tried again, also unsuccessfully (hence no nice photos to show) but the fannying around I had done meant I was well behind the group. Six miles later and it was clear they had no idea I'd stopped, the loch ended and I was riding through a tunnel of trees. I switched on the axillary lights I'd fitted on Tuesday morning and although one had failed sometime during the ride up through England, the remaining lamp illuminated the road ahead brilliantly.

A little while later and the road turned to the east and ran along the shore of Loch Fyne. With no tail-lights ahead to be seen, but no turnings off the road I pressed on as much as the damp roads would let me. Half an hour after I last saw the others I came to a T junction. To the left, and the way my nav was telling me to go was signed the Argyll Coastal Route and Oban. To the right, Glasgow. I knew I didn't want to be heading south to Glasgow, but it was on the right road, the A82. The road to the left was something I'd never heard of, which was a problem. I had a look at my phone, re-read the instructions on my tank bag and decided to trust my Nav device. Left it was around the head of the loch.

As it turns out the fellow LDU'er who had transposed the written instructions into .gpx files for importing into Sat-Navs had done an amazing job, but had got this one little bit wrong. We should have all taken the right hand turn here and carried on for a fair few miles before turning northwards and the taking the A82 along the shores of Loch Lomand all the way to Fort Bill. If I hadn't have been faffing/panicking about the bikes cooling system and bolting on new lights right up until the last minute then I'd have gone through the route map myself and hopefully spotted it. As it was, I was riding along the scenic route in what I was increasingly thinking might be the wrong direction. I crossed the Aray Bridge and got to Inveraray at which point my Sat-Nav pointed me hard left and insisted I climb a steep, narrow road away from the water. I sailed straight past the turning initially and had to turn back around to take it. With my head full of doubt, especially as I was starting to get very cold, the roads were still wet and with no sign of the others I pushed on as fast as I thought sensible.

On and on and on with covering ground the main priority. I was stuffed with doubts in my head and both drizzle and midges covering my visor, the latter doing their damned best to get inside my helmet. One even deciding to take a bath in my eyeball, the little bastard. After many brief stops to clear the blackening smear of midges from my visor using the amazing V2 Sponges we had been given at the start of the ride I finally saw a road-sign for a road that was in the written instructions.  After turning North on to the A82 a sense of relief settled upon me, at least I was on the right road now and Fort Bill wasn't that far away.

A few hundred metres up the road however were a pair of tail lights and two figures stood near them. I'd finally found the group I'd been with, but it was Nick and the Transalp rider minus the chap on the Yamaha. I pulled into the layby and took my helmet off, I'm sure there was a big smile on my face but the other two looked a bit serious. Apparently the third man had realised at this point that they had also gone the "wrong" way around to get to this road and had demanded the group go back to ride it correctly. The two had understandably declined to do so!

The three of us got back on the road and headed for Fort William. It was getting towards properly dark now that midnight was approaching. We had all stuck additional lights on our bikes and they were thoroughly appreciated, if not by the very occasional car or truck that was came the opposite way. Sadly we saw very little of the beautiful scenery that the road shows you around Glencoe, our focus was on the patch of light ahead illuminating the bitumen. I've seen photos of the route, and clicked through streetview on Google maps, but sadly we saw little of that very beautiful bit of Scotland. What we were more grateful for were the street lights illuminating the clouds above Fort William. Entering the town we peeled into Morrisons carpark to find that whilst the lights were in and there were people in the the kiosk, they'd turned off the pumps and tills at midnight, a quarter hour ago and had cashed up for the night. They suggested the Esso a mile down the road which was also closed but the chap on the Transalp scooted off to the Shell station a little further along the road to Inverness and reported it too was open. Which was a very good thing as Nick was running on vapours.

When we got there Mr Transalp had already fuelled up and announced he was (understandably) worried about the amount of oil pouring out of the oil cooler and coating his left boot. So he decided (strangely) to set off on his own and make for pitstop 5 before us to get it sorted. I shrugged as he left and got on with refuelling the bike. At this point I was cold, very cold and thoroughly regretting not bringing thermals to wear under the textile jacket and trousers that I had spent a lot of time sweating in since about ten AM. The very nice lady behind the till was happy to give me a paper to stuff up inside my jacket to keep some of the wind-chill off my chest. Nice and thick, she said, although I'm not sure she meant the paper, the writers or the readers. We don't sell many in Scotland so fill your boots. I commended her on her excellent Naval expression and thanked her for her kindness.

As we left for Inverness the group had become a pair, and both of us with antisocially sounding bikes due to missing exhaust components. I was amazed by how well the £12 projector lights lit the road in front of me, despite only one of them working and compared to the official Kawasaki headlight. Very occasionally I caught a glimpse of something reflecting out of the pitch dark in the trees beside the road. I guessed they were deer and with every fibre of my being I hoped they'd not make a suicide bid to cross the road. The route took us to the east of the brilliantly named Loch Lochy and the west of Loch Ness. Progress was swift with no other traffic and only the villages with their reduced limits to slow us down. Eventually we saw more lights on the horizon which rapidly became Inverness. Nicks Sat-Nav had Haggis tours programmed in, which was useful as one of the bridges was closed. It efficiently re-routed us to the industrial estate where signs were hung with flashing Christmas lights directing us to the amazing haven that is Haggis Tours, the very best company proving tours around the N500.

As with every pitstop we were warmly embraced by those magnificent titans staffing them despite it being well passed 0200h. Chain oil, bike health checks, rider refuelling and more than called for was provided at the final check on us riders. I was cold, really really cold so Keith dug out some thermal liners for me to wear under my textiles, told me to bring them back on my way home tomorrow.

 

Mister Transalp had made it here a little before us, Alan had done some work on his oil cooler and so he left not long after we'd arrived with a mere nod of his head. All felt very strange but there wasn't much we could do about it. They had put on a magnificent spread of food and drink at the pitstop, I really needed that hot coffee. A lady called Trisha had made us little doggy bags and made us promise not to hoover the contents before we got to John o'Groats, there was a little bottle of Glenmorangie in there amongst a scone with jam and butter and other assorted goodies. Grant, husband of Trisha and one of the participants in the LDU had approached the distillery and they'd been happy to sponsor the LDU with a snifter of the good stuff for those who made it to the finish. Absolutely brilliant people, I can't thank them enough.

Just in case I've not mentioned it enough, the pit stop crews are the life and blood of this enterprise, without them there's no way us imbeciles would be able to complete the challenge. And they have to spend hours* waiting for us all to filter through in the heat/cold and sometimes pouring rain. They feed and water us with whatever we ask for whilst undoing whatever terrible bodgery we have inflicted upon the bikes. All hail the pit crews!

*as an example of just what the pitstop crews do, this was written on the group chat about P5:

"If I'm right they were at PS5 about 8pm  to get organised and I think Mrs T and Mrs B didn't leave until 4am"

I couldn’t have done it without the support team, the first person I saw looked me in the eyes and said “what do you need” when I came back from the toilet the next person said “they’ll look after your bike, you look after you.” I’ll never forget that.