Time to Disperse

 

Not long after the group photo people started to disperse in ones and twos. I stayed around to chat to a few others but with most people having a long way to travel I left them to it and started heading south myself. It was a strange feeling being back on the bike, despite it only being six hours since I'd parked it up. I had thoughts of visiting either Duncansby Head to the East or Thurso to the West, but the former would have been down some tiny tracks and the later was half an hour out of my way and with no surf to tickle the reef there wouldn't have been much to see.

I headed slowly to Wick and filled up the bike, nodding to two other LDU'ers as they did the same. With a full tank I started to bimble towards Inverness along the coast road but soon found myself riding with a little more enthusiasm than necessary. Somewhere along the A9 I saw a sign for a cemetery with a commonwealth war grave overlooking the sea so I stopped for a bite to eat and to slow myself down. Lots of this coast is familiar in a fleeting way and the sign was something I'd seen before but didn't have the time to stop.

After I left the cemetery my next stop was to Haggis Tours in Inverness to return the textile liners I had very gratefully borrowed previous night. Whilst I was there I borrowed some tools, popped the belly pan off and had a quick look at where the exhaust was blowing from. I presumed it would be from the balance pipe, they're know to rot so hopefully I could quieten it down with some exhaust tape. As it turns out the left hand cylinder exhaust header gasket had failed and I wasn't prepared to even contemplate fixing it there and then, even if I could have got hold of the copper gaskets. I fitted the 'pan back on, pushed my earplugs in a bit more and said goodbye to the magnificent pitstop 5.

My aim for that evening was Elgin, some 150 odd miles from John o'Groats. Mrs EvilSpike works as an instructor in Cornwall teaching people to be navigators and sensor operators in naval helicopters and the new maritime patrol aircraft, the P-8 Poseidon. Before he was killed my brother was the senior engineering officer for the old maritime patrol aircraft, the Nimrod, which was based on the north coast of Scotland.  Mrs ES had asked one of her students if anyone in the new Poseidon squadron remembered Ant and they'd arranged for me to visit the next day. She had also found me one of the very last rooms in a hotel in Elgin too which I made my way to and proceeded to do some impromptu washing in...

 I toddled into town and ended up having a curry in 'spoons before heading back to my baking room for a proper rest. I'd just dumped the bike outside the main entrance to the hotel with only the steering lock on that afternoon, the blowing exhaust had really been getting to me. The next morning I couldn't work out if I was pleased or irritated to see it still sat there, utterly covered in dead midges. I had finally caught up on sleep and with a clear and happy head rode to few miles to RAF Lossiemouth.

There I was greeted by a number of people who had worked for and alongside Ant at the Nimrod squadron, and everyone in the engineering department had fond memories of his time as the boss there. One of the Warrant Officers was able to talk to me about some of the operational practices and procedures that Ant had brought into the squadron and were still fiercely being defended today as engineering and safety best practice. They even offered to try and make a couple of exhaust gaskets and fix the bike whilst I waited, although the actual fitters tasked with thought it was a slightly whimsical idea from the WO and we decided it was better not to...  I also got to have a thorough look around the new P-8 Poseidon, it's an absolute travesty as a island nation and a NATO member that we've had no maritime patrol capability for almost a decade since the Nimrods were withdrawn from service. But hey, up until 18 months ago half of this current government were on the payroll of Putin one way or another... I got to sit in the pilot's seat, where all the sensor operators work and see how the sonarbuoys are launched. I even had a crawl around underneath and see the controls for the surfaces and how the torpedoes are launched. I did promise them that I defo wasn't a Russian spy. I've got photos but they're for personal use only!

I left there with a very warm heart and headed to my next stop at Stirling. I'd heard that the A9 was average speed camera purgatory for bikes now and decided to do some of the route through the smaller roads through the Cairngorms. A friend had told me about a road that runs through the villages of Granton on Spey, Lecht and Glenshee to Perth. I did some of the route, and stopped to watch someone fly fishing for a while on a river

Time was rapidly ticking on, I'd been in Lossy for much longer than I'd planned and needed to get to Stirling. Mrs ES had found me a cheap room in the Stirling University halls of residence for the night and I had to check in before 1900h. Plus it was cool once the sun had gone in and was threatening to rain so I abandoned the wiggly route, pulled on all my spare clothes and jumped on the less interesting dual carriageway to Stirling.

The night in the uni was brilliant, just what I needed as it had started raining not long before I got there. After dumping my stuff in the room I walked through the campus and got myself a meal at the rather more salubrious but much more expensive on-site hotel, then went and crashed straight into my bed falling asleep to the sound of pouring rain. I think it was graduation week judging by the number of families there and I was very lucky the waitress took a shine to me and cleared a table in the restaurant for me after they had officially closed. Walking further to find food would have been a damp affair otherwise. I'd come to Stirling for one main reason and found a couple more things to look at too.

But more on that tomorrow, I'm off to bed. G'night.