Personal Musings: LEJOG 17 - Day 8, 17th June. Fort William

We spend a lot of time looking at the road, so have become connoisseurs of tarmac. There are of course lots of different varieties, but I summarise them into 4 categories.

The crème de la crème - freshly laid tarmac that is smooth and a pleasure to ride on
The older road that is OK but littered with cracks and potholes
The nut jangler. Road that the builders clearly couldn’t be bothered to apply a smooth top layer.
The worst of the worst – the new road that the builders have just dressed the surface with loose shingle. This is not only hazardous to ride along but the loose chippings get stuck in your gears and brakes.

I am pleased to say that the roads today were mainly 1 and 2. Once again Fort William was clouded in mist which meant that we saw nothing of the surrounding hills. We were prepared for the worst weather that Scotland could throw at us, but we got lucky and escaped with only a few passing showers. We even saw some blue sky, the sun cream was not required though – we are not in the South of England!

The scenery was stunning, passing Loch Ness, the Moray of Firth and some hilly bits. We made good progress and within 3 hours had passed a group of LEJOG riders who were staying in our hotel and they had set off an hour earlier than us. (As I type this, half of the same group have just arrived at our hotel, 2 hours later than we got here, and they still have a further 30 miles to go!)

It was a great day and we are looking forward to finishing off the trip strongly tomorrow.

Fines today go to;

The only one we can think of today was Cormac – for his solo breakaway and disrupting our formation.

A special mention must go to the old lady who worked at the Premier Inn. Her mantra was clearly not ‘service with a smile’. She reflected the weather - absolutely miserable!

Yesterday I promised some clarification for previous rule infringements. Lateness and dull Garmin banter is self-explanatory. Below are examples of Azon’s careless cream application and multiple offenders of the arm exposure.

Bring on our final day tomorrow!