Saturday 25 June 2011

Day12, Blair Atholl to Slochd Summit

Woke up to a grey day, but no rain and little wind. After a big breakfast and a stop at the Blair Atholl corner shop for sandwiches, I left town at 09:00

Again I kept to NCN7 and climbed steadily into the lowering clouds. The mist turned to drizzle then turned to
light rain as I climbed higher towards Drumochter, so I stopped to don waterproofs. This had the usual effect of stopping the rain almost immediately and the weather started too improve from that point on.

I soon met up with John, a retired KPMG man who was also doing a lone LEJOG and we rode together for quite a while. I was going to stop for a coffee at Dalwhinnie, but there was no coffee shop, so continued.

The winds were at our backs, the track was well surfaced and the gradients all now downhill so we made excellent progress. Roadworks north of Dalwhinnie had closed the cycle track and we were told we were supposed to phone Recovery for a lift along the road on the breakdown truck. Aye, right! 2.1/2 miles? All downhill? Brand new asphalt? Single lane with no overtaking allowed? No-brainer! We hit the A9 with gusto and beasted it down the road with a tour coach and tailback in hot pursuit and cracked it in around 6 minutes. I left John in Newtonmore as he took a break and I carried on apace as I was meeting Anne for a picnic lunch at Inverdruie. I covered the 52 miles to there at a pleasing average of 12.7 mph (and remember, all you who scoff, that this included Drumochter Pass with a full pannier load) By this time the sun was shining strongly and the knee warmers came off (donned today for the first time this trip)

After dumping some dirty washing and eating my fill (and dumping my rancid old cycling mits - Anne brought my new ones over) I left my good lady to go for a walk and continued towards tonight's abode : the Hostel at Slochd. This a) got me an extra 4+miles past Carrbridge; b) lowered my average accommodation cost; and most importantly c) got the climb to Slochd Summit over on a comparatively short day. Tomorrow is c78 miles but the first 23 are virtually all downhill to Inverness. The hostel is brilliant. I can get my own breakfast as early as I want and get cracking. Good find, Anne!

Anne picked me up after a shower and we had a meal at Carrbridge's Cairn Hotel (CAMRA pub of the year 2011, coincidentally) then we split until Thurso.

The end is getting closer!

Stats for the day : 68.6 miles at 12.0mph avg ; 5hrs 40mins saddle time; 798m ascent

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