Grumpy Old Men On Bikes

It has been 2 days since my last confession and we are back in Balloch, having cycled 850 miles and climbed 50,000 feet.  Yesterday we continued to follow cycle routes 7 and 77,vaguely following the A9 to Perth. It was a longish day but the sun was shining and Type 1 fun was in plentiful supply. For a long stretch we were on a freshly resurfaced cycle path....so fresh that at the end of it we found the road crew just finishing off a section. In Perth, and perhaps all of Scotland, the legal drinking age is 12.  We know this because we had dinner in 'spoons last night, where the local kids were getting pissed before heading home to do their homework. At no point was anyone asked for ID provided they filled out the Track and Trace form.  Maybe Track and Trace trumps the licencing laws? Today, our last, was another filled with sunshine and great scenery, including a cruise past Gleneagles golf course where I saw a man in spectacular trousers fluff an...

The average population density in London is over 5000 people per km2. In my home town it is about 500.  In the Scottish Highlands it is.... wait for it.......8!!!  By an amazing coincidence the camper van density is almost exactly the opposite.  You can actually walk the NC500 treading only on the roofs of camper vans.  When you consider that a new one can cost £60k or more there must be a lot of kids who won't be getting the inheritance they were hoping for. Since leaving the NC500 we haven't seen a single motorcycle or camper van.  Our route today tracked the A9 south and I had to expected it to be a bit pants.  Au contraire!  Today was Type 1 fun!!!!  The route was traffic free, there were enough hills to keep it interesting but nothing too testing, the scenery was gorgeous and THE SUN CAME OUT.  We were all done by 3pm and sat in the hotel garden sunning ourselves and sipping a recovery drink.  Carrying my panniers up...

When Plum arrived via the SGH I was reassured that I had made the right choice.  He looked buggered.  Our B&B was of the 'someone's spare bedroom' variety...my least favourite.....but they were very welcoming and the room was comfortable. They had managed to create en-suite facilities in a room that really wasn't big enough and the trick in the shower was never to drop the soap as bending to pick it up was impossible.   Neil just lay on his bed staring at the wall and muttering 'big hill', 'nasty' and 'dont send me back'. Today , after days if slogging into westerly winds, we turned east.  Unfortunately the wind reversed direction so we STILL had a headwind.  Bugger. Apart from the wind, and a temperature of about 12 degrees it was an easy day with very few hills.  At our lunch stop we met a fellow cyclist of the female persuasion.  She was carrying full pannier crap like us and yesterday had done the same big hill as Neil, ...

So....the elephant in the room....life on the road in the 'new normal'.  It's a bit rubbish.  We have experienced the full range of covid protection measures, from 'l aminate a few signs and put out some hand sanitzer' to 'assume that Vladimir Putin is trying to kill you with Novichok'. At the Novichock end of the spectrum was Detta, our Dutch landlady in Armadale.  She met us in the car park with our disinfected room key held out at arms length in a wooden box.  We let ourselves in and met her in the no man's land between our part of the house and hers.  This doorway had a newly fitted perspex screen, behind which she read out Ze Rules (there were many) designed to thwart the best trained Spetsnaz assassin.  Breakfast (pre-ordered) was delivered to our side of the house through a hatch and we handed back our full slopping out bucket through the same hatch (ok, the bucket bit is made up).  As we left Detta was putting on her hazmat su...

2 days to catch up on.  While the south of England is enjoying an Indian summer we have been 'enjoying' a Scottish winter. We are now working our way down the west coast, last night we were in Ullapool and tonight it is Gairloch. The weather yesterday was pretty epic.  It rained solidly all day and by the afternoon the headwinds were back to 40 mph. At one point it briefly became a cross wind and I had to stop when a gust threatend to throw me in the verge.  I then discovered it was impossible to start again because, in the split second needed to put a foot on a pedal and generate some thrust, the wind would just try and dump me back on the verge.  Neil, who was ahead (as always) and sheltered by a house just watched and giggled.  Git. Ullapool is NC500 central with badges and T-shirts for sale everywhere.  We have identified 3 particular species of NC500 follower: 1). Camper vans.  There are trillions of them.  W...

Today was a Type 3 Fun day.....I'll explain in a moment. Rob Tanti won the sensational prize.  It was the song used in the ad where the hunky guy strips off his Levi 501s in the laundrette and sits in his underpants while they wash. Not quite me rinsing beer out of my clothes but close enough. You have probably often wondered which would make the most satisfying post-cycling meal: a lamb shank, a family sized LIDL lasagne or a family sized Tesco lasagne.  At great personal expense we have done this important research for you and the answer is.......drum roll......ALL OF THEM TOGETHER   I'm not sure that even 60 miles into a huge headwind justified so many calories but we had seen today's weather forecast and needed cheering up.   So....types of fun.  A friend recently emailed me and mentioned  that he thought my trips were mostly Type 2 Fun.  He provided a link which explained the 3 types of fun: 1-...

To keep my panniers as light as possible I am travelling with the absolute minimum of non-cycling kit.  This means just one set of evening clothes.  Imagine my delight when the barman threw a full pint over me in 'spoons yesterday evening.  He said it was an accident but I suspect he has been reading this blog.  The only upside was the large glass of wine I extorted from them by way of an apology but, as I stood in my pants washing my shoes in the sink later, this didn't feel sufficient. Today it all went horribly wrong.  Thus far we have been enjoying a moderate tailwind but today was the day we turned and started bearing west and the tailwind became a crosswind then a headwind.  We were prepared for this.  What we weren't prepared for was the wind speed rising from 10-15mph to OVER 40.  Bugger!  Our average speed dropped so low that we turned off our speedometers and started using a calender.  Eventually we even gave th...

The big winners from Coronavirus are Amazon and Zoom but in 3rd place must be the manufacturers of those little gadgets for laminating notices.  Every cafe, shop, hotel lobby and bedroom is now festooned with signs about their mask requirements, cleaning regime, one-way system blah blah blah blah blah. I really don't understand why they don't just have ONE notice with a number of bullet points.  It is as though each notice was churned out on the spur of the moment to cover another point they had just thought of and should start with ".....and another thing:" The Royal Tain Hotel had extended their COVID precautions to include closing the restaurant (or maybe it was just the chef's night off) but we were allowed to eat our takeaway at one of their restaurant tables, which suited us fine.  For desert we had a bag of jam donuts from Tesco's......livin the dream. Now that the A9/A99 forms part of the NC500 it has...

After eating our own weight in frozen lasagna we settled down to watch the Tour Dr France highlights on TV.  Obviously there is no comparison between what they do and what we are doing but they are still young......and if they keep pushing they might one day reach our level. We shared the lounge with a chatty Glasweigen couple whose knowledge of geography beyond Scotland's borders could best be described as hazy.  They had heard of Folkstone, Reading, Basildon and Poole but had no idea where any of them were.  Mention of other places just drew blank looks.   After a couple of hours of trying to explain that London wasn't as far south as Cornwall we gave up and went to bed. Today was, again, mostly dry.  This is the longest dry spell since records began and Nicola Sturgeon has declared a public holiday to celebrate.  Apart from being dry the weather is pretty poor...cool, overcast and blustery....

I don't mind Neil getting up early for his prayers but as we pass people on the road he now yells "Allahu Akbar" which attracts the wrong sort of attention.  I may have to have word with him! My training for this trip has been sub-optimal (yes, that's right, I didn't do any) and this probably accounts for me being completely knackered last night.  Yesterday was my first full day in the saddle since February and, inexplicably, laying around in the garden  throught lockdown doesn't seem to have kept my legs as toned as I was hoping. Despite all this the legs reported for duty this morning with only a slight grumble and we stayed more or less dry all day; weather so remarkable in Scotland that it will probably make the evening news.  Between Connel Bridge and Onich there is a splendid 32 mile bike path which we made full use of, but then we were dumped onto the busy road for the last 8 miles into Fort Will...

I know I promised to try and stop using plays on words for the songs but it is easy and I am tired.  We are staying at the Falls or Lora Hotel in Connel. Our host, Harry, claimed last night that he had built the B&B in one day.  Quite apart from the obvious improbability of this claim, it does not suggest the sort of build quality that I think £90 per night entitles one to.  In every other respect he was a gracious host and if he wants to talk bollocks about how long it took to build the place who am I to complain?  He even made us up a little complimentary packed lunch this morning. The weather today was very Scottish.  We had many of the thousand different types of rain that make up the weather palette in Scotland and we alternated  between wet and completely soaked for all 72 of our miles.  Rest and be Thankful was open (we had the old military road to ourselves) and Inverary had forgotten to close one of its cafes so w...

I realise that this makes 3 blog entries in a row where the song title is a corny play on words.....this is lazy and I'll try and do better in future. We are now in Balloch , just a few miles north of Glasgow but in a completely different world on the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond (I suppose that this might have been a better song to use).   This place gets madly busy throughout the 'season' and especially at weekends but we have timed our arrival for a Sunday to avoid the stupid 'Saturday night' hotel prices.   We are staying at the Arbor Travel Lodge.   You are probably imagining a large, modern purpose-built budget hotel...... as was I, until we arrived to find that it is a 3-bedroom B&B run by a bloke called Harry.   No matter, the pub is only 50yds away and the owner is letting us leave the van in his car park for 2 weeks.   We are inside the very northern edge of an area of new COVID restrictions, where visiting a friend or relativ...

When I returned from my last cycling trip (New Zealand in February), COVID-19 hadn't been invented and the 'Coronavirus' was just a curiosity affecting China.  Real men, such as myself, scoffed at the idea of facemasks and life was good.  Little did I know that I would spend most of my spring unravelling a series of trips to France, Italy and the US and that airlines, hotels and booking sites would become my worst enemy as they attempted to weasel out of meeting their obligation to provide refunds.  Along the way I have to had to learn the whole vocabulary of the 'new normal': 1.  New normal 2.  Flatten the curve 3.  Herd immunity 4.  Social distancing 5.  Bubble 6.  Key worker (who would ever have imagined that the dozy old bat on the checkout at my local Sainsbury would one day be regarded as 'key') 7.  Wankers (an old term but now re-purposed to mean 'airlines')  I have managed a couple of weeks away; ...

For a man whole cycles a lot, and even made his living out of cycling for several years, my bike collection is a disgrace.  Basically just two bikes, the newest of which is 8 years old.  It's a wonder that nobody has organised a telethon to raise funds to help me!  Both these bikes are lovely but the one that I use for touring suffers from two key deficiencies:   1/  These days I like to use fatter tyres, which leave such little clearance with the frame that small stones get wedged, requiring me to stop and pick them out while muttering bad words. 2/  It uses rim brakes.  When screaming down a big hill with heavy panniers in the rain this can lead to more buttock clenching than is ideal. It should be pretty obvious by now where this is going......I have a new bike.  Or, rather, I have a bike built with many new bits.  I have purchased a new frame and some new parts, supplemented by cannibalising the old touring bike, to create som...