Day 15
The Pedal for Parkinson's Double End-to-End Cycle Challenge
Dornoch to Invergary
78 miles
A day is a long time on a cycle tour! How much can change in the space of a few hours. Just 48 hours' ago I was enjoying (despite the predominantly foul weather) rediscovering some real fitness again after two weeks riding with the Pedal for Parkinson's Challenge Team. It was too good to last and after bagging John O'Groats for a second time, reaching Dunnet Head and completing the first phase of the Double End-to-End Cycle Challenge, my luck ran out and a bad crash, resulting in a broken collar bone, brought my personal Challenge to an abrupt and painful end, leaving all my sporting aspirations for the summer in a messy heap on the roadside near Loch Fleet in Scotland. Now, after flying home yesterday from Inverness to Gatwick, I'm following the Team as it continues its ride south-westwards towards the Mull of Kintyre and beyond into Ireland. A strip of broken tarmac and proud road markings have conspired to relegate me to a virtual and distant participation as I follow the Team from my desk at home. This was defintitely not in the plans! The best laid plans can go astray, it's true, and if my accident has served as a hard reminder of this adage so too did events yesterday conspire to take the Team off course, resulting in a very long, unscheduled ride.
At the end of another eventful day, the Team and I exchanged news using Skype. There was plenty to discuss:
After leaving me in the safe hands of Geoff and Liz, whose caravan was now serving as an ambulance and airport shuttle, the Team set off for a day's riding in what promised to be pleasant weather, which only added to my regret at not being with them. The original route scheduled 78 miles but the lads reckoned that they could cut that shorter (and after riding over 800 miles already, why not?) by taking the ferry across the Firth of Cromarty to Black Isle. Looking back, the change of route was a bad decision. The day's ride quicky turned into a nightmare of minor roads that had to be navigated on the hoof, so to speak. Time was also lost when a repaired puncture escalated in to a piece of pure theatre with a complete blow-out of both tyre and tube, the latter being of the self-repairing type, i.e. filled with green gunge instead of pressurized air: the tyre hadn't been seated in properly before being reinflated, creating a hernia which exploded, plastering Nigel and David, in true comic farce, in green snot. (Let that be a lesson to those that think that I am such an old tart when effecting repairs and doing bike maintenance.) Anyway, to cut a long story short, by 4pm the Team were still on the road and had what must have been a dispiriting 50 miles to ride; it was 8:30pm when the Team finally checked into its accommodation for the night in Invergary. It was the end of what must have been, by all accounts, a tough old day.
In my absence, the Team have been practicing their bike maintenance, employing some unconventional methods.
Click on the photo to see a larger view of this inventive chap inflating his tyre with bellows. Hannah found this pickie at
a wonderful repository of old cycling pictures.
A long day for The Team but, as Bernard Hinault so often reminds us, "Le Tour n'est pas encore fini", which roughly translates as "it ain't over 'til it's over!"
The Challenge presses on. Today the riders have over a 100 miles to cover from Invergary to Lochgilphead. I can't be there but I am with the Team constantly in spirit and look forward to hearing all the news again later, perhaps much later, this evening, which I shall endeavour to relay here. So, keep tuning in...
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