Day 7

All going well, this should be our last day of cycling. After yesterday's heroic push we only have 80 miles to do to get to Fort William, Ben Nevis's neighbouring shanty town. That said, I know someone who motorbiked through these hills a few weeks ago and got tired doing 100 miles on a huge Ducatti. As we're desperately plugging away at 4 mph up hill with a 12 mph raining headwind, roads made from corrugated bastard, and the cumulative fatigue of a day and half of cycling and hiking engendered upon a frame far more accustomed to bed and wine, I notice how the motorbikes blitzing past us at 80mph seem to be having a considerably easier time of it.

Massively deterred, but committed nonetheless, we head off from the last of our Travelodge stays (ideally ever - although this was the first one not tied to a Rubbish Chef so had it's own far better breakfast laid on) and make our way to our end point from Day 6. Yesterday, the attentive will recall, comprised endless depressed towns and rotten conditions. Today, at least, promised to provide far better scenery, if not downhills all the way with tailwinds and massages.

The factors that make a ride harder are numerous - hills, road surfaces, headwinds, knackered bikes, knackered bodies. What you're riding through makes a difference too. And the benefits of this today were greater than any other time in the week. The A82 up past Loch Lomond and on through Glencoe is a magnificent road. Just lakes and mountains and trees and landscapes and scenery off huge and magnificent proportions. Still, there's only so much this can do to temper the prospect of a 10 mile climb of 900 ft. And even less it can do if there's a head wind too. One of idiosyncracies of winds over hills is that if it's blowing towards you, when you're heading uphill, it's lifted off over your head, providing lifts for hangliders and sparrowhawks, leaving just enough to impede your already plodding progress. But on the other side, when you've noticed the road dropping away below you in a moderate cadence, indicating chances of a good turn of speed with little pedalling, the wind's there to rain on your parade with it's road hugging full force meaning you have to pedal just as hard as you did on the way up! What a treat!

Ploughing on through the morning, we enjoyed the views but there was little respite from the climb. The 10 miles we'd been promised, was duely delivered, and not one of them was easy.

We cracked on past a restaurant touted as the best one ever anywhere at Tyndrum, assured that John had laid on a fine spread at the 40 mile mark. The desolate location of this luncheon sent us trotting back to the hotel we'd passed 3 miles back. A civilsed bowl of soup and John's magnificent sandwiches and chocolate drinks (apparently, cyclists can go further with these than if they took the wheels off their bikes and drank vodka) later, the afternoon shift began. With a hill. Upwards. With a headwind. Again. The relentless hacking of the morning continued for another 15 miles until we were well on the way through Glencoe when the mountains open up all around on a scale that needs to be experienced and the road dropped smoothly between them, the gargantuan structures providing a change to the prevaling wind that allowed to us enjoy every bit of it, rolling almost all the way down into Glencoe where, so engendered were we with a sense of conviviality, that we stopped for coffee and cake, confident that the plod over the bridge and into Fort William would present none of the heinous battling we'd grown accustomed to. In fact, the slightly spurious notion that we were on the home stretch (conveniently disregarding Ben Nevis tomorrow), endowed us with a pep not seen since our teens and we blitzed the last miles with gusto and pace unmatched for days and challenged only by the drug fuelled nutters that charge coaches and buses along these roads.

Finally, Fort William hoved into view, we chucked the bikes in the van for the last time, and we headed back to the King's House Hotel - a beautifully stranded lodge sat hopelessly diminutive and alone with nothing but the thousands of feet of the caledonians around it. Good tucker, moderate whisky, an undulating pool table, luke warm ale and plastic sheets were our adequate, if not slightly disappointing, shelter for the night, as we slumbered a little unprepared for the day ahead.