LEJOG – Day 15 (The Journey Home)
7th August 2010 – We had finished Lands End to John O’Groats, but still had to get home. It was too much to get home in one day, so we had decided to get the train from Thurso to Aberdeen (5 hours), and then the following day taking the fast train (fewer stops) from Aberdeen to Kings Cross, taking 9 hours. As it was the weekend there wasn’t the option to take the Abeerdeen sleeper train. We also had a 1 hour cycle to Thurso. So in all it was a good decision. It also gave us the chance to go out in Aberdeen and finally have more than one or two beers with some spicy Thai food. We had a great night out watching a live (and slightly anti-English) band.
LEJOG – Day 14 (Carbisdale > John O’ Groats)
- Original Route Mapping
- Route Stats on Garmin Connect
6th August 2010 - Our final day (in terms of completing LEJOG, as we still had two further days getting home) and it was a fairly long stage at around 160km. We got up early, but Carbisdale had a coach load of Germans so we got caught in the breakfast queue (the dinner and breakfast queues were a big negative for Carbsidale and one of the reasons I prefer smaller hostels). After our delayed start I took us a slightly different route than planned along the A836. It wasn’t the most direct, but it was certainly a nice route as the roads barely had any cars on them and there was plenty to look at.
LEJOG – Day 13 (Loch Ness > Carbisdale Castle)
- Original Route Mapping
- Route Stats on Garmin Connect
5th August 2010 – Today was a typical LEJOG day in terms of distance, and was set to be a day of heavy rain. But fortunately we seemed to miss all of the rain and didn’t see a single drop. The temperature was still a fair bit lower than England, the high only being around 17C. We set off following Loch Ness up to its most northern point. The route was quite scenic, although the road often moved away from the loch to the point that you couldn’t really see much apart from trees. The roads were typically very fast, and on occasion dual carriage way, which wasn’t terrible pleasant. We passed through a few small towns, Beauly was very nice (we sat outside the old church) and walked around the ruins.
LEJOG – Day 12 (Glen Coe > Loch Ness)
- Original Route Mapping
- Route Stats on Garmin Connect
4th August 2010 - We set off a little earlier today as Glen Coe hostel didn’t serve breakfast. We cycled into Glen Coe but didn’t find much in the way of breakfast, so had to make do with a shop and sitting outside on the kerb. Glen Coe as a town was a little disappointing and felt empty, nothing like what I had thought it would be like. We cycled around the lochs there, taking photos as we went, and pushed on up to Fort William to meet my uncle.
The road into Fort William was classified an A road, but was a typical city B road in England, meaning we had to go in single file the whole way. We made good time though as the roads allowed us to push a bit faster. I led most of the first 30km to ensure we’d meet my uncle on time. Fort William was another disappointing town. We didn’t see much of it, the pedestrianised high street was nice, but I didn’t like the ring road and business park around it. We met my uncle for around an hour over a coffee and got back on our way. Today was the shortest route of the whole trip so we were planning to arrive at our hostel nice an early.
LEJOG – Day 11 (Loch Lomond > Glen Coe)
- Original Route Mapping
- Route Stats on Garmin Connect
3rd August 2010 - We set off at around 09:00 after a decent Scottish breakfast. The day before had been one of our shortest LEJOG days so we were relatively fresh. While being short, it was still a hard day due to the open landscape and strong headwinds. One thing we learnt, no matter which direction we cycled in, there seemed to be a headwind. So in the end we just learnt to accept it.
We cycled along a cycle path that runs around Loch Lomond all the way to the very top (which is around 30km or more). It was perfect cycling along a wide, well tarmaced path, with the loch on our right and midgies not able to keep up. We took plenty of photos enjoying the views. So much so our pace was quite slow and we had to push quite a lot harder later. We also randomly ended up on the private drive of Loch Lomond golf course after going through a swing gate. I wasn’t sure if we should be there, but we didn’t care and cycled along. We did come to a big gate and weren’t sure if we were on the public or private side of the gate (we were on the private side!), but the guard was fine and let us through. If you can find it, it’s worth going down and no one seems to care.