Today was, on paper, expected to be the hardest day so far - the longest ride and the most climbing. It didn't disappoint. It was harder than expected, or seemed so. It began innocuously enough - 10 fairly flat miles followed by the highest climb of the day that went up in a series of short ramps, sometimes steep, sometimes not, with flat or downhill bits in between so that you hardly felt the ascent. The descent into Kinross was exhilarating. If only the day had stayed like that. What happened was that it kept throwing upward ramps along the way, all the way to Killiecrankie, just before Blair Atholl, which was still 5 or 6 miles from Calvine and Struan. So it was a hard day in the saddle, even if Garmin thinks it was less ascent than Strava said it would be.
The stats:
Distance cycled today: 83 miles
Ascent: 4,839'
Distance from Lands End: 744.1
Nick's rear wheel had been buckled for a while so he dropped into a cycle shop in Inverkeithing, just after crossing the Forth bridge and asked them if they could straighten it. They found he had three broken spokes, took it in immediately and fixed it. He was back on the road within 30 minutes. A big shout out to Ryan's Bike Surgery. If you need anything bike-related in the area, use them!
For anyone interested in the Royston Woods route, it has been very good so far through Scotland, mostly on minor roads running parallel to the main roads, or on tracks alongside them. Relatively few off-road cyclepaths have been used and mostly those have had good surfaces, today there were a couple of short sections of unsealed muddy or stoney surfaces making for slow going but on the whole things have been good, main A roads avoided (there was just a short section of A9 today).
Tomorrow, Inverness, then just two more legs to go. Let's hope our legs hold up :-)
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