Beautiful sunshine put a smile on both our faces. Away went the arm/leg warmers, gilet and overshoes. Out came the suntan lotion and sunglasses. Hoping on the bike we were welcomed with a gentle tailwind, buttery smooth roads and a ever so slight downward slope to the road for the first 5-10miles. A great way to start the day after the 125mile pain of yesterday, until the Garmin locked up. It took 4 power cycles and saving of the current tracking to get gps fix again.

From there on out the majority of the ride was done along route 7 (our faithful friend since first entering into Scotland). Managed to grind out a good pace whilst topping up our tans. However, our plans to jump onto the A9 through Inverness was not a good idea. The A9 at that point is a heavily busy dual carriageway. On the fly checking of the map showed that we could double back along route 7 before switching to our new friend; route 1. Unfortunately, due to our constant stop/start map checking we ended up passing the same lady 3 or 4 times. She was smiling each time, so we must have come across as “charming” stalkers.

A surprise highlight was a fun, challenging climb and long shallow descent to enjoy because of one of these detours. By the end of the day we realised our “shortest” day turened out to be back up to our average daily amount. Finished pretty fresh despite the heat. Oh, and James is immature. We stopped at Bonnars Bridge.

Failure Stats:

  • Garmin crashes: 1 (4 power cycles and saving the track for it to work again).
  • LiveTrack connection issues: 3

Funky stone arch

We've climbed higher

Double checked: This is not the Harry Potter bridge

Tough hill, but had to stop for: Mount Rich Place

Open plain in front of mountains