Day 16: Rest day on Islay

Excellent full Scottish Brekkie.

Spent the day pootling from distillery to distillery on my bike. Enjoyed tours at Lagavulin (thanks for the donation to Marjorie and staff) and Ardbeg. Later was very kindly given a free tasting at the Laphroaig distillery.

Lagavulin pics:

Looking back from the jetty ( shame about the obscured 'L', but hey ho ) ..

Very old whisky ( 2nd barrel from left at front ) ..

One of the pear shaped stills ( undergoing maintenance ) ..

Very very tasty 'Distillers Edition' - promised to myself once I've finished one of my existing bottles ..

Spotted a bit of wildlife in a beautifully quiet bay. And am now here updating this blog thing in the local youth centre - noisy !

Can you spot the seal ? ...

Port Ellen marina as the sun goes down ..

Back to the mainland tomorrow. Then a short-ish ride up to Kilmartin. Into the last week now - boo hoo.

Stats for the day:

Wee drams 4
Seals spotted 2
Otters spotted 0
Mileage 8 ish.
Tot. 8 ish more than yesterday.

Cheers,

Mat.

Day 15: Brodick to Port Ellen, Islay

Earliest start yet at 07:45 !! after a great breakfast. So happened that the Captain of the Ferry from Lochranza to Port Askaig, Islay, was the co-owner of the B&B so his wife who runs the B&B kindly offered for him take my pannier bags with him to await my arrival on the ferry later that morning.

Cycled the lovely 22 miles across the pass through the middle of the Island and then up the West coast in good time on a beautiful clear morning in order to catch the 10:45 ferry from Lochranza to Claonaig, on Kintyre.

Pics from my blissful early morning ride across Arran:


View from the pass known as 'The String' back down towards Brodick ...





Looking across to Kintyre from Auchnagallon ..







Lochranza from the Ferry terminal ..





Met up with one of the touring cyclists met yesterday again, and a couple of a tandem doing an extended end to end - heading up the Western Isles and then across the north coast of Scotland. Brilliant.


The Ferry to Kintyre is coming into land, complete with my pannier bags ...

Looking back over to Arran from the ferry ...

The little ferry from Arran dropped us off at Claonaig, then we had a short ride up a singletrack hill to Kennacraig to catch the ferry across to Port Askag on Islay.

Started to relax a bit as it would be the rest day next and enjoyed some excellent cycling company and a couple of Scottish beers on the way to Port Ellen on the other side of Islay from Port Askaig.

Good luck to all cyclists met on the way !

Zoomed down to Port Ellen on the straight 8 mile road with the wind behind. Plenty of friendly waves along the way ( I suspect one or two of them may have mistaken me for a well known local cyclist who may occasionally wear a similar black cycling top - cycling related blog written by this chap here ... http://ileach.co.uk/post/ ) Good friendly accommodation awaited me at Port Ellen, and a decent curry in from the local takeaway hit the spot for dinner.

Islay pics:

Bowmore distillery ( one of the 7 working distilleries on the island - popn. 3000 ! ) ...






Didn't get to visit the Mull of Oa this time, but will do some day soon ...






Whitewashed houses around Port Ellen Marina ...





Stats for day:

Ferry journeys 2
No. of rides 3
Flapjacks 2
Very long straight roads 1
Stunning views (lost count)
Mileage 49.8
Tot. mileage to date 821.5

Cheers,

Mat.

Day 14: Sanquhar to Brodick, Arran

Good breakfast and out of the door fairly early.

This pic should've been in yesterdays blog entry - but its here - its the oldest Post Office anywhere ever and its in Sanquhar ..

Although the wind was still blowing into my face, as the distance today was short it wasn't too much of a problem.

Dog faced sheep almost distracted me ..

It was a race to catch the afternoon ferry to Brodick on Arran from the mainland at Ardrossan in Ayrshire. Did this okay with the only problem being navigating the final few miles around Irvine, Stevenston and Saltcoats.

Exciting to catch the Ferry, and made more so as I met up with a couple of other touring cyclists both heading across to Arran and beyond to tour the Inner Hebrides. Had an great chat on the ferry, swapping notes on tearoom stops in particular !

Me on Ferry trying not to look too bush-whacked ..

Ferry at Arran ..

Ferry dropped us off in Brodick and it was a short ride to my accommodation. The other tourers sped off to elsewhere on the Island.

Pic, I think, of 'The Calf', the biggest hill on Arran ..

Stats for the day:

Choc bars 2
Flapjacks (negligible)
Mileage 51.7
Tot. mileage to date 771.7

Cheers,

Mat

Day 13: Carlisle to Sanquhar

Good brekkie, and met a guy from the midlands in his 70's who'd completed Lands End to John o'Groats when he was 65 on a bike almost as old as himself - awesome.

Long day, longer than expected and harder because it was mostly into the wind. Celebrated crossing into Scotland in the quietest tea room on this trip ( and possibly ever anywhere) in Gretna - it did say it was a tea room on a sign, but looked and felt more like this ladies front-room.


Made it to Scotland, and half-way ish ..

Struggled onto Dumfries, and cut my planned route short as it was clear I was going to be late to get to my destination otherwise. Dumfries was nice, and a kind chap at Halfords pumped up my tyres to max pressure. Headed onto the 'A' road from Dumfries towars Sanquhar up the Nith valley.

Lovely River Nith ...

This wasn't too bad as being a Saturday meant the traffic was quite light. Took to the back roads once I thought I was roughly back on track, and luckily came across the village where the inventor of the pedal bicycle, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, lived and is buried.

Grave of Kirkpatrick Macmillan ..

New-ish style pedal cycle in front of iron model of original ..

Some of the scenery here was great. Continued on the back roads and had a stop at Drumlanrig Castle where I popped in to have a quick look around the Scottish Cycle Museum. Some excellent examples of old and more recent bikes, including a model of the original Kirkpatrick Macmillan pedal bicycle.

Drumlanrig Castle ( didn't get a picture of the bikes in the museum - doh ) ..

Some excellent examples of old old and more recent old bikes in there - friendly and helpful shop staff also.

Got into Sanquhar at a decent enough time in the end, albeit a bit cream-crackered.

Stats for the day:

Flapjack 1
Belgian bun 1
Graves of the inventor of the bicycle visited 1
Mileage 73.7
Tot. mileage to date 720.0

Cheers,

Mat

Day 12: Hawes to Carlisle

Decent breakfast, and off in the rain again.

Into the wind for a while for the first time on the trip out from Hawes heading West, but the turn towards Kirkby Stephen made things less windy but hillier.


Lovely road heading West out of Hawes ...




Weather dried up and the sun beat down for the rest of the day. However hard this start was it was going to be far easier than my original plan of heading up the climb past Buttertubs and on to Tan Hill Inn - which I made a tactical decision to change.


Into Cumbria ..






where you have to watch out for the (Red) Squirrels ...





Apart from saving me energy, the other unforseen benefit of this change of route was finding a stunning tearoom at Kirkby Stephen. Lovely Cream Tea and then a packed lunch to take away for a tad over £6 - awesome.


Food went too quickly to get a 'before' picture ...

Rest of the day was pleasant and pain free until a stretch of hills just before Carlisle.

Accommodation in Carlisle was a friendly Guest House in a so so area of town, but close enough to easily walk to some food within 10 minutes.

Stats for the day:

Flapjacks 0.5 ?!
Cream Tea 1
Packups 1
Red Squirrels spotted 0
Red Squirrel warning signs spotted 10+
Mileage 59.05
Tot. to date 646.3

Cheers,

Mat.

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Amusing signs appendage:

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Probably a ...

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A twosome of mildly amusing placenames plus a ***thwaite for good measure ...

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Day 11: Thornton to Hawes

Top brekkie, and an enthusiastic farewell party to watch me make a highly clumsy hill start !

Bit of rain to start the day cleared up almost before I could start whingeing to myself about it always raining. Decent enough route up to Skipton, where a substantial cup of tea and flapjack tided me over.


Skipton ...




Then into the Yorkshire Dales and a feeling of elation to be in such inspiring surroundings in the sunshine.


Entering the Dales ...




Which lasted until it started lashing it down whilst I was enjoying my Cheese sarnie in Kettlewell.


Lovely Wharfedale place names in the wet ...








The lovely River Wharfe ...





I'd made good progress so tried to ignore the driving rain and headed up to Buckden and then across the top to Hawes. Quite proud that I managed to avoid wheelies on the steepest sections, probably due to the couple of kilos lost from the panniers in Penkridge. Great views of cloud from the top.


Warning steep clouds ahead ...




Accommodation in Hawes was good though. A lovely building, friendly hosts and plenty of space on the drying rack above the fire. The Cumberland grill for dinner was almost as challenging as the days ride.

Stats for the day:

Flapjacks 1.5
Pairs of Waterproof socks holding water 1
Mileage 48.1
Tot. mileage to day 587.2

Cheers,

Mat.

Day 10: Altrincham to Thornton, Bradford

Its been awhile again, but safe to say I've found a spare minute during my hectic rest day on Islay to provide mini-updates on the days of travel since the last time I posted on the 25th. (which have now been revised).

First thing, many thanks again to everyone who has donated online and offline since my last posting.

This was a pretty good day. Manchester drizzled on me, but my route through the southern Mancunian conurbation was pretty painless. The route from Glossop to Holmfirth over the substantial hill of 'Holme Moss' was tough but beautiful and bleak.

View up Longendale from just outside Hadfield ...




Someone took pity and took a photo of man & machine at the top ...




View of West Yorkshire from the top ...

It was a bit of a fight in the traffic through Huddersfield but fairly flat. The climb up to my stop for the night from Brighouse (to Queensbury) was something I'd forgotten about from my Uni days in Bradford - good job too ! Still I made it to the top of the ...

After a little rest in ... (more comfortable than plastic saddle ?)

Kathryn and Rob my hosts were very welcoming and I had a lovely evening in their stunning house with Kathryn's cousin and husband and my old Uni mate Jill - great fun.

Stats for the day:

Flapjack 1
Custard Slice 1
Near misses with white van men in West Yorkshire 2
Windy peaks 2
Mileage 57.6
Total mileage to date 539

Cheers,

Mat.

Day 9: Penkridge to Altrincham

Mum fed me well and I happilly set off on a sunny but windy day to roll through Staffordshire to Cheshire.

From Penkridge I zoomed up to Stafford to pick up some spare Brake blocks as a just in case for later on. From Stafford headed out to Eccleshall in order to follow a route to the west of Stoke- on-Trent. There were some pleasant roads, and nice views, but nothing particularly outstanding.

( Revision 17/08/07 - familiarity probably bred a little lack of respect here, as I used to cycle on these roads and they are very pleasant and pretty quiet. The whole description of the day below was probably coloured by me not feeling full of va va voom).

As I was making good time I stopped for a sit down lunch for a change at the pretty Barthomley, near Audley. After this I struggled to get back up to pace and mithered along the rest of the way.

Managed to cross the M6 a couple of times, and take a bridleway instead of the correct road at one point - these were highlights.

Also quite exciting was passing quite close to Jodrell Bank. A disappointment was failing to get a good picture of the sign for Over Peover, ho hum (see below).

The last bit of the ride saw me taking a wrong turning and finding myself at the end of a runway at Manchester Airport - I reckon the map is out of date though.


Okay day, hope I'm feeling a bit perkier for the challenges of the Peak District and the Dales.

Stats of the day:

Flapjacks (muesli bars) 2
M6 crossings 5
Days mileage 70
Total mileage 481.3

Cheers,

Mat.

Disappointing sign pics spot:

'Over Peover', honest it is ...

Large Owl pic spot:

At Mobberley a beautiful carving of an owl from a storm felled Oak stump ...

More info on how the owl came to rest there here ...

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1010/1010285_villagers_stumped_by_owl_carving.html

Day 8: Rest day

Not much to say here. Spent the day at my Mum's trying to ditch as much weight as possible from my luggage, stocking up on Flapjack style bars from possibly the worlds finest bakery, and trying to remove some of the vast amounts of oily muck from the bike chain.

Managed to reduce the weight being carried by a couple of kilos. But the extra maps required for the northern bit of the ride, and the numerous flapjacky bars have offset those losses somewhat.

Cheers,

Mat.

Day 7: Arlingham to Penkridge

Top breakfast and an early start.

The original plan was to follow the Severn valley as far as possible in order to make quick progress as this was going to be by far my longest day. Taking into account all that we knew about the floods this was changed a little.

Made excellent progress to begin with with a fairly strong tailwind up to Gloucester on the A38. The plan was now to take the A417 at Maisemore then follow the B4211 along the River Severn as far as possible. Sadly, the road to Maisemore was closed with a deep flood. So I headed off on the A40 to loop around via Highleadon which worked fine adding a few miles. When I got to the flooded village of Upton I followed the advice of the chaps directing traffic. So off towards Malvern I went, I thought about looping around and coming back down to the B road I'd been on a few miles further north from Upton but couldn't be sure that the road wouldn't be flooded a bit further up, so after reaching Welland decided to come back down to the Severn at Worcester. This meant a climb up to Malvern taking me well out of the way and into the hills I was originally trying to avoid. Sadly after considerable extra effort this plan was scuppered by flooding of the River Teme, which feeds into the Severn, at Bransford !

I was close to thinking I wouldn't be able to get any further North, but on the advice of one of the numerous flood watchers I cycled a few miles south-east to Powick as the previous day people had been able to walk through the overflow from the Teme there. On arriving at Powick it was clear that a few people were indeed still walking through, one or two even cycling - although one of the flood watchers was claiming that the police should be stopping people as there were raised manhole covers and part of the road had collapsed. However, having watched some more people walk and cycle through in their wellies I plucked up a bit of courage and waded through pushing the bike, wearing just sandals on my feet and rolling up my cycling shorts a little. The water came up above the bottom bracket but didn't reach the luggage. Phew.







At Worcester I took my lunch before continuing north on the A443. I started to wonder at this point how I was going to cross the River Severn. This potential problem was solved just a few miles later near Holt Heath, when I saw a lot of traffic heading off towards Drotwich. At this point I abandoned my hopes of a scenic ride to the West of the Severn, and headed towards the A449 and over the high and flood free bridge over the Severn.

The final thirty miles were spent ploughing along the A449 through Kidderminster, Kingswinford and Wolverhampton. This made navigation quite easy, especially as the road passes through my stop for the night at Penkridge.

I was glad to reach home, let alone get there in good time for dinner with my Mum.

Stats for the day:

Flapjacks 1
Flooded roads waded through 2
Days mileage 91.9
Total mileage 411.2

Cheers,

Mat.



More flood pictures:

This is normally a field not a part of the river..


















these areas near Powick are normally a field and road passable by more than just 4x4's & pedestrians...

















another pic of the flood waded through at Powick..