Day 14 Crask to John o' Groats 84 miles

Well, this is it, the final day.  Rachel and I awoke with a lot of strange feelings about this being the final day, excited to finish and to know that we have done it...but sad that it will soon be all over and we will become normal human beings again rather than long distance cyclists.

We had a lovely breakfast around the big table again, and got ready to head out into the sun.  The midges were pretty vicious, but once we started cycling they weren't a bother.  I worked out that if you stop you have a 30 second time window to take a photo before the biting creatures attacked again!!

It was such a lovely day that we stopped for several brief photo stops, the scenery was stunning in a barren and remote sense, we loved it.


As we continued our journey the skies started to darken in that ominous way...and yes, the heavens opened.  The rain continued until Bettyhill, which I arrived in a top speed as I knew there was a brew stop at the top of the hill (Betty's I presume!).  After two comfort cherry bakewells we set off again, and the sun started to come out.  We had a good few climbs along the north coast, but amazing views of Dunnet Head appearing in the distance.  There were also many free roaming sheep on the roads and moorland which I always love to see, however with free roaming sheep come cattle grids, and cattle grids when wet are the arch enemy of the cyclist. I crossed one on an uphill section and felt my rear wheel spinning on the smooth metal, before I had chance to warn Rachel how slippy it was she was on the grid and then the bike slipped away from underneath her and she came crashing to the ground half in the road half on the grid, but in the middle of the road.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank the first car that didn't even slow down and shot past rachel as she was lying tangled in her bike in the middle of the road...arse!!  But I would genuinly like to thank the next 2 cars that did stop and asked if there was anything they could do.  Rachel is fine, cut and bruised but nothing too serious.

We stopped for lunch at Melvich and Rachel got her cuts and bashes cleaned up, and then we set off for our final afternoon.  We had a lot af great cycling in the afternoon, big long descents on wide and quiet roads.  We approached Castle of Mey where we were regrouping for our arrival at John o' Groats, and also where we were adorning our helmets with a mass buy of yellow marigolds in order to be kind of chicken like!

As we left Mey, it happened again, the heavens opened...there was rain coming out of the sky on a scale I don't think I have ever seen before...it was actually hilarious.  The roads became rivers, nobody's brakes were working...I couldn't have been wetter if I had been in the sea.  But it was brilliant, it was memorable and we all felt great as part of a team and a big bunch of new friends!  As we dexcended into John o' Groats the rain stopped, the sun came out and a rainbow appeared (this is no word of a lie) it was absolutely amazing.  We had done it! 1000 miles of cycling over 14 days.

We had all the photos done and there were loads of tourists snapping photos of us too, it was a bit like being a celebrity.  The Peak Tours guys had champagne for us, it was perfect.

There will be final entry to this blog tomorrow, but I am now back at home, I am tired and have to think about going back to work!!