Day Eight - A Small Silver Lining In A Rather Large, Grey Cloud

The message last night was nice, but was more of a relaxing message rather than anything serious. At first we were a little disappointed about that, but then we thought that if we had a deep sports message in the middle of a long tour, that might have been bad news for our muscles. Either way, our muscles were sore.

Breakfast was starting to be less of a full English and more of a partial English. The bacon and mushroom and certain things had lost their charm after a solid week. Too much grease. The rest was providing enough protein and carbs to see us through the day. Myra had started to get the porridge where possible, as Scotland serves up some mean porridge.

Anyway, the day was to start off dry, but the sky had no intentions of hiding the fact that we were in for a wet one. Our yet again gracious host saw us off at the normal late time of about 10am, and we set off for the West coast of Scotland.

Within half an hour the rain had started, so we waterproofed ourselves as best as we could. Within an hour it was coming down hard and fast. I was having to ring out my gloves every half hour. The terrain around us had started to look a lot like Canada, we thought. I can't put my finger on it anymore, but there were lots of evergreens. It just felt familiar.

The temperature was cold and it was windy too, but luckily at least the wind was behind us for most of the day. We only had 71 miles to do today and we just wanted them done, so we ended up managing a pretty good average pace. The bad weather at least had that good effect on us. The other effect was a severe lack of pictures, so I can't remember too many details about the ride anymore, other than we mostly just had our heads down and tried to get through it as quickly as possible.

There were some highlights though. After a steady climb in the rain, it had started to ease up a bit, and in front us us opened up an amazing section of windy road that went on and on and on, and had one perfect bend after another, just tight enough to be fun and open enough to carry quite a bit of speed through. I was wishing I didn't have the trailer to have to consider, as that was one of the funnest sections of road on the entire trip. Would have been awesome in a car! Generally, the day was filled with truly beautiful scenery, but it was all just hidden behind the rain.

Half way through the day, the temperature had dropped further and the rain had started to come down even harder, and we had just about given up. We passed through a tiny town and  spotted a little cafe/teahouse/knick-knack place and had to head in for something warm. We ended up having unbelievably good scones which has started Myra on a mission for good scones ever since. We were extremely glad to be out of the rain, but we were so wet that it really didn't make much difference as we would just have to go back out into it anyway. At least we weren't cold, and the tea was rather nice.

The sun came out for about 45 seconds and it had been so long since we had seen it it actually felt a bit strange. The rain started again and we just pounded out the miles and reached our destination in silence, feeling extremely relieved and glad that our rain-driven pace had got us there in good time.

Back in dry clothes (there's no better feeling after a day in wet ones), we walked a mile to the local restauant (we were staying just outside of a town, so it was the only place around) as the sun came out into a blue sky, and were treated to one of the best meals we would have on the trip plus a nice sunset, so at least the day ended well.

Looking forward to tomorrow when we'll be riding up the coast and getting back into some nice lumpy hills.