Day Ten

Tired. Nearly 100 miles with 40lbs to pull behind me was rough. The bike was slowly getting worse. The rain came back. But, we were off to Ben Nevis and had some spectacular parts of Scotland to travel through, so it wasn't all bad!

Actually, the rain wasn't too bad. It was mostly just overcast, to tell the truth. We took a quick detour in the morning to see a castle that we passed on the way in last night, and there was someone playing bagpipes off in the trees somewhere, so it was more than a bit surreal.

Our muscles took forever to get into the swing of things. Sore, but mostly just tired, everything just felt a lot heavier today. Uphill right from the start didn't help - or maybe it did. Either way, the miles had taken their toll on us.

I can't actually remember too much detail about today, and we only have a couple of pictures, so this will be a short one. Lots of mountains, lots of lochs, a bit of rain off and on, some really nice roads, and eventually we made our way into Fort William. Above is Loch Etive (although it could have been Loch Linnhe) and below is Loch Creran. The ruined castle at lock Creran was particularly stunning, and fairly typical of the days ride.

We were expecting a nice, resort town, being the outdoor sport capitol of the UK and at the foot of Ben Nevis. We were also expecting to be blown away by the UK's biggest mountain, but why, I'm not sure. It's a real mountain, but it's just a small peak compared to where we've lived. Compared to it's surroundings, however, it towers over most of the hills.

Busy tourist town or not, Subway still closes at 6pm. So weird. Don't people eat dinner here? They certainly don't eat before 6pm, so I can't figure out why a place like Subway, especially in a tourist town, would close at such a ridiculously early hour. In any case, we snuck in just in time, I nearly lost my wallet after leaving it on the counter, and we peddled the last two to three miles to our B&B for the evening, passing Ben Nevis on the way.

Our B&B was run by a very nice woman from the States (somewhere around the mid-west, if we remember correctly), and had a great view of the Ben Nevis range... which is almost always buried in cloud. We never saw the whole mountain, but it was a great view nonetheless. We tucked into our dinner, had a somewhat relaxing evening, and slept soundly, relishing in the concept of a short day tomorrow.