Friday 19 September: day thirteen – rest day

Friday 19 September: day thirteen – rest day

The Glen Coe youth hostel is completely lovely. It has a great lounge in which we were allowed to hang around for the whole day. I went down to the village because I wanted to change my front tyre. Crank It Up Gear is a cycle shop and cycle hire run from a garden shed. The lady of the house could not find what I needed but her husband, Davy Gunn, arrived and after a bit of fishing around found exactly the thing. He let me borrow his track pump after I had changed the tyre.  

He told me that end-to-enders stop in October or November as the weather up on the moor gets so fierce that you could not ride through it. He said you get winds of over 100 mph. He told me he had never done the end-to-end, but it was on his list.

I cycled down to the loch and met a despondent SNP supporter whose opening greeting was: “It’s a beautiful morning, but it’s a grey day for me!” He blamed Gordon Brown, the media for lying (especially Jon Snow), and said that Labour was finished in Scotland. At the time I thought he was wrong, but we now know hen called it correctly. He was completely obsessed with the referendum defeat and it took my 45 minutes to get away.

 

The rest of the afternoon was spent reading cycling magazines – including a great story about two young guys who, in order to prove the innate generosity of people, cycled all the way from Lands End to John o’Groats having started at Lands End with nothing but a pair of union jack boxer shorts each.

There followed by another great dinner at the Claghaig Inn.

We met up with Linda and Frank again and they offered to take our bags all the way to John o’Groats. We have emptied out everything we will not need over the next three days.