Getting home

To get home we had to get a train from Thurso to Inverness, another from Inverness to Edinburgh and finally from Edinburgh to Kings Cross.

The Thurso train was due to leave at 6.50am so we had decided that rather than try to get there the day after we had arrived at John o'Groats we would stay in Thurso and get up eraly for our train. That meant we had a day to hang around John o'Groats and Thurso.

John o'Groats is not as much of a disaster as Lands End, it is saved by having a working ferry port, but it is still gift shop central. When planning the trip we had toyed with the idea of using the day to get a ferry to Orkney, but in the end we were a bit overwhelmed by what we had just done and too short of energy for anything taxing.

We hung around the gift shops for a bit, bought postcards for friends and family and wrote to Barbara at the Clun YHA, the man in Shrewsbury who had sponsored Pete and the lovely coffee-drinkers in the Culture Cafe at Bentham.

Our hotel reception said that if we got the right bus driver they would be willing to let us take our bikes on the Thurso bus. We got a great driver who, when he heard we had just finished the end to end, was really happy to let us prop up our bikes on the back seat.

We had a very entertaining bus ride through all the small hamlets between John o'Groats and Thurso and got within a mile of Dunnet Head, the most northerly point on the UK mainland.

Thurso is an odd place. If it had a horse, it would be a one-horse town. It has a lovely sandy bay, but not much is made of it. There is nothing you could call a sea front and the row of houses closest to the sea actually back on to the bay and face towards the town.

We hung around and then ate in a surprisingly stylish bar where Pete had the biggest imaginable plate of fish and I had tortilla chips and salsa. We stayed in another private bunk-house which was not as bad as Glastonbury - a fish and chip shop underneath it rather than a rock and roll pub - but it was out of the same mold - scruffy and cramped.

At the crack of dawn we started the 14 hour train ride to London, all the way down the east coast.

The train left Thurso at 6.49 and travelled across rolling and empty grassland reminiscent of Russian steppes and not at all what I expected from the highlands. It was a single track line and took from 6.40 to 10.35 to get to Inverness. A quick change at Inverness and another four hours of travelling, this time through much more interesting countryside, often very close to where we had been cycling - I glimpsed the road to Shin Falls on which we had cycled. It got us to Edinburgh for 14.24. We ran for the London train but missed it by less than a minute leaving us an hour to wait. The Edinburgh to London train travelled at a decent speed and took us down the East coast, with wonderful views including across the sea to Lindisfarne. I was taken by surprise at how flat it was for most of the way.

We got to Kings Cross just before 8.00 and Hilary was waiting. Pete went off to Paddington for the sleeper to Truro and I went home to a welcome home banner across the front door and a fish pie in the oven. Brilliant!

What a trip!