Stirling effort

Choice of full English or Scottish this morning. Both were enormous but we powered through. Great haggis and black pudding! Andrew’s breakfast attire was more suitable today as there were 14 other guests and they were all respectable elderly people.

Steve found a shortcut for the first few miles, but as it involved an unnecessary hill, Andrew and Pete went the long way. The first 5 miles or so being mainly downhill. The Southern Uplands continued to be pretty until we left them. The rest of the day was geographically quite boring. We passed through the undelightful towns of Lanark, Carluke and Falkirk.

There’s a fairly sparse and unpopulated area just to the east of Cumbernauld and Airdrie that we went through. Every inch of the roadside was covered with rubbish. Where there was a larger space, van loads of stuff had been dumped. It suddenly dawned on us we’d entered the demesne of the legendary Clan McFlytipper. It was appalling!

By Falkirk Andrew had processed both his breakfast and his lunch and so we stopped at a delightful Nisa Local store by some council tower blocks to refuel him. He has the metabolism of an F1 car - we’ve never seen anyone need to eat so much, use it so quickly, and still lose weight! Lucky bugger - Pete wishes he could be like that! Like owning an electric car, we’re all now suffering from Andrew range anxiety. There aren’t many council estate fag and sweety shops in the highlands 😱, so he’s gonna need to stock up.

Finally made it to the hotel on the Uni campus in Stirling. It’s north of town so good for an escape in the morning. It’s very ‘corporate’ and totally unlike the last few nights lovely inns, but the radiators work so washing can be done. Unfortunately the restaurant was fully booked by the Physics department so we had a half mile walk to the only other local restaurant. Still, we got to watch the US Open rather than having to discuss Newtons law of Relativity or Einsteins contribution to Thermodynamics (this from Andrew who got grade E in Physics)!

stats 72 miles, 3532 feet

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