They only went and done it, sir! 🚴🚴‍♀️🚴‍♂️

Wow! It’s the last day, the last few miles, the last hurrah!

Nice ride today, especially for Pete and Andrew because they had a 14 mile head start on Steve. Wind behind and a gentle rolling Sutherland landscape. They even had faffing time to investigate an old abandoned phone box that had become a sticker board for Lejog and nc500 travellers.

Interestingly, as soon as we crossed over to Caithness, the landscape changed to wide open vistas and flat plains. We’d seen the last of the hills.

Steve’s Day

Log book entry day 15 Tongue to John o Groats

- Awoke refreshed after a decent night’s sleep to a lovely view over the Kyle of Tongue. Very good breakfast (yet not in the top 3 - so good have some of them been).

- ⁠suddenly in this part of the world, LEJOGGERS and cyclists doing other routes like the NC500 converge and you come across many more than we’d encountered since early in the trip. There were a couple of blokes having breakfast who’d done it on lightweight road bikes with a paid support van. I didn’t actually tell them I thought they hadn’t really done it at all, but once they’d heard about my 2 tonne battle cruiser rig, I think they knew who the daddy was. I omitted to mention my panniers had been transported for me for 4 days.

- ⁠I had 14 miles of basically hills before I reached the planned start of todays ride. So asked for extra marmalade for my toast.

- ⁠Setting off for the final cycle of the 15 day trip felt really strange. I cycled out of the hotel, panniered up and…..started riding. Something felt distinctly amiss and I was struggling to identify it. Then it came to me: I had become unaccustomed to leaving in this way. Morning departures had become associated with 15 minutes or so of standard faffing, but without Ernie (ne Captain Faff), progress from the hotel entrance to cycling was instantaneous, and this hitherto forgotten way of doing it had unsettled me.

- ⁠The climbs were a bit climby but anything less than 15% gradient now doesn’t feel that bad, and the scenery was continually awe inspiring.

- ⁠I had a loose arrangement to meet the others for lunch in Thurso and progress to the final signpost henceforth as a threesome. Having had the misfortune to visit Thurso once previously, I was in no hurry to get there but a sinister looking grey mass behind me to the west somewhat stiffened my resolve and I had a pretty focussed ride, attaining speeds high enough to be confident of outrunning the midges.

- ⁠The further east I got the brighter the weather. The expected tailwind today delivered on its promise and was like a turbocharger on the open parts of the road. Great cycling.

- ⁠I duly reached Thurso and met the boys before they had chance to run away. By mutual agreement they went ahead while I consumed a scotch pie containing a puzzling wet grey-brown substance. Gawd knows what was in it but it kept me going for the rest of the afternoon.

- ⁠I caught them up again a while later. I didn’t hang around eating my lunch (you wouldn’t in Thurso) but still, I was a bit surprised to come across them at mile 50. Pete explained that the faff count had been very high, what with it being the last day and all.

- ⁠We duly cycled to the end together, happily faffing as we went, at which point Pete’s account will pick up I’m sure.

Back together

Team run in the last 15 miles to the full tackiness of John O’Groats.

We were greeted by Clare who had bought us all a miniature of Doors whisky at the distillery. Huge joy, relief and toasting all round. Absolutely amazed that we made it and we’re still talking to each other!

One good thing about approaching the end from this direction(west) is that most lejoggers don’t! So most of the cyclists we saw were actually doing the NC500. This gave Pete a huge superiority complex. Just 500 miles? Call that a bike ride? We’ve just passed the 1000 miles mark! Pussies!

However, along the way we did meet a nice chap called Harjinder who was cycling Inverness-JOGLE-Tunbridge Wells. Kind of put us back in our box, except he was just starting out, so he may not make it - right? Good luck to him, hope he does.

Journey done, Andrews butt heaved a sigh of relief …..but we had to cycle to the hotel - 7 miles back into the wind with a bonus hill! He loved that, the others could tell. They’ve learned that he only feigns utter exhaustion at the end of each day to encourage his mates. Inside he’s full of joy and raring to go.

The Mey Hotel is really nice. Run by a lovely couple.

We enjoyed a few beers before we retired to shower. Problem was that three showers all kicking in at once blew the fuses. Immediate panic from the owners but soon fixed.

Great dinner. Clare was amused and greatly entertained by our tales of bravado and derring-do. She’s very polite 😂

No worries today about quantity of beer, wine, dessert wine. We had a flight of interesting Wolfburn whiskies to round the night off. Our host isn’t just a great chef, he also knows his whiskies.

Home tomorrow. I’ll publish a roundup of conclusions and lessons learned in the next few days.

Stats 59 miles, 3281 feet. Steve did about 14 miles more