Well, f@@k me!

Today was always going to be about the weather. We’d known for 6 days there was a lot of rain forecast for today. This morning all the forecasts (BBC, Met Office, XC etc) said ‘proper’ rain all day, for all of our route. Woke at 7am - proper rain. Breakfast at 8am - proper rain. 9am - still proper rain! My Dad once said ‘If you want to know what the weather is like then look out the window’. But we went one better. We looked at the rainfall radar (great app by the way). It’s like a huge window in space showing what’s happened in the last 60 minutes. From this we saw the wide band of rain we’d seen out the hotel window was due to pass over by 9:30. There was another band about 20 minutes behind it. All travelling North, just like us, at about 10mph. All we had to do was leave at 9:30 and ride as fast as we could to stay in the dry spot! As I said before, our motto is ‘nothing can go wrong’! The first 17 miles involved climbing to the Pass of Drumochter at 1515 feet. This is the highest point of our whole journey. Unbelievably we made it in the dry. Captain Faff stopped to refuel (again) in spite of scoffing a bigger breakfast than the other two combined. Then we had 16 miles down hill, but into a north wind which made it quite annoyingly hard, to a nice bakery cum cafe in Kingussie. We even made that with a few minutes to spare before the rain arrived. Had a big lunch, some awesome milk shakes, and looked at our ‘window’ again. It said ‘eat slowly, have pudding, then coffee, then head out in 45 minutes’. So we did.

The next 30 miles or so were damp but not raining. Mainly, I think, because we were riding in the clouds! Andrew took a wrong turn at one point and ended up or rather, down in Aviemore! The non-presence of his companions alerted him to his mistake. Companions waited while he climbed back up the unnecessary extra hill.

Should probably mention the route - NCN route 7 all day which runs alongside the A9 for miles. Many parts have been recently resurfaced so it was quite fast and easy riding, which helped us to beat the chasing rain.

Made our hotel in Carrbridge just before more rain. Bizarrely there was a traction engine driving down the high street. We assume it was the Highlands equivalent of a high speed car chase by a cash strapped Polis force.

The guy who checked us in asked how wet we got today. When Andrew told him his response was ‘F@@kin Hell, we’ve had half the rain in Scotland here today’.

All we could say was ‘F@@k me, how the hell did we get away with that?’

Good food and good beer in the hotel.

stats 64 miles, 2769 feet, 2h37m faffing time

(Apologies for the language 😂)

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