Beautiful day. (Relatively) warm especially as I’ve now started riding with a T-shirt under my jersey for warmth. Only a few minor showers.
Wind below 7 knots from every direction in different minutes.
Traffic heavy mix of tourist self-drives, trucks, coaches and mini-busses, and maybe 5 or 6 cyclists. A few motorists got impatient stuck behind four slow cyclists and took significant risks to get past, others waiting timidly for an invitation to pass, most waiting patiently and moving past us without dramas as the opportunity arose, we would get off the road when possible to let built up traffic pass if the tailback got too long. While the other LEJOGers had several close passes during the day I only recall one. With only a very few exceptions motorists throughout Scotland and England have been very patient and courteous to cycle tourists wandering slowly along and stopping randomly in odd places.
The Hotel at Bridge of Orchy was picturesque and hand nice carrot cake, Tyndrum was a busy bunkhouse centre for the West Highland Way, Rannoch Moor was pretty and natural.
Glencoe was stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. The sun shone through the scattered clouds on the grass and the Heather and the grey rocks, the burns babbled and the scale was just the right mix of huge and enclosed. Our lunch of cheese and jam sandwiches prepared on the benches outside the restaurant at the Kingshouse Hotel gave us time to soak in the view.
Bumper to bumper traffic in places on to road down the Glen but generally in good humour as everybody is rubbernecking the view and highly aware of the risks of hitting something moving or otherwise.
As usual our banter quieted as the shadows lengthened, the legs tired and the lodgings beckoned. A nice venison pie and two pints of ‘swampwater’ as John calls ales and it was bed after day of great beauty.
