Day Twelve Inverness to Tongue

Day Twelve

In an attempt to medicate my way through a challenging 89 mile day in the Highlands on a pair of clapped out and loudly protesting Achilles - I think I may have overdone it a little.

I didn't bother with the small-print for Ibruprofen or paracetamol dosage, but I suspect I sneaked beyond the 'ample' zone.

My suspicions were aroused when, from out of nowhere, I dredged up from the dark recesses of my mind the Laurel and Hardy classic, 'Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia' and proceeded to belt it out on the quiet country roads north of Inverness for far too many minutes, including the high-pitched Oliver Hardy bits. (Which I thought I did rather well). I also started to bleat back at sheep.

But whatever the painkillers were doing in unlocking my self-restraint, they weren't doing a whole lot to dampen down the pain from my ankles. (Up until now, they've had the decency to take it turns. But since yesterday they've decided to call it a day together).

This makes cycling a somewhat tricky and painful proposition. At one point, first thing in the morning, I was seriously concerned that I was about to be overtaken by a lady pensioner on a Raleigh Shopper - thankfully, she turned off before she caught me.

I appreciate that being a man, my gender's reputation for pain tolerance has gone before me, and at least 50% of you reading this may already have jumped to the hasty conclusion that I'm simply being a bit of a baby.

But I know they 'really' hurt because my usual array of coping mechanisms: counting to 100, panting sharply like I'm in childbirth, recalling every swear word I've ever encountered (and what a surprisingly rich, varied and textured tapestry that turned out to be) failed to work.

I then tried to see if I could get away with - sort of - not pedalling. I started by trying to pedal one-footed, with the least painful foot, but this threatened to slow my already pedestrian pace down to mere crawling.

I then discovered an initially promising change in pedalling style (toes pointed downwards at all times making me look like an overweight ballet dancer forced onto a bike) but after five minutes that hurt too. So I just made do with counting down the miles.

There were 89 of them today. Over the bumpy Highlands with wind and midges thrown in too. 89.57 miles to be precise. Go on - count them - I know I did, every last flippin one of them.

But 89 is far too big a number to deal with at the start of the day. Knocking off a couple of miles, so you can tell yourself, 'only 87 to go' doesn't deliver the kind of self-deceit or delusional motivation I require.

You have to break these numbers up a bit, play a few mind games with yourself, trick yourself. Set small targets and easily achievable goals.

As we rolled out of Inverness this morning, I knew from memory that we had 154 miles to go before John O'Groats. So the first target was to turn those 154 miles into 150 miles (that way, I had a small moral victory after only four miles).

The next target was to cycle until 9.30 am, watching the clock on my bike as each minute passed. The next milestone was to reach 22.25 miles, which would be exactly one quarter of today's ride. Only six miles later (at 29.66 miles) we'd be a third of the way through the day's ride. Then I'd ride to the next village for a shop-stop and a can of Irun brew. Then another minute of cussing. And so on. And so forth.

I'm also a great one for pulling faces. I don't have a poker face on a bike; if it hurts, it shows. One of my idiosyncrasies in these painful situations is to press my tongue against my chin. You may remember that this was a look perfected by Fleegle (the dog-like lead singer of the Banana Splits) but I've added a pair of cross eyes to the look. If you can imagine Fleegle on a bike, cross-eyed and moving slowly, with that trademark tongue out, and suffering from Tourettes syndrome, that gives you a pretty good approximation of what I looked like today. And for the full kids-TV / cartton mash-up of the 70s, imagine Steve as Road Runner. Meep meep !

In the end we made it. By we, I mean I made it to remote town of Tongue and Steve didn't die of boredom in the process (I dont think Steve has travelled so consistently slowly on a bike since it had a pair of stabilisers on it). He's being very good about it - but what he wants to do is scream out with every fibre of his body, 'come on Slatter, stop moaning and move your lazy backside'. Today he asked me 17 times (I counted) if I wanted him to carry my panniers - 17 times I managed to keep myself from temptation.

The trouble us, Steve needs an additional challenge to keep himself interested. This ride is not challenging enough for him. You see, Steve, as I may have alluded to, has competed in national cycling events, whilst I have only watched national cycling events. That is a small, but crucial difference, which is becoming increasingly apparent each passing day.

But what a beautiful place Tongue was when we finally arrived. If you don't know it, its on that northern Scottish coast, the one pointing towards the Artic which we generally forget about. It is very remote. The road we took (the main road I'll add) was single track for about 40 miles and passed almost nothing except stunning valley and loch views, that unfolded one after another.

But being remote has its problems - supplies of essential goods just aren't that regular. We know to our cost becuse the YHA we are staying in doesn't provide meals, so tragically we had to go to the pub. Equally tragically, having had two pints (between us) we were told the pub had no more ale. So Steve and I had literally drunk Tongue dry.

Which was a shame because we needed to raise a toast to our last night on the Lands End to John O'Groats trail. Tomorrow, if all goes well, we will arrive in John O'Groats - the adventure over.

Still, me and my ankles have got to get there first ! I'll let you know how those last hilly 65 miles go.