Right, it has taken us three weeks beyond our finish to… erm.. finish this blog?! (sorry!)
Having uploaded Rach’s excellent account of Team Car’s adventures for the last few days of the trip, it is high time I filled in some of the details of our final few days riding to the End!
Day 9/11 New Lanark to Loch Lomond
This day started with a heart pounding steep climb out of New Lanark followed by my second favourite decent of the whole trip! A fast twisting section of the A72 out of Lanark carrying 25-30mph the whole way down it was great! Pete, stuck behind captain slow in a Rover, thought it was fairly tame at 20mph.
On from the twists and turns of the A72 we stopped for brunch in Hamilton where the pains of the previous nights drinking caught up with Pete to the point where we lost him on our ride out of town, Jude’s quick thinking and hi vis jacket had him back with us in 5minutes!
The hangover from 7 bottles of wine the night before hit Pete hard in Hamilton
Jude improvises a new signalling method to locate the lost and hungover Pete
finally found the Sustrans route into Glasgow, though instead of cycle path it should really be called crushed glass alley. Every corner was littered with smashed remnants of a Glaswegian picnic it seemed. Despite the imminent tire danger we cycled on and found the route to be very scenic taking in sweeps of the River through the heart of Glasgow.
Free wheeling on the glassy glaswegian cycle path
We stopped in at the saltmarket where the kind staff at Billy Bilsand Cycle shop indexed Jude’s gears for free! Nice one guys:)
With bikes fixed and new brake blocks purchased, we chilled in the unusually sunny weather on Glasgow Green with ice creams, it was very idyllic until some locals dealing something illegal 20m from us made Pete and me decide it was time to move on. Jude and Jenni, completely oblivious to these local transactions, were happy to hit the road as well.
chilling on Glasgow Green after ice cream in the sun
How many end to enders does it take to ride this bike?
Ducati poses can be achieved on a bicycle...
Heading out of Glasgow we discovered this amazing bike sculpture and many poses were tried and the ducati pose finally achieved on a bike! Shortly after said posing on sculpture Pete’s repaired tyre (the glass of Glasgow got to him) burst again! A quick fix and a chat with some inquisitive 10year old locals later we were back rolling along the sustrans route towards Loch Lomond.
2miles down the road from Loch Lomond Hostel we stopped for a pint, which turned into dinner in Balloch, leaving our bikes outside the pub. In this fair establishment for some time we all had some great grub but some pikey stole my whiskey mascot off my seat post!! then cycling the 2 miles from the pub to the hostel we had our 3rd puncture of the day, this time my tyre gave in to a large shard of Glasgow’s finest. bad times 
On the bright side our arrival at the Loch Lomond YHA was a pleasant surprise as it turns out the YHA is not a hostel but more of a castle come stately home…
Loch Lomond YHA!
Day 10/12 Loch Lomond to Fort William
This day started off as Rach mentioned with the boys “tinkering on the bikes”, or taking care of essential maintenance as we saw it. The saddle position on both mine and Pete’s bikes needed vital adjustment before we set off up to Inverness. Which meant that the girls had plenty of time to make a lead on us, or enough for me and Pete to blast along the shores of Loch Ness at 23mph with big grins, until our knees decided that was enough silliness and we slowed the pace to something more reasonable for the distance.
After catching the girls at Tyndrum we all enjoyed a greasy lunch at the local fish bar, I had the largest onion rings I had ever seen
MEGA ONION RINGS!!
We set off along the valleys up to Glencoe. Using me and Pete as wind breaks alternately leading the ride we managed to carry a good pace.
Formation riding to Glencoe
The hills were steady and long and the views impressive. With our differences in pace on the hills Pete and me decided to hide at the top of a particularly large climb and wait for the girls to cycle past oblivious to our whereabouts. Sadly we suck at being able to hide in 40cm high gorse and the girls spotted us straightaway, doh!
After each hill climb the decents were long straight and fast! To Pete’s frustration I blasted him on one decent using my tri bars, so he chased me down using Jenni to lead him out only to catch me when I thought it was all over!
Day 11/13 the separate adventures of the boys and girls – Fort William to Inverness
The penultimate day of the journey started out more sedately after the beasting downhills of the previous day. This days ride found us winding along the shores of Loch Lochy up towards Loch Ness where we stopped in at Fort Augustus for some well earned lunch. At this point in the ride we had two options to continue along the busy bland A82 or to divert to the other side of Loch Ness to the B862 which Pete said had a couple of climbs and then found it’s way back to the Loch to head along the shore up to Inverness. Having had our fill of A roads Pete and me decided to head off into the hills for a challenging climb, whereas the girls had the scent of age old brick work on the wind and wanted to visit Urquat Castle on the A82. Thus we went our separate ways for the afternoon with the plan of meeting in Inverness later, little did Pete and me know what lay in store.
The B862 was mean, brutally mean and nasty. A relentless 2mile climb out of Fort Augustus and we were ruined, making it to a scenic little loch we rounded a corner to see the hill continued upward!!
The never ending hill out of Fort Augustus
More of the never ending hill
Though when we finally arrived at the top we were rewarded with an amazing view, my favourite of the trip.
The view from the B862
Continuing on from here Pete and me abandoned conventional muscle power in favour of smug propulsion, drawn from the sense of satisfaction that our route had worked out way better than continuing along the A82. On route past Loch Ness on the northern side we stopped at the impressive Falls of Foyer, unfortunately it was a long walk from the road in our bike shoes.
The Falls of Foyer!
We arrived in Inverness 2hours before team car and the girls giving plenty of time to kick back with beers and admire Inverness Castle.
Inverness Castle
The last days early start meant we had an easy evening in Inverness cooking up a mean curry with loads of Dahl to carb load for the final push to JOG. The Inverness hostels kitchen was sparse on the utensil front so Pete cooked up the Dahl in a stainless steel salad bowl. Still it tasted amazing.
Day 12/14 Inverness to John O Groats! (only 122 miles)
Setting out early, everyone was a little sore headed and tired, so after a few miss turns in Inverness we were out onto the horrendously busy A9! ahhh it was nasty! massive lorries thundered past just a few feet from us as we tackled the first hills of the day.
the busy A9 out of Inverness
As we carried on further north the A9 became quieter and more winding as it followed the coast, we passed the Glen Morangie distillery but couldn’t go in for a drink as we still had a long way to cycle
Some time later in the ride Me and Pete attempted hiding from the girls at the top of a very big climb, we did such a good job that the girls didn’t see us. Though the peleton of buff soldiers they had picked up on that hill may have been distracting them a bit.
Pushing on for the last 30 miles we had a strong headwind making the riding really tough, despite this we saw riders from several other end to end groups and decided to try catching them through some formation riding. With me and Pete taking turns at the lead and Jude an Jenni marshalling the group as joint coxes we set a cracking pace and managed to catch up with a group of riders tackling the ride for Alzheimer’s.
Then finally after far too many more hills we made it to John O Groats! Team Car who had done a sterling job with the booze all of the second week were on hand with some champers to celebrate! The sense of achievement when crossing the finish line was amazing 12 days, 970ish miles and the whole length of mainland UK viewed by bike.
Thanks
After such a great trip, I would like to thank everyone for their support in this great adventure. Thanks very much to my Dad who provided awesome support and proved a great member of the team particularly when bikes failed at the start and end of that week! Thanks to Team Car! You guys rocked the second weekJ sorry about my smelly shoes! Cheers to Dave Cross and Becky for the flap jack slices at the start of the trip to help us through Kernow, they were well nice dudes! Thanks to Dave Megson for putting us up in Irby, cheers mate 
and a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has so generously supported our adventure with sponsorship!!! The charities we have raised money for were a great help to my mum last year and I know all of the money raised will help them to continue to support many more people.
