Day Twelve - The Finish! - 65 miles

Today’s Weather Gods: who cares?

Today’s bottom state: grateful.

Setting off from Brora

As I wrote last night’s blog John was lying upon his still made up bed, fully clothed and fast asleep. Paul too was snoring gently, spread out in the room’s only double bed. It does not take much to send us to sleep now; the days are taking their toll and each day we are a little more weary. This morning I noted John was still in his clothes but roughing up the bed that he had clearly slept on, rather than in. It seems he was concerned that the cleaners might think he had shared with Paul if his bed did not look slept in! I tried to point out that these things were not frowned upon anymore (should he have had any interest) at which point he frowned at me and muttered something about Scotland and men in skirts.

After loading the car and retrieving Geri (who had not been allowed to stay in our place because of the dog) we set off initially for the beach in Brora to view the North Sea. We obviously were not thinking about just how much of it we would see today. Afterwards it was once more north along the coast road. I had woken up this morning wondering if it were too much to ask for that the last 65 miles would be downhill all the way to John O’Groats and it would appear that it was. After a relatively flat start we had some of the hardest hills we have had for many days; short, steep drops into coves and hard short climbs out again. So much for all my authoritative statements on the state of Scottish hills in yesterday's post. It was all a bit too much like Cornwall except that our legs had now had 11 days of preparation. But the weather was good, the sounds, smells and sights of the sea to our right provided a distraction as did the hills to our left which were bright yellow with gorse bushes. This was the terrain until it got very flat before Wick, where we had lunch before pressing on for the last 17 miles of our trip. Wick is small and friendly and the location of the shortest street in the world: Ebenezer Place. Blink and you will miss it (we did).

Road to Wick

World's Shortest Street
 (it is the face with the door on)

The last few miles were flat through a few small villages and isolated cottages. There is one final ascent just before the end (but it was not as hard as we had been told it would be by a local in Wick). As we reached the top of this, our last hill, the tip of northern (but it was not as hard as we had been told it would be by a local in Wick). As we reached the top of this, our last hill, the opened up before us. Straight ahead across blue water were the Orkney Islands, looking so much closer than their ten miles distance. Below us to our right, and two miles off, was John O’Groats. It was larger than I expected although still only a small settlement of grey houses sitting in the brown scrub of the landscape. We free wheeled down all the way, crossing into the village side by side (how else could we do it?) and down to the harbour for the statutory photograph by the sign. The last 65 miles of a 954 mile journey were complete and three very happy cyclists dismounted for the last time from their bikes.

Finished!

What are my initial thoughts on completion? Satisfaction rather than elation is how I might put it. It has definitely been a memorable trip and will be more so once I have managed to unpack the memories of each day; currently they have blurred into one and I think it will be a few days (and a good night’s sleep) before I am able to look back on them with more clarity. But we have completed what we set out to do all those months ago and in doing so met some wonderful people, seen some of this country’s most beautiful areas and experienced some of its most horrible weather. Would we do it again? We have differing views on that particular question. But we all agree that it was worthwhile. 

Finally, we would like to thank all of you out there for your support in all its various guises. We hope we have been able to pass on a sense of what we have been up to in this blog and that in doing so we have either informed or entertained (ideally both). Paul, John and I would also like to say a big ‘thank you’ to Geri for driving the support vehicle: collecting us and dropping us off again; carrying spares; arranging accommodation around our ever changing plans, and so much more. Without her support this trip would not have been possible.  

John, Paul, Mark