Inverness

Dramatic beauty

Althouh my wee visit to the Outer Hebrides was brief it has wetted my appetite for more. One of the highlights of my trip was definately the folk I met along the way. I was accompanied back to the ferry in Stornaway by Tom, a much more experienced cyclist from Edinburgh. Tom had some great tips on cycling and I enjoyed his commentry on the local wild life...it was a bit like being on holiday with Bill Oddie! ;)

A Highland promise

The ferry arrived into Ullapool at 5pm which left me about 4 1/2 day light hours to cycle 50 miles to Inverness. I cycled most of the way in the sunshine however when I was approximately 15 miles out of Inverness, the heavens opened and it began to pour down...it was also beginning to get dark, yikes!

Again I felt it was time for some diviine intervention! I swithered about stopping at the side of the road and trying to flag down a van in the hope that they would take both me and my bike but that didn't seem like the right thing to do at the time. Then I came across a flood in the road which was being fixed by workmen; I asked them what my chances were of getting through the flood and back to Inverness before night fall but they told me it was impossible...so then I asked them how they would feel about me putting my bike in the back of their van so they could take me back to Inverness after they'd fixed their flood and to my surprise they were totally ok with that!

I was delighted. My dad and Al had slightly different responses to the situation; "what do you mean you're in a van with two work men hitch hiking a lift back to Inverness?!"...in fact Al was having none of it and insisted on coming to get me although he was unsure about how he would find me; "Oh that's easy" I explained, "I'm in the yellow van with the yellow flashing lights at the side of the road!". Here endith my adventure.

I was somewhat relieved to arrive back at Charity's and Alan's place. On seeing Charity I fell about the place in hysterics, a combination of relief and over exhaustion I think!