NC500 - What a difference a week makes...

Myself and London Alan are sat at breakfast.  Alan tells me he has slept well.  My thunderous snoring completely failed to wake him from his much needed sleep.  He says he was unconscious as soon as his head hit the pillow.  A proper solid 6 hours sleep he says.  Nothing I could have done would have woken him from his dance with the night.  It's often said there is nothing as good at initiating a deep sleep than a hard days work.  It's only taken 7 of them and approx 300 miles of hard riding to get London Alan unconscious whilst in the same room as me.

I look out and see a man pushing a tall trolley cage with by the sounds of it wobbly shopping trolley wheels past the dining room window full of what looks like dead cyclists.  Bits of Lycra poke out everywhere with an occasional limp arm and leg on show.  It's addressed to go to the recycling plant.  Very appropriate.  This 500 thing is hard work!

Back in our room London Alan is on the hunt.  He cannot find the top for one of his water bottles.  He remembers taking it into the bathroom during night but lost the top off it in the darkness.  He says he  heard it hit the floor, so he thought.  A night of broken sleeps leaves a darkened toilet full of unmentionables and used toilet paper waiting for the dawn before giving it a big flush which London Alan diligently did at 06:30.  His bottle top is nowhere to be seen.  Conclusion: it landed in the bog, was subsequently covered by all mixture of stuff from old outbound greek conveyor belts being wrapped in its paper and poo coffin and with a whimpering waterfall sound was sent on its merry way to the sewerage farm.

Two wheels on my wagon, and I'm still rolling along...

After several days of riding pretty much alone we're now being caught by many a snake.  Virtually all are on supported rides (I.e. no baggage) trying to do the 500 in 6 days or less.  They're now an infestation.  Like midges with a nasty suck, mainly on water bottles but take my word do not get too close.  They're moving fast; in wolfpacks, some lonesome types, two up tandems and some loaded to the hilt masochists.  Local game keepers have been hired to cull the slower feckers and the runts and take them for processing into bone meal and new hairy lycra underwear with designer 'gasping lip' flies.  The remaining small portions of overworked flesh is mixed in with other inedible animal parts for processing into Haggis.  Nothing goes to waste here.

I'm stood at the roadside having a pee and musing to myself if I will have any effect on the taste and colour of the local single malts.  Tastes like what?  Yep, that's Yorkshire Whiskey fer ya... A cyclist pulls up.  How's it going he says.  I start to tell about the hill just climbed and he interjects and says, remember me, shared a chicken sandwich with you in the Kinlochewe cafe in the pouring rain.  Grand lad to chat with.  His wife is meeting him in Ullapool to swap out his unmentionables and bottle tops.  He's targeting to complete the 500 in 6 days.  Again I fail to ask for his name but get him on video.  A couple of dutch riders roll up tall in their saddles.  We're all wearing high vis and hard cycling hats and are just missing a hole to look into.  I'm now getting nervous as one good shot by a game keeper will bag the lot of us.

It's a big hill climb today.  Another group of green bibbed cyclists pass us in dribs and drabs.  I suspect the bibs are green to meld in with the forest cos they're from a local school for Aardvarks (I think that was the name on the side of their school bus).   They know how good a shot the game keeper is but also know that his eyes are poor cos he mistakenly shot the school lollipop lady.   She's now mounted above his fireplace.

It's a charity run doing the 500 in 6 days.  One passes us on the long climb.  I turn my RB211 afterburners on and chat for a while until the lack of oxygen shuts me up.  They're on a charity run organised by the soon to be deceased head mistress.  It's for the Scottish Air Ambulance Service which in all likelihood will spend all of their well earned cash picking one or two of the lame and dying ones up somewhere around Tongue.

We work our way up through the Dundonnell forest following the Dundonnell river; a magnificent stepped cascade of white water rapids and falls beside the road up onto the 1050ft plateau.

It's a cold deserted place.  Mountains in the distance have a fresh covering of snow.  We start to descend from 1000ft down into the post glacial glen that feeds Loch Broom.  We're wet with sweat after the hard climb up.  The cold air rips at our skins.  I feel an ice rash develop as though I'm an aircraft flying through supercooled air.  Jeez this is fresh!  I'm praying for warmer airs as we quickly descend but stop here to look at the fantastic view of Loch Broom when we're half way down ...

We enter a hidden cafe and local arts shop on the way down.  They tell us of a couple of cyclists running the same route the day we were drowned in Glen Torridon.  It was freezing atop the pass and one cyclist who had no wet weather clothing stumbled into the cafe with oncoming hypothermia and was quickly thawed out in front of their stupendous log burner and with tons of hot tea and cake.  He promptly gave up and went home.

It's here that I also spent some time in a local carvers workshop.  Alec is an old retired gent now working piecemeal on bobs and bats.  He showed me the wooden model of an amphora he's carefully made from a mix of light and very hard dark woods which he will be entering in the local craft fair for judging this Thursday.  Clearly a man who has a love for his craft and a messy workshop with tools, bits of wood, glues and clamps piled atop one another and absolutely covered with a snow of wood dust; similar to my old work desk at home.  Like me he knows where everything is!

We're on the final run down into Ullapool.  London Alan is clearly annoyed with something.  His bike is off the road, upside down and he's fecking swearing at it.  We try to locate the cause of the br br br noise which has plagued his life since day one.  Front wheel is taken out and checked.  Put back in and the end nut and spring of the quick release lever drops off.  We're in long grass!  Don't move I say and with a bit of care locate the nut and the small black spring and re-affix.  I get my spanners out and set about all the mounting nuts on the mudguard and do a proper job of setting it up.  It's now clear of the wheel.  Alan is so happy.  I muse though that at this rate of attrition, in 5 days time I'll roll into Inverness dragging London Alan's bike frame behind me with a pair of determined eyeballs staring out across an empty handlebar clamp.  I figure I'll have Alec make them into a new key fob for me perhaps, in memory of Alan and as a memento of the Scottish 500 ride.

I'm in my BnB.  The sump pump is making a noise like an asthmatic with an 80 woodbines per day habit.  The middle aged French masochists next door have just knocked on my door.  'Mon dieu!  Ze noise.  Heet is loud n'est-ce pas?'  I'm sorry I say with a French accent and turn off all the room and bathroom lights.  After a timed delay the pump drops dead.  The walls are thin.  I fear they do not know what is coming their way about 30 seconds after I fall asleep.

Food is crap.  15 quid buy's a 3 day old mummified roast chicken with powdered mash and lumpy tasteless gravy.  I'm hungry so eat the lot.  Alan again has frogged off to another hotel.  But the good news is he is now happy to share future rooms with me.  He has learnt what is needed to help him sleep with a rampant cacophony of snores and says it'll help him no end in his relationship with his girlfriend back home.

I'm thirsty.  Its a thirst hard to quench tonight.  I take a deep slug of liquid from my lemon flavoured bok bok and suck on the nipple so hard I almost turned the dam thing inside out.  Tomorrow is a tough day.  We have 3500ft of ascent over 35 miles to get to Stoer right up on the west coast.  Alan has taken a photo of a man in a van with a mobile number on its side guaranteed to come to the call of ageing and broken cyclists on the 500 if needed.

He'll get £5 per pound from the local gamekeeper for my rotting flesh.

Warning.  Avoid eating Haggis for the next month.

There's confidence fer ya.

Nite..