Day 13: Wednesday 3rd August Braemer to Tomatin Approx. 63 miles

The theme of hills continued today, although the weather seemed to have brightened as we departed our lodgings. The hotel where we dined the previous night had me thinking 'maybe I will and maybe I wont' (Little britain), lots of stags heads, big fire, very ordinary food, and the owners had a rather crazed pug which started offering its rear end to us in a rather contorted and frenzied/disturbing manner.. I won't say more but I couldn't help thinking there was perhaps something in the water in this sleepy village not far from Balmoral... Incidentally, you may have to put up with some poor spelling, punctuation and grammar from now on as our excellent editor Pamela is now off to France. This will also mean more no more maps and pics till next week. Soz.. So back to the ride, feeling quite tender from the day previous, we set out on a steady ten miles or so, but expecting some more climbs. The first two or three came easily however, there only a certain number of climbs I can do in a short period and eventually I had run out of steam by the time we reached a rather long hill. By the time we reached a hill at Cockbridge, Matt and I decided it was just too much and decided to push. The weather had gotten steadily worse too and we were greeted with high winds at another ski resort. After lunch I found my rhythm a bit at a hill near Bridge of Brown, although steep I stayed with it. As the ride began to level out with the worst hills behind us we found we still had at least 15 miles to go to be in touching distance of Inverness, and no accommodation booked. We struggled on northward eventually finding a special bike route alongside the increasingly hairy A9. After turning off some way later to find a bnb we fortunately stumbled across a very reasonable one and got settled. I must say that the weather combining with the steep climbs has made the last two days perhaps the most challenging of the ride so far. I know myself and Matt are feeling very sore, but hopefully the next two days will be somewhat easier. Incidentally if anyone wants to join us at the finish line this Saturday afternoon please let us know, particularly if you have a large people carrier and bike rack! LOL, don't worry the journey home is all planned although some of it very recently, and we should all be in London for Sunday night.