Day 1: Excited eejits

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Day 5: Bicingles bonanza

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 A quick reminder: the plan today is to ride up (and down) Mt Ventoux 6 times; twice each on the 3 roads leading to the summit from Bédoin, Malaucene and Sault. That’s 274km in length and climbs a total of 8,800 metres, coincidentally equal to Mount Everest. I’ll start in Bédoin and in order to complete the challenge I need to have done all 6 climbs and get back down to Bédoin by midnight.  And so it was that, as if this was an entirely normal thing to do, which drove 3 of us to get  up at 11pm, make some coffee, get ourselves sorted and drive the 15km to Bédoin for the start.  I should explain, the 3 were me, Drew (fellow cyclist and awesome athlete) and Badge, our enthusiastic and all round legendary support driver and DS.  Ascent no. 1 - Bédoin (1st climb) From the website:  The southern gateway of the giant via Bedoin extends over 6,300 hectares of forest on the Ventoux, which ranks the village among the largest municipalities in France. It is also the ...
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Day 0: Terminated Trains

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Last week, the weather in the Western Isles was, according to pretty much every weather app going, pretty decent. That is to say 18 degrees and sunny.  Last Saturday night, engineers had not decided to make a dogs dinner of repairs to the railway.  Timing, as they say, is everything.  Today started innocently enough. I had, months ago, planned transport which would take me from Wiltshire to the tiny village of Tyndrum, 55km from the Port of Oban and the smallest village in the world to have 2 train stations.  Getting to Tyndrum was, in theory, reasonably straightforward. Get the train to London, ride across London to Euston, then take the Caledonian Sleeper train north.  Those overnight engineers had other ideas though. The late finish had caused havoc with the train service from Bristol to London, with the train which I had booked and 3 others being cancelled.  I plumped for an earlier train which was apparently running, and set off. The 10km or so to Chip...
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Day 4: Lochs & Lumps

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Skye is an assault on the senses. That is to say that on nipping in to pub opposite the campsite last night I saw more people that I’d seen in total in the past 2 days. To be fair it was a busy pub. But you get my point.  Whilst there, I took the opportunity to plan the next 24 hours. What to do with this day which had been given back to me thanks to the high winds of Mull Sound which seemed like a lifetime ago.  My first thought was to take a loop around Skye on a route which just so happened to pass the door of the Talisker distillery. Then I realised that it was impossible to do a tasting tour without at least 2 weeks notice.  My next plan was a loop of Loch Alsh and Loch Dutch. A cunning plan indeed since it would provide an opportunity to dump my tent & luggage at a campsite 30km away and continue the rest of the loop without carrying it all, and it would put me 30km nearer the ferry to Mallaig the following morning, meaning longer in bed. Lovely. That sorted, I ...
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