Day 1: Excited eejits

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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 1: Garmin Gaff

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It was one of those nights where it finally felt like I fell into a deep sleep 3 minutes before the alarm went off. That’s not unusual for me at the start of a big tour; excitement coupled with a healthy dose of mild peril.  Anyway, we awoke to a beautiful sunny day and headed down to find some breakfast. I had a feeling that the first 70km of today’s ride will be remote, so the breakfast would need to fill us well.  And fill us well it did, with a superb buffet offering which left nothing to chance. We lavishly forked out for a nice hot espresso, mainly because the free coffee was a) nasty and b) cold. I displayed my displeasure through the cheeky grabbing of a boiled egg on the way out though - I’ll enjoy that at later… We were joined at breakfast buy a guy also planning to ride the TNR. Turns out he runs one of the bike hire shops in Girona, so probably a decent rider. Also turns out we’re planning to ride it one day quicker than him. Hmmmm.  After some high level faff...
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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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