Day 2: Inverness - Kinross

It was great tucking into our 'free' holiday inn breakfast, but it meant that we were a bit later leaving. Fortunately all the kit had dried out overnight so we set off with dry kit and in sunshine.

It was a steady drag up into the Caingorm mountains, nothing as steep as the South Hams, but long climbs and for about 20 miles we slowly wound up to Schlod summit at 405 metres. We tried to avoid the A9 where possible, taking some of the smaller roads. This was much nicer but didn't do our average speed much good!

First stop of the day was Aviemore at 31 miles. I was expecting a pretty mountain ski village, but was fairly diasppointed! Still it had the essentials (Tesco).

After a nice 10 miles on smaller roads we were back on the A9 and the headwind started to pick up as we began climbing again. It was a long slog of about 30 miles on a busy road, into the wind and mostly steady climbing so it was a relief to reach the literal high point of Drumochter summit at 462 metre and have some lunch, sheltering from the wind behind a lorry in a layby!

From here we had an 11 mile descent. It was quite bizzare pedalling hard downhill and only going about 15 mph, but the further we dropped the less the wind was.

Will was keen to stick on the cycle path at the side of the road so we ventured onto the pothole and gravel ridden track from time to time to mix things up.

By the time we reached Pitlochry we had lost most of the height gained and stopped briefly outside the Bell's distillery but no whiskey this time.

The rest of the route was straightforward, following the River Tay through some pretty towns, into Perth.
As (seems to be) usual, the last 20 miles down to Kinross was hard going. The wind picked up as the rain approached and the race was on to get to the hotel before we got soaked. We just about made it before the heavens opened. Staying the night in a travelodge at a motorway service station, so had to walk into town (in the rain) for a Chinese.

One of the toughest things about today was the lack of places to buy food and drink, it was pretty barren in the Cairngorms. Tomorrow looks set to be the same as we don't actually pass through a town until we hit England.

Vital Statistics:
Distance cycled: 132 miles
Time on bike: 8 hours 44 mins
Average speed: 15.1 mph
Total ascent: 1771 metres
Max altitude: 462 metres
Max speed: 32.1 mph

Mechanicals: nil!
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device