Day 11

Tuesday, June 20
Motherwell to Inveraray
135km

Best cycling scenery ever.  Worst cycling weather ever.  Wonderful day.

Bright and sunny when we woke up.  Cool though, so we wore leg warmers and long sleeves.  Brought our heavy-duty rain jackets as well...this is Scotland after all.

First 20km of the day followed bumpy cycle paths along a river into downtown Glasgow.  We had 10 pages of directions today instead of the usual 5 or so.  The orienteering made an interesting challenge.  (I kept us on track...Charlie and Roger would have been proud.). Stopped for a snack at 35km in the Glasgow suburb of Clydebank.  More cycle paths until Balloch at 58km, where we stopped for lunch.  That's where the rain started.  It rained heavily and constantly for the rest of the day.  It was terrential!

The afternoon is where the scenery really impressed me.  First was a wide valley, then a long, narrow loch that we cycled along for 15km.  All of this was lovely, despite the rain, but our climb away from Loch Long was absolutely unbelievable.

By this point the wind and rain were at their worst.  Together, they were occasionally blinding and had us all completely drenched to the bone.  Somehow though the weather just made our surrounding more powerful. 

We climbed along the side of a valley, with huge green mountain peaks disappearing into the mist all around us.  The steep canyon walls beside us had bunches of tall trees, rushing little waterfalls and jagged grey rock protrusions that seemed to have been forced through the mossy green hills they stuck out of.  It was stunning.  I tried to capture it with my waterproof camera, but there were so many raindrops on the lens that all the photos were blurred. A photograph couldn't capture the magnitude of the scenery either...it wouldn't all fit in the frame!  I can't imagine a more magical setting.

Cresting the peak, I soon found myself flying down a long decent at 45km/h.  I was relaxing from the effort of the climb, and replaying the scenery in my head when a huge gust of wind almost blew me off my bike.  No exageration - I thought that it might knock me off my wheels.  I've never felt such strong wind.  It swirled around, pushing us in every direction.  Headwinds brought us to almost a complete stop, while tailwinds sent us hurdeling down the wet roads.  And crosswinds required absolute concentration and blew us from one side of the lane to the other.  With wet roads, wet wheels and a steep slope, it was hard to slow down and impossible to stop.  A very stressful decent, but thrilling all the same.  My forearms hurt from all the braking.

The last 20km of the ride were tiring.  We had to keep moving to avoid getting chilled.  The scenery was still lovely, but didn't compare with what we'd just seen.  I kept my head down and didn't pay it much notice.

I hope that oure last 4 days in Scotland have more great scenery in store for us.  What a beautiful country.