Day 9 our last day of cycling

Early Start from Inverness Youth Hostel, really warm even at 7 in the morning, our intended start time.

This being our last day and one of our longest being 120 miles to John O Groats




Surprisingly no one really had any muscular problems, the most common complaint being painful Achilles Tendons and painful bottoms, so we all felt we would get through the day and were excited to be on our last day.

We saw a few other guys doing lejog who were hoping to reach John O Groats the next day.

As this was to be a long day we decided to have more frequent stops but stop for less time, this worked well as we racked up the miles well and stayed on schedule all through the day to lead us to a finish of around 7:00pm

We had a lot of steep hills to deal with, fortunately these tended to be long slow inclines with massive, wicked descents. Some of us achieving speeds up to around 46mph!....don’t worry it was a national speed limit zone.

The wind grew steadily stronger throughout the day which we thought had slowed our pace but to our surprise we maintained our schedule

Our last stop was a Tesco superstore in Wick. The mood was euphoric….we only had 15 miles to go, despite David’s efforts to convince us otherwise there was a big sign saying 15 miles to John O Groats…….we were all hardcore cyclists now, 15 miles it was as good as in the bag

Badams felt he was fit enough to finish the last 15 with us, so we were back to full strength.

We wanted to stay together for this last stretch with the exception of Tim who was off to complete his additional mission of completing the most southern (Lizard Point) and northern (Dunnet Head) points of mainland UK, so he turned off after only about a mile.

We laughed and chatted all the way, we had a couple of wee stops together after downing our “Monster energy” drinks, Ben was coping well despite his knee still not letting him forget the previous 800+ miles he had completed and still being weak from being poorly.

As we approached John O Groats we lined up across the road as we rode, well tried to anyway….so we could all finish together

Hannah was waiting for us to video us as we arrived.

The wind by now was seriously strong and the sun was starting to go down, we arrived at the sign post at about 7:30pm, we previously discussed jumping in the sea on arrival, this idea went out the window when we got there as it was so cold.

Because of the lateness of our arrival the sign wasn’t out and you have to pay for it if it is there, so we all had our picture without the fingers and just the post.

Not much time for celebrating as we had 2 tents to put up, food to eat and laugh’s to be had.

Putting the tents up was not easy as it was still blowing a gale but we got there eventually.

About 2 hours after we arrived at John O Groats, Tim made it, we were so pleased to see him as it was pitch black and still very windy, he had a rough time of it but did with his mileage being 147 for the day compared to our 120….well done Tim (this was him the next morning)

Whilst Guy and Ben B went off in search of a takeaway the rest of us went to the pub, later we would eat our takeaway in the pub and then make our way back and go to bed