"Nobody said it was easy"

Well, where do you start? Let's try Ardlui, on Loch Lomond. We started off in beautiful weather at about 9 am on a clear and cool morning. We were very keen to get away from the main road before the Bank Holiday traffic started pouring back into Glasgow, we cracked on quite happily for a couple of hours in sunshine but the road got busier and busier until it was pretty uncomfortable being constantly buffetted by cars and lorries. We turned off and took a back road into Glasgow and were then on home turf for a couple of hours (even popped into our local supermarket to pick up more water) before heading south through the lovely fishing villages of Halfway, Hamilton, Blantyre and Larkhall where the entire populations ran out of their homes to greet us and threw their hats into the air on our arrival; that was a dream. In fact all the aforementioned are pretty nondescript, characterless places and the residents didn't even know we were there (there was bunting out, but that was for an orange parade in about 6 weeks time). The next 60 miles or so were up and over several passes on terrible roads into a headwind and dodging lorries from the mine and the "under construction" wind farm (I'm sure they'll grow lots). I've struggled a bit today and in truth have held Stuart, whose as strong as an ox, back; we finally plodded into our final destination at about 7.30. The girls have done a fabulous job and managed to book a best western hotel + dinner for a song, after such a tough day it's a real treat to have such a fab place to stay, well done Sarah and Maria! Tomorrow can be a fabulous day (despite the weather forecast that would drown Noah) when we hope to cross the border into England, move over half way and end up in Garstang, Lancashire before dusk. Today we rode 114 miles in 8 hrs 40 minutes, 15 seconds; the name of our final destination? Lockerbie, which puts my trivial moans into some sort of perspective. It's a lovely wee place by the way.

On line at last!

Hallo, sorry we haven't been communicating too well, but we haven't been able to get online for two days. We've had two very contrasting days so far, but at the moment we're sitting in the Ardlui Hotel and have 240+ miles under our belts after two days cycling. We left the imaginatively titled "Seaview Hotel" in JOG at about 8.30 on Saturday morning. JOG is pretty grim and there's nothing much there, even the guy who organises the photos for Joglers couldn't be bothered to turn up. However we did get a fabulous send off from Sarah and Maria who had banner, whistles and horns; it was the most exciting thing to happen in JOG since 1937. We had an hour's climbing out of JOG in misty weather until the got to the coast road when the sun came out and we had fab views over the sea. Unfortunately at lunch time the rain started and it poured down until we finally reached Drumnadrochit at 7.30, 132 miles from JOG. Our support team did a brilliant job finding a great B+B run by Mad Maureen who could not have been more accommodating. Refreshed, and with dry clothes we set off again this morning in misty weather, our first stop was after 1 mile, when we got a "I was there" picture at Urquhart castle. The weather picked up a lot once the sun burned the mist away and we spent the most of the rest of the day in sunshine. Even the Great Glen was kind to us, we've never been through it in anything other than rain, but this time it was fabulous, bright sunshine all the way through with fantastic scenery and breathtaking atmosphere. The climb through the glen isn't all that steep, but it's 6 or 7 miles long and a steady incline that gradually saps your strength; but it was well worth it today, we've really caught the sun and look like we've been on holiday. We've just had a fabulous roast beef meal at the hotel and are a couple of pints / red wines down and looking forward to what we know will be a tough day tomorrow; we're aiming to get about 10 miles south of Moffat, so it'll be another 120+ mile day. The highlight (apart from getting there) will be going through Glasgow, home territory at last! By the time we finish we'll have cycled through most of Scotland and we'll be within striking distance of England, which will give us a great boost.

A revelation

Hello to our three followers! Great to have you on board. well, it's not long to the start of our Jogle adventure (we drive up to JOG on Friday and start the ride on Saturday morning). We're now casting our eyes heavenwards for two reasons; one to check the weather (it's glorious in Glasgow and has been for several days (concerned it'll be too hot), but before that it was wet and windy for a week (concerned it'll be too wet and windy) and secondly looking up to God and asking him why on earth he gave us the idea to ride from end to end. Oh crikey. It'll be great, though; just want to get started. Hopefully the blog will be interesting and amusing; I think it should be possible to get mid day updates from the support team as well as some sort of feedback at the end of each day. However it'll get tedious to read about saddle sores after the first few days, so hopefully you'll be able to interact too! Any advise short of "stop!" is welcome. I'm writing this principally to assure you all that we haven't just disappeared with your cash and that we are going ahead, but also to see if I can write a post using my dongle (good trick if you can do it). Given that internet access will be patchy at best in the B+Bs we're likely to stay in I thought it best to invest in some technology. So here goes. Also wanted to thank you for your support so far. We're up to about £1800 with power to add during the rest of the week.