DAY 1 - Glencoe to Balloch 68 miles

First things first: the Smith-o-meter!

 Not too bad then, for the first day.

The weather when we woke up was not much better than when we went to sleep, but better enough for us to feel happy to have a good go at the ride ahead.

After a substantial breakfast we headed a little way north to meet the send-off party at the new Glencoe visitors centre.



Once we'd coaxed Nero out of the car we set about finding a suitable place to sprinkle some of Dad's ashes. Marie spotted a very nice little spot in full view of a mountain amongst a clump of trees. Happy with this we said a few quick words, gave the ashes a sprinkle and promptly headed back to the cars where I got ready for the first stint of cycling. We said our goodbyes (all too soon really, as Lee and I felt we weren't able to do their presence justice the evening before after having had such an early start and a long drive) and got ready to set off on our way.

Thanks all SO MUCH to everyone for making the journey all the way up here to send us off.

So off we went, south on the A82. As the climb chart at the top of the page shows, the first half of the day was all hills and the second half relatively flat, so we decided to break the day into four chunks and each do half of each section.

The hilly bits were certainly hilly and WET, but the hills were long and shallow rather than short steep climbs, which meant we could hit the 'granny gear' and stay in the saddle and grind it out. I was climbing for about 20 mins on one particular hill, but despite the pouring rain and passing trucks we both enjoyed the cycling.

The routine found its own flow and the Moggy driver would pass the cyclist and then sit in the next layby until the cyclist went past, and so it went, giving us the occasional photo opportunity. In the main though, we just had our heads down, stopping only if absolutely necessary, as we were keen to get out of the rain despite our enjoyment.

I handed over the first baton at the ski centre and Lee slogged out an average 12-13mph for 18 miles to our lunch stop at Tyndrum. We ducked into the Green Welly Stop for a sandwich and a break from the rain, and immediately bumped into a similarly dressed person who crossed normal social boundaries by starting a conversation with us without wanting anything (there seems to be something quite magical about doing this kind of activity - it breaks down normal boundaries so that people feel free to start up conversation).

It turned out he was also a native of Birmingham and was doing the JOGLE (John O'Groats to Lands End) - he had started out a couple of days ago, camping along the way. We chatted for the duration of lunch and traded information and routes for about an hour then bade each other farewell before donning our (wet) waterproofs once more and hopping on our respective saddles; he was heading for Glasgow, us for Balloch (12 miles or so nearer).

The difference in the roads at this point was marked - they were much flatter but with a larger aggregate on the surface so while easier, they didn't help our speed much: we averaged about 15-16mph during the afternoon stint.

Fewer laybys on this stretch (due to the road running alongside Loch Lomond) meant that we didn't see each other for quite a while and at various points we each thought the other had got lost, but we put our faith in my newly acquired Garmin bicycle GPS unit, which works really well and certainly has our seal of approval after today.

We finally arrived in Balloch at about half past four, checked into The Balloch House, locked the bikes up, showered and washed our clothes out. We had a couple of very good pints of Deuchars IPA with dinner and spent a few hours in our room (which was actually more like a sauna, thanks to the fact that we'd turned the radiators on full blast in an attempt to dry out our clothes/shoes) fighting the urge to sleep until we'd made all the preparations for tomorrow and updated the blog.

Verdict then for day 1: a great success! Oh, and another £5 donation from a kind local couple who saw our CMA t-shirts and after inquiring as to their significance promptly forced money on us - our plan of using the CMA shirts as our evening  uniform seems to be working!

NEXT STOP: Ayr - 51 short miles, hopefully a little drier although the same weather man seemed fairly certain that the rain was heading south at about the same speed as us.