f4f3 | Wherever You Go, There You Are...

So the weather this morning in Ardrishaig was grey, but it wasn't actually raining, as such. So I loaded up my rucksack and cycled home.

Many learning points from the day, the first of which is TAKE YOUR PANNIERS, STUPID!! Even if you think your traveling light, you'll end up with 4 banana rolls, a litre and a half of water, a waterproof jacket, a non waterproof jacket, a multitool a book and three bananas in there. And after half an hour, you'll notice. After four hours, you'll want to throw the buggering thing away. Panniers. Don't forget.

Second, this is Scotland - you can't rely on the weather. Inside half an hour I was sweltering, and after an hour I was down to t-shirt and (padded) shorts. See note above about jackets adding to the weight on my back. The weather stayed warm all day, without a drop of rain.

Three, have a fallback route. The plan was to cycle twenty miles to Claonaig, take the ferry to Lochranza on Arran and then cycle across the middle of the island, about another 24 miles. I reeled off the first 10 miles pretty quickly, since that's on the main Kintyre road, and I wanted off that ASAP. The next couple of miles were a brilliant shortcut around Tarbert, which saved me two big hills. Unfortunately the remaining seven or so to Claonaig were mostly uphill, and I found it tough going. No pushing, though, and I had time to head round the road to Skipness (though I was too early for lunch at the cabin, worse luck).

Across the water, Arran looked a bit like this:

Actually, it didn't, but I like the random inversion, so I'm leaving it.

The clouds were pretty solid over the centre, and that was my planned route. I decided that cycling uphill through rain was going to be no fun, and I took the coast road instead. I've been that way before, in the other direction, and my memory was that the east coast stretch was beautiful, and that the hill above Lochranza was an absolute killer. I spent about 15 minutes pushing up it, and it wasn't nice.

I decided to go for it anyway, and, after the briefest of stops at the Lochranza Distillery,

I started up the climb from sea level to 200 metres. Much to my surprise I made it with just one stop and no pushing. Either I'm fitter or the hill wasn't as high from this side...

Another lesson learned was that coming down a hill at 50 kph is a lot more dangerous than going up it a 5 mph. I should have stopped at the top and put my helmet back on, but completely forgot. No harm done, but enough potholes to make it a risky descent.

That out of the way, the last 10 miles or so were a joy, so much so that I had to drag myself away from Corry and Sanox, bribing myself with the promise of buying a picnic at the Arran Creamery and Skippers (?) smokehouse.

The fish place threw in a couple of slices of bread with the cold-smoked salmon they'd just sliced, and I bought some fancy orange juice and a small tub of crowdie from the creamery.

My multi-tool was pressed into service to spread the cheese, and improvised lunch on the Brodick front looked like this:

It tasted wonderful - best salmon and cream cheese sandwiches ever.

All in all, a wonderful day, topped off when I got home by an hour in the bath and some lovely little lamb chops (with fava beans and no Chianti).

Arran: It delivers.