Day 6 - The "P" Word

Ride stats: 94.6 miles, 3,684 feet of climbing, total time 8 hrs 36 mins, riding time 6 hrs 26 mins

Firstly we want to express our gratitude and thanks for the donations generating the emails from Virgin that continue to arrive in our email - thank you all.
Secondly we want to thank people for leaving comments on the daily posts. It is a huge motivation for us to know that people are following our adventure and we love reading what people have to say so please keep them coming.
Thirdly you may wonder what Joy and Julie get up to in the long hours between feeding us.  These photos may give you a clue!

We woke to a little bit of drizzle and the promise if we were lucky of a reasonably dry day.

We should have warmed up indoors

Today's leg started with 10 miles of reasonably flat terrain allowing us to get the stiffness out of the legs before we started a 30 mile section that was steadily uphill.
We soon came across our "official photographers", the same group of lads from the North East that we met at Lands End and at various points all the way up here.  This time we made a note of their names; Peter, Richard and Jamie (unfortunately the 4th member of their team Matt had to retire yesterday because of knee trouble) and their charity, Martins Children's Hospice in Selby.
We rode together for a good 30 minutes exchanging stories about our rides before they stopped for a comfort break - just as well because we had been pushing ourselves to keep up with them!
They had a pretty bad experience on the top of Shap Fell yesterday.  They told us that they had their first puncture (the P word!) and only had one spare tube which then failed and would have left one of them stranded. Luckily for them a cyclist riding in the opposite direction sold them his spare tube to get them going again.  This is typical of the camaraderie between cyclists, they will never leave a fellow cyclist in the lurch if they can help out.
We have been very careful to date not to mention the P (puncture) word as tradition says that as soon as you mention it you will get one. So guess what, they mentioned it and Jeff got the teams first puncture about 10 minutes after we left them - not bad since we had covered 450 miles.
A new tube inflated with a CO2 canister meant we were soon on our way and the luckily for us Joy and Julie passed us on their way to the next stop - our frantic waving for them to pull over so we could check the tyre pressure and get a new tube was very nearly in vain as the girls thought our vigorous waving was because we were so pleased to see them. Fortunately the penny dropped just before they disappeared from view and they pulled over - bless them.

Service stop 1

And 2 - Nice hair!

Having completed most of the days climbing in the first 40 miles we made pretty good progress up towards Glasgow although the westerly wind was now against us as our route was more west than in previous days. 
Hitting the metropolitan area at East Kilbride and Paisley to the south west of Glasgow brought the now familiar stop start at traffic lights, considerably slowing our progress.  This was all forgotten as we crossed the River Clyde on the Erskine Bridge and witnessed spectacular views in nice sunny weather to the west, to the east over Glasgow and north towards the Trossachs.

With only 10 miles to go we made quick progress on the A82, the road we will be following all day tomorrow, to our guest house in Balloch by Loch Lomond. A quick wash down of the bikes and clean of the chains ended our chores for the day.

TLC for the bikes

Upon hearing the details of what we were up to Alison, the owner of the Woodvale B & B, gave us a discount on the room price and told us to add it to the donations - people really are nice.

We have said in previous posts that Robin's daily weather and traffic reports are really important for the next days ride but he always adds a humorous note to make sure we go to bed with a smile on our faces.  We thought we would share last nights with you -
"I have come up with what could almost be called a cunning plan......
With all the woollen mills you will pass in the next few days which are usually full of Americans having jumpers made in the family tartan for all the folks at home.
Back to my plan, i thought you could go in one of them and get yourself some cashmere underpants !
Now you can’t wear them under your cycling shorts because we know what happens when you do that.
Don’t we Ian .....!
However just think how comfortable you will be wearing them at the end of the day !
One word of warning though gents do not get them wet.
They will be round your ankles faster than your trousers after a hot curry."

Until tomorrow.




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