Day Twelve

Bettyhill to John o'Groats

Awoke at 7 to the beeping of an incoming text from North Scotland's Mobile Bicycle Repair Man: "Sorry, can't help you: I'm on holiday".

To add insult to injury that dastardly woman from 'Misery' appeared to have broken into our room in the night and taken a hammer to our legs.

We hobbled around the hamlet of Bettyhill in the early morning mist assessing our situation. Our situation appeared to be thus:

1. The nearest bike shop is 30 miles away in Thurso and apparently they're very unlikely to leave the shop and come out to us.

2. Bettyhill consists of The Bettyhill Hotel, a shop, a post office and a couple of houses. Everyone seemed genuinely concerned about our predicament with lots of teeth sucking, but generally were pretty unhelpful.

3. The people in the shop said that Hamish (no joke) across the road is a real whizz with bikes... but unfortunately he's in hospital.

4. The post office said there is a newspaper taxi that comes from Thurso 'some time this morning', which could take Em (but not her & her bike) back to Thurso, so she'd have to get the spare part, somehow get back here and hope we could fix the bike ourselves with no tools.

5. There is a bus once a day to Thurso, every day except Thursday. We've lost track of what day it is but according to the law of Sod we deduced it must be Thursday.

6. The hotel manager can take Em + bike to Thurso but not until 3pm, making Em's ETA in JoG sometime after dark.

It seemed our only option was to attempt to cycle the bike in top gear for 30 miles to Thurso - not an attractive option given the monster hills ahead of us and the state of our inflamed tendons!!

The situation was finally resolved by Em sweet talking the guy at the bike shop in Thurso to leave his shop & drive 60 miles to fix the bike - result!! We are astounded by just how remote it is up here in the north of Scotland & how unprepared they seem to be for End2End cyclists!

So at 11am we set off along the Northern coast of Scotland (unbelievably again into strong headwinds) to complete the final 50 mile leg of our journey. We were on a real high with the thought of finishing (or maybe it was just the combination of painkillers?) and, with glorious sunshine & breathtaking scenery along the rugged coast, it was a fantastic day to end on. We rolled into John o'Groats in the late afternoon, hardly able to comprehend what we had achieved. What an incredible feeling to actually finish this - at times we really didn't think we'd make it.















Thank you to everyone for your constant support and encouragement - can't wait to see you all and tell you the stories we didn't have room for on the blog!

Vital Stats:

Total miles cycled: 996 (some clever navigation kept it sub 1k)
Total hours in the Saddle: 85
Max speed: 46mph
Calories burnt: c.150,000 (=calories consumed!)
TTT:5.5
Low point: Climbing for 3 hours on the morning of day 7 in driving rain and agony as it dawned on us that not making it was a real possibility.
High point: Setting off from Bettyhill today in glorious sunshine, bike fixed - knowing we would make it.
Total raised for Save the Children: £1,325 (and counting...!)


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Location:Bridge St,Wick,United Kingdom