JOGLE 2019

Distance: 63.7 miles Elevation: 2635 ft Average speed: 13.3mph https://www.strava.com/activities/2441799480 Ride report (a shorter entry today, as I've not taken many pictures!): Another later start today with a good cooked breakfast to see us on our way. After the stress of yesterday evening's ride into Edinburgh, I was slightly apprehensive about getting out again, however, after a short, pleasant spell on the canal tow path, we managed to navigate our way through Edinburgh suburbia without any incident. Once out of the city, we had stopped for a quick flapjack break, when Dad's phone rang. Mum had left Edinburgh shortly after us, and had headed towards the planned coffee stop in Broughton, only to discover that the A701 (our planned route) had significant roadworks and was shut. After gleaning important info from the friendly local postie, Mum gave us a call. With the phones out, we re-planned the entire day's route and headed north towards the A702 instea...

Distance: 43.3 miles Elevation: 1839 ft Average speed: 11.6 mph https://www.strava.com/activities/2439340695 Ride report: Day 5 of 15, a third of the way through the trip - seems like time for a "rest day". Except, with time limited by the amount of leave I could feasibly take, and a planned trip to France with friends at the end of the month, we've gone for a short day rather than a day of no cycling at all. After a bit of a lie-in and a good cooked breakfast, we left Perth at about 10.30am.  Navigating out of the city was interesting, but with only a couple of very short bits of accidental dual carriageway, we were soon out into the countryside. Such different surroundings to the Highlands! Noticing that there was a cycle route signposted to Kinross, where we'd be meeting Mum for coffee, we decided to follow that instead of the route I'd planned and loaded on the Garmin. Oops. The road very soon "rose up to meet us" and once the g...

Distance: 86.8 miles Elevation: 3218 ft Average speed: 12.4 mph https://www.strava.com/activities/2437342032 Another early start as this was the furthest daily distance of the whole trip. As we packed up the bikes, a couple of fellow travellers arrived with their steeds - electric fat bikes! We were rather jealous as we looked at our leg-powered skinny tyres, and hoped our route would be kind to us (spoiler: Ha!) The weather was overcast, however the promised headwind still hadn't materialised and the loch was glassy smooth as we rolled out of Aviemore. Contemplating the day ahead We pulled over for a banana/flapjack stop in Newtonmore, where the wet roads suggested that we'd managed to miss the worst of the early rain. As we left again, we had one of the highlights of the trip so far for Dad as a red squirrel ran across the road in front of him (fortunately avoiding our wheels!). We met up with Mum at the Snack Shack in Dalwhinnie, having followed a nice qui...

Distance: 75.8 miles Elevation: 3800ft Average speed: 11.5mph https://www.strava.com/activities/2434060303 Ride report: When planning this expedition and putting the route together, today was the day I was most worried about, mostly due to the amount of climbing late in the day. It was a hard day, but not as bad as I'd envisaged (i.e. we both made it with both bikes, and it was still light!). It helps that the strava route planning tool I'm using massively overestimates the climb, but I'll try to forget that at the start of each day so it's a nice surprise. Still, it's been a long day, and in writing this, it's strange to think that only this morning we were up on the Dornoch Firth! Pre-ride - I think the bikes were more ready than we were! We made an early start of it today, real shame to leave the excellent airbnb behind, but we knew we had a lot to do. The day started with a good test of the brakes, as it turned out we went down the steep st...

Distance: 70 miles (Dad), 37.7 miles (Rachel) Elevation: 3478ft (Dad) Average speed: 11.7mph https://www.strava.com/activities/2431266312 Disclaimer - this is Dad's Strava record for the day, for reasons that will become obvious... Ride report:  Well, that didn't go to plan! Today started out well - the sun had come out and the views were spectacular. Couldn't be more different from yesterday. We celebrated by getting the team colours out on show, nice not to be wrapped up in waterproofs! The cycling team in team kit Full team selfie! We left Melvich at around 8.30, and started the day with a climb uphill. After a couple of off-and-ons for cattle grids, we had a nice downhill section before once again turning uphill. This is where it all went a little wrong... The first time my chain fell off, I thought it was annoying. The second time, I was a bit concerned. After it came off for the third time, I was about ready to pitch the stupid bike off a cl...

Distance: 46.8 miles Elevation: 1788 ft (though there is some disagreement here, as Dad's Garmin seems to have gone off on it's own, flatter route!) Average speed: 14mph https://www.strava.com/activities/2428386795 Ride report: Scotland holds about 90% of Britain's fresh water, and I think rather a lot of it fell on our heads today. When I first had the idea of cycling the length of the country, I rather foolishly imagined two weeks of glorious sun, riding through beautiful countryside. I'm sure the countryside is  beautiful, we just couldn't see it today! We left Thurso just before 9 this morning, and headed out to the top of the country. There is some debate over what constitutes a "true" end-to-end trip, so to make sure we covered all the bases, we started at Duncansby Head (the north-east "pointy end"). I foolishly didn't bring a good waterproof cycling jacket, so after having donned my regular mac to get the bikes off the ca...

Well, here we are - welcome to the MovingHouses JOGLE! (Blame Dad for the team name, and me (Rachel) for the cheesy graphics). We've spent the last few days in and around Thurso, exploring Caithness and Orkney, but can't put it off any longer. Tomorrow night's accomodation is not in Thurso, so we'd better get the bikes out! Tomorrow, we'll be heading out to Duncansby Head (the "pointy end") to start the ride, and have about 50 miles to cover on our first day. Easing in "gently"... Mum's got the route sorted for her vital role as support crew/team driver, and even has a co-driver/navigator! Huff the Puff swotting up on the route Big thank you to everyone who's sponsored us for this crazy journey. We've already raised over £1000 (inc. giftaid) for our three charities, the MS Society, Mind and Macmillan, which is fantastic. For those who've asked, here's our fundraising page: www.virginmoneygiving.com/andyhouse ...