LEJOG Day 30 - Aviemore to Inverness

Aviemore to Inverness today, 40 miles.  Considerably colder this morning, 46 / 8 degrees, chance of rain today.  That means all the clothes on I think!

Waiting for the heat to come on at the B&B this morning.  Most of the places we’ve stayed in seem to run it for an hour or two in the morning and the same at night.  Chilly start for early morning types!

Going over the Monadhliath Mountains today, including over the Slochd Summit.  Taking the Speyside Way / NCN 7 which is supposed to be beautiful.  The book gives two options for part of the route, one which involves a stony track not good for road or touring bikes.  Knowing how ‘ambitious’ this book can be about some of the trails we’ve been on, we’ll pay close attention and take the alternative route!

We’re staying at a guest house on the River Ness in Inverness tonight.  Not going by Loch Ness as this route takes us too far east for that, we go by little Loch Moy today and tomorrow looks to have firths, lochs and a kyle.

“Don’t know whether to wash these clothes when we get home or burn them.” Steve, this morning.

Left Aviemore, lovely crisp fall morning.  Cold, but a good cold - autumnal, with some pretty fall foliage about.  Passed this bridge about 6 miles out.  Steve stopped the bike because he knew I’d have to take a picture!

Climbing up into the forest, heading toward the mountains and there was a noise, a new noise and it matched with every rotation of the wheel.  Steve checked it out - ‘Houston, we have a problem!’  The rim of the back wheel had cracked / split.  We were 8 miles outside of Aviemore and 28 miles from Inverness on a road in the middle of nowhere. Called a bike shop in Inverness, Highland Bikes, who were very helpful.  They said they had a wheel of the right width / diameter so we continued, after disconnecting one of the rear brakes, carefully, to Inverness.  

This is a problem

Diagnosing

And we made it to Inverness!  Didn’t have to call a tandem tow truck.  Unfortunately once they started looking at the bike, they realised the wheel they had wouldn’t fit.  Placed a call to JD Tandems, they could send a replacement rim.  Unfortunately, it wouldn’t arrive until Thursday afternoon (it’s Tuesday), which means the bike wouldn’t be ready until Friday - this is a problem.

Time to consider options:

- wait till Friday and rejig all the hotels, arrive home on the 12th

- take the east coast route up the A9 and book new hotels, still having to pay for the old hotels because we can’t cancel at this point

- can the whole thing and head home

- rent solo bikes and continue on tomorrow

We went for the solo bike option.  Picking them up tomorrow morning, having the tandem repaired in Inverness, continuing the route.  For goodness sake, we only have 169 miles to go!

Otherwise it was a beautiful day!

Looks like a good route

A tale of 2 routes - look right and it’s the A9 traffic, look left and it’s beautiful hills for as far as you can see

Today’s summit

Todays cow farm

Another beautiful bridge 

Another farm, a wind farm

Inverness in the distance 

The hills are lower now

The River Ness

Brewery and distillery!

Some options…

Look what we found!

Pages and pages…

How nice, steps from our guest house

Dinner by the river

Guest house on the river

Steve asked if I wanted to split a bottle of wine tonight, I said, ‘No, I’m driving tomorrow.’  Wish me luck!