Where camping is fun for disabled and able-bodied together

DAY 9 - The Rain Cometh

Its flipping wet!!! thanks go to my good wife (Sarah) for providing first class home cooking for us all!! The house has been turned it to a 4 star B&B.

Excitement here as I have been drafted in to help cover the support for the lads cycling. Possibly due to Tim's poor geography. The next support team (Mat & Alison) according to Tim, were suppose to be in Lancaster but it turns out they are in Gloucestershire! some 5 hours away. The weather has been awful.

I am now putting my foot down to catch them up! somewhere near Dumfries. James

10:12pm What a day driven 212 miles following the boys on their journey through some fantastic scenery. A big thank you to Mark for providing rock solid support for the past 8 days. Really enjoyed it to day and I am astounded at the generosity of some people when they learn about Woodlarks and what Ben, Tim and Craig are doing for the charity.

We struggled to find a campsite for miles and I was getting worried when we hit over 80 miles! one had been burnt down and the other closed years ago. Whilst thinking what should we do I pulled into a pub car park and asked two locals at Hollybush where we might find a campsite. Think we were nearly looking at getting the lads into a B&B as they were wet and very cold. They simply stated there isn't any for miles! oh dear I thought - however they kindly rang their parents up and asked if we could use their chalet and they said yes. They kindly let the lads stay for free - this is extremely generous and I couldn't quite believe it. I still cannot now even when they handed over the key! Anyway emptied the car quickly of all the lads stuff and headed very quickly back to Carlisle.

I took loads of photographs today - see them in the photo album page.

James

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I woke in the early hours of this morning to the sound of rain lashing against the window of the bedroom we were staying in at James' house. We had expected the weather to turn but it sounded like a storm raging rather than a shower of rain.

Conditions hadn't improved by morning and we sat contemplating the days riding over a huge breakfast prepared by Sarah. We stuffed down as many calories as we dared then got waterproofed up for riding. The rain had eased by the time we set out and I thought that maybe we had got away with the worst of it. Oh how wrong can you get?!

The ride through Carlisle was briefly interrupted when we stopped to help two cyclists also heading to John O'Groats who had a snapped gear cable. A quick look at the bikes confirmed that they needed a professional repair but once again I was amazed that someone would set out on trip like this with loaded panniers and bikes in a crap condition.

After a couple of wrong turns we were heading up the A7 to Longtown and the weather was getting steadily worse. When we stopped at the "Welcome to Scotland" sign, we were battered by a squall and this set the scene for the next 3 hours of riding. We were assaulted by a mixture of cross and head winds which often caught us off guard, pushing us across the road. The lashing rain made it difficult to see and chilled us quickly when we stopped to eat. The conditions were the worst I've ever ridden a road bike in and we all hope we've seen the end to it.

Fortunately James had decided to follow us for the day as we would have no support van until late afternoon. He met us at Dumfries with hot drinks, food and shelter at the back of the car and without doubt he kept us going today. We pushed on towards Moniaive and the rain and wind started to ease. At one point we stopped for a brief food stop and for the first time realised just how beautiful the scenery is in this part of the world.

We continued along quiet roads winding through farmland and forestry plantations and without the rain it really was very pleasant. However some nasty head winds kept the pressure on and even the long swooping downhills did give us a rest as we had to cycle down hill to keep ourselves moving at a reasonable speed.

We were due to stop at Carsphairn but knew there wouldn't be any campsites so we pushed on to Patna. The campsite turned out to have closed several years ago so James sped ahead to find somewhere for us to stay. We pushed on but were getting very tired as we were by this time approaching 90 miles.

A voice mail message from James somewhat cryptically told us to ride to the Hollybush Inn pub as he had a solution. We thought he had got us camping in the pub garden which we would have been grateful for. In fact he had done much better. He'd gone into the pub to ask where he could find accommodation and a customer had taken him up the road to his mums place where they had a holiday cabin. When they found out we were doing a charity bike ride, they said we could use it for free!

By the time we rode up to the place we were completely knackered and had resigned ourselves to riding a further 8 miles to Ayr. We were all amazed to find a lovely and very comfortable wooden cabin at our disposal with enough beds to sleep us all as well as heating and a HOT BATH!

I expected to wake up at any minute and find myself following Bens back wheel in the rain! Such actions by complete strangers restores your faith in humanity. The owners just seemed happy to be able to help out but after the hardest/grimmest day of riding so far, it helped to save the moral of the whole trip. (Name and details of this lovely holiday let in a beautiful part of the country will follow shortly).

The local pub rang us at 8pm to tell us that the kitchen would be closing soon and would we like to place an order! How often does that happen at home?!

A hard day in the saddle but once again we owe a debt of thanks to a small number of people who have kept the show on the road. Sometimes it seems that the riding is the easy part....

So tonight we sleep in comfortable beds again and tomorrow we head up to Gourock (via Aye and Irvine) for the ferry to Dunoon. The forecast is for dry weather but the northerly head winds are likely to persist. Tomorrow night we might get our first frost!

Craig