Chris G’s cycling blogs. They’re for me, not you!

  Stats : 43.4 miles, 2805 feet climbing, 1 ferry 1 left behind gilet, 1 lost headphone jack (me) 30 miles, 1 ferry, 1 train, 1 sleeper train (Dec) 47 miles 1 ferry, 1 train, 1 sleeper train (Kieran & Frankie) So the day finally comes when the team splits! The last night together hadn’t been quite as chaotic as Derry had been at the end of the Ireland end to end, and Stornaway had been a bit of a disappointment. It looks a bit down on its luck, lots of empty shops and restaurants and a general shabbiness about it. We did find a little place that although got off on the wrong foot with to much choice of beer (5 pages worth!) turned out to be great! Food was good and the 2 young guys running the place had some great tunes on, a mixture of Gaelic traditional stuff mixed up with more modern stuff. It was so good we asked for the playlist! Then it was early to bed for the extra early call in the morning. I was planning on staying in bed, but Frankie’s alarm, him clumping round the r...

  Stats: 72.6 miles, 3,944 ft climbing, 2 beers, a 20mph head wind and 2 stone circles! Well it’s probably not what most people will remember today for, but it’s done! Another trip ticked off the bucket list! The day started out with breakfast at the B&B, Dec talking to the other couple staying. He was a cyclist and he was returning to complete the trip he started early on this year, his wife driving the support car. He had got as far as Berneray when the ferry broke leaving him stranded. Again it shows how lucky we’ve been on the trip so far. Packed and ready to go 10 minutes early, you’ll find hard to believe, the first stop was to be just 5 miles up the road to the Calanais standing stones, a number of stone circles in a small area around this part of Lewis erected about 5,000 years ago. We got to the small circles first, me and Kieran riding up to them over the peat. Stood in the middle on a beautiful early morning with no one about Kieran decided to see if he could connect...

  Day 4 Stats: me and Frankie 75.8 miles Dec & Kieran 84.8 miles (we’ll come to that later…) 4,376 feet of climbing, 1 ferry (we’ll also come to that!) 2 islands, 4 very tired cyclists… We were all a bit worried about today. A couple of big climbs, a whole lot of nothing after Tarbert 42 miles in, and an early ferry to catch, which if we missed it, would proper scupper everything. Over a somewhat heated debate after the pizzas we came to kind of a consensus that it was 21 miles to the ferry and we had to be there for 10, so no cocking about and we needed to be away for 7.30, at the latest, to make sure that any mechanicals ( I’m looking at you Dec) or other misfortunes would be able to be taken care of and still make the ferry. Amazingly the alarms went off at 6 and despite Kieran’s lack of sleep due to the amount of snoring coming from the other 3 in the shed, ( he was chuntering at 3 in the morning about this was the last trip he’d ever do, why was he putting up with this etc...