Days 7 and 8

Well, it's the end of day 8 and it's been a long hard slog up into the wilds of Scotland. The rugged beauty does nothing to make up for the burning thighs suffered while climbing some rather unpleasant hills and suffering some beanfeast level winds.

Day 7
Robin joined today on the YJOG (when you can run), bolstering the team by an extra member and lead the unit out of York Northwards on the A19 towards Thirsk. Disaster struck about 5 miles in when Pete felt something go ping in his left hamstring and while he soldiered on gamely until Thirsk hoping for a reprieve, had to call the ever helpful support vehicle in for an easy and ice packed rest of the day.

The rest of the team left Thirsk after a toilet stop at the Texaco station in Thirsk (good toilet, ask the man for the key if you need it ;-) ), into the headwind from hell all the way to Northallerton. The Ledge was out in front up to Northallerton, which interestingly is the place where Robin's mum and dad first met, just thought you'd like to know. I really need to stress the wind here - in the face and blowing harder than the night after a vindaloo.

The headwind continued into Darlington and onto West Aukland, had lunch, which was uneventful, but satisfying. Then it was toughsville, with a mile of climbing to Toft Hill (godforsaken place that you have to climb up to, horrible. flat places are much better, we'd go for lincolnshire or holland) then on to Castleside for the stop for the night. Usually when you look at the map and it says 14 miles, it ends up being 20, but this time 14 actually meant 8, which was nice.

There was a massive 12% descent into the campsite (6 miles ahead of schedule) and the Ledge shot off up the next hill only to plod back down to enter the campsite. Pete made up for being crocked by making a superb chilli beef dish from scratch (real ingredients and everything, no packets). We then got bitten by endless midges again and woken/annoyed/irritated/allowed stereotypes to be reinforced by some pikey geordie children who insisted on kicking a football against our tents, which in true teacher fashion, Polly confiscated (it was comedy central).

Day 8 (day of doom)
A communal decision was taken (so he says) that Pete would sit the day out until the lunch break to allow the hamstring to repair further, but the rest of the team made the monster climb out of Castleside on the mighty road North through the Northumberland National Park. While the views were stunning, the headwind was back with a vengeance, making even normal downhill sections tough.

Those steady slight downhills where you can really build the speed were down to 10mph making it a tough old crawl into the icy North. We saw several icebergs and much snow. And some coal. It was the A68 the whole way with progress slow, a lot of stopping due to a great deal of climbing. There was a huge climb up to Hadrians Wall, which disappointingly didn't exist despite the adverts to the contrary - we have dispatched a letter to Advertising Standards. Scenery started to get increasingly barren and rugged as we made the final ascent to Carter's Bar (413m) and the border into Scotland. The weather came in, true to Scottish form, and it became freezing cold and drizzly making the team somewhat miserable after a tough hour of climbing. It was actually something of a low point for the trip, despite the obvious elation of reaching the border.

Then the section from Carter's Bar to Jedburgh was awesome, a solid 10 miles of downhill that raised our average speed for the day a whopping .5 mph. The scenery was stunning - proper Scottish mountainous rugged scenery, there were many photo's taken. On that point, we've kind of struggled with connecting up our camera technology (call ourselves IT guru's??), so sorry about the lack of pictures, they will follow, honest. After a hard earned lunch in Jedburgh it was the final few miles to Alan's dad's mates dogs tennis partners builder who is letting us use his field (and computer) super generously tonight. Big up to Duncan, an awesome guy with some excellent Cortina's.

Now comes the difficult decision over whether to go up the West coast and take in Ben Nevis (we are planning to cycle up one side and then run down the other with the bikes on our backs over burning coals), or the central road route through the Cairngorms (you have to say that in your best scottish brogue). More later when we can - not sure if they've discovered the internet further north! tata, The Team

See you later