Day 16

As it was a new day, we all hoped for a slight improvement in weather. However, after eating as much of the youth hostel's continental breakfast as we could, we were met with "heavy drizzle", which got us soaked in a few minutes. Also, there was one of the dodgiest starts to the day, which involved carrying our loaded bikes over flights of steps to get over a bridge.

The weather was bad, and although the road was an A road, it was single track the entire way. We were surprised anyone used the road, the largest town we found before Tongue had two houses, one of which was a pub.

The weather got worse and worse, but after about 20 miles it died down completely (to drizzle), which made us very happy. The rest of the day was much nicer, there were plenty of hills but they gave us great views.

From LEJOG Day 16

Tongue youth hostel was small and cosy, gave us views over the sea, and best of all, had home-made cake and rolls. In the evening we thought about the distance we'd ridden - 15 days ago we arrived at Tintagel very close to breaking point, but we were now at the top of Scotland.

Physically everyone was fine- no sore muscles or bums, however, we were all apprehensive about our bikes. A mechanical failure at this point would be devastating, and all we wanted now was to get home for our holiday! Also, we were all very mentally tired - Nick pointed out we'd been working 7 days a week, from 7am to 6pm, so it isn't really a surprise we went to bed that night at 9.