to lanark, the following 10 miles must have taken us 2 hours.
Because we were making slow progress, we decided to grab some food from a
petrol station and get going.
At abington we met a couple of other bikers who were on their way to hoik
we pointed them in the right direction and they reciprocated. We were
surprised to find at this point we had only 43 miles to go, rather than the
50 we thought. Spurred on, we put our heads down a hot about another 10
miles down (the wind was not quite as bad as before 'lunch'.
We then joined the a74M which had a good quality cycle path, a bit of
shelter from the wind and a massive downhill - not terribly steep, but long
and gave us a bit a rest while still making progress. It was like this all
the way down to balnock where we had only about 15 miles to go to
ecclefecchan. Dave got a puncture around about here, so we stopped to fix
it then got back on the road and stopped after about a mile to do it again,
properly...
We arrived at 6 - considering the headwind and the later start, not too
bad. Ecclefecchan is small and quiet but the hotel bar (ok, it's just a
pub really) was buzzing. The owner (Joe) came out to meet us and put the
bikes away - a really friendly guy and not a little crazy. He's in the
middle of renovating the pub and we had to work our way through the
building site to get to our room, but once there it was very comfortable.
The bar was apparently a rangers bar and everyone was celebrating - thank
god they won today!
Feeling tired, but looking forward to crossing the border tomorrow. I have
a strange bruise on my right calf and sunburned knees but other than that
just enjoyin a well deserved pint.
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