The last Tain miles were the hardest.

When we left the comfort of the Sutherland inn we immediately felt the cold
and had to chuck on some warmer gear.

We started strong and all the way to Tain we were keeping a good pace. In
Tain we saw a sign for alness (our first) and were surprised to see 16
miles, we had obviously made better time than we thought. So, spurred on,
we peddled hard for what seemed like 5 miles (we've got pretty good at
estimating) when we were greeted by another sign saying 13 miles - confused
we carried on for another 5 miles when we saw another for 10 miles - and so
on, until we reached alness after what felt like about 30 miles.
It was a day of extremes weatherwise, being calm and sunny half the time,
but gusting and in your face the other half. The sun came out quite a lot,
but we were also met with fairly torrential rain.

We arrived sore but happy at the station hotel at 6:15 - a good 10 hours on
the road with a few decent stops. The bar was full of surprisingly drunk
Scottish people considering it was 6 in the evening on a Thursday. We were
shown to our room (Dave made the nice girl showing us carry his bag for
him) which is basic and not completely functional, but to be honest it had
beds and a hot shower so neither of us cared.

We have since found that the berry dale brace is the steepest hill we will
encounter which makes us both feel a little better about whinging so much.
Looking forward to some stunning scenery at Aviemore tomorrow, although I'm
a little concerned that 'stunning scenery' means 'whopping great hills'

Off now to take in the local culinary delights (probably a curry) - wish
you were here!