On Friday 17th April, John and I set off to spend the night in Lochgilphead with Jenny and Colin before the four of us took the ferry the following day to Arran. The forecast was fair so we were all looking forward to our adventure.
As we were sitting on the ferry on Saturday morning we were planning our first stop (thinking of our stomachs!!), only to find the shop was shut when we got to it! The road was fine and quiet, though undulating it has to be said. John discovered a small off-road (approx 3 miles) piece which would take us right down to the shoreline and past The King's Caves (a one time hiding place of Robert The Bruce-I guess John wanted to seek out his ancestry.) We very quickly discovered why it was not marked as a cycle route!
We had lunch in a hotel in Blackwaterfoot and then we started the real hard-core cycling very hilly but the roads were not too busy and by the time we got to our stopover we were glad to be there. Though we only did 40 miles it was a pretty tough one.
The following day was interspersed with visits to a chocolate factory (Jenny runs a sweetie shop and we called in at one of her suppliers), cheese shop and Arran Aromatics. It was a short cycling day but we had a long drive to get back to Inverness that night. We stopped to have our tea in The Lock Inn at Fort Augustus, the same place as we ate in the night we stayed there, during our End2End cycle ride.
Well I hope I'm more fit to do the Malawi Bike Ride as I felt the Arran Cycle very hard work. I don't know how much weight the panniers were and if that had any bearing on it, but there was one hill in particular where I was sorely tempted to ditch the lot!
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