Diary - Day 23

Today was never likely to be much fun. It started of ok with the sun out and a nice easy trip down to the ferry at Dunoon to start the day. After getting soaked the previous evening before being attacked by midges again and then finding another bloody coin operated shower that we didn't have the correct coinage for, we were happy to get going without anything ridiculous happening. The ferry was straight-forward and with little traffic about on Sunday morning we could have enjoyed ourselves.

The downside came when we tried to follow the cycle routes through Greenock on our way towards Barrhead and found that when we did locate them they were covered in broken bottles or similar. A puncture soon occurred, predictably on Sam's bike (the strength of my tyres was a source of amazement throughout), and we had to stop to fanny around sorting that out. Back on the main roads then, or more accurately onto the random little backroads where guesswork rather than map-reading was the order of the day. I would have used the map more but for the fact it began to rain again, quite hard, and we seemed to be getting on ok without it.

We rolled into Barrhead on time at about 12:30, went to Kelburn brewery, found nobody there, then went for lunch in a cafe around the corner. Having royally stuffed our faces it was back round the corner to Kelburn to make sure nobody was there before leaving. It turned out that a mix-up over dates has led to us being a week too early although for a nice change this was not actually my fault. No harm done though, another Scottish brewery missed but not much we can do about it. We we will assume that Kelburn are a decent brewery as they were nice enough to reply and the standard of beers we tried throughout Scotland was very high.

What I can remember of the next 30 miles could be written on the back of a stamp. It was pretty miserable and as much as I had enjoyed Scotland as a whole but it was difficult to enjoy built-up areas in the wet and underneath a cloud of fog. We reached the same spot on the west side of Lanark as we had over a week before on our way up the country. This spot marked our entry into the town and the start of a pretty nasty climb towards the end of our day - this was annoying because of the fact that New Lanark was at the bottom of a hill a little further into Lanark and probably a little below where we were, but the hill had to be climbed. This time I enjoyed it a lot more than the first time - the result of a little less weight on the bike, legs a little stronger maybe - a few people passing in cars actually shouted out encouragement and one asked how easy it was! "Very" I lied, but to be honest I felt good at the top.

After wheeling around the centre of Lanark for a bit, wondering why signs to New Lanark didn't seem to point in the right direction (we knew full well where it was, but misleading signs are always intriguing), we arrived in New Lanark Youth Hostel again, booked in and sorted our stuff out. Then we headed to the Weatherspoons at the top of the hill again and stuffed ourselves again. Job done, and the weather had been better since about 6pm a little before we hit Lanark.

Day 23 review.

Miles done - lots
Punctures - 1
Pints - a few
Wetness factor - 6/10