Day 0 and Day 1

So, day one is over.
We spent all of yesterday getting trains from Kings Cross in London all the way up to Wick in Scotland. Train journey went very smoothly, but day 0 was not without its issues...
An annoying 8 yr old who insisted on opening the loud hydraulic doors EVERY 5 MINUTES to go to the toilet. We assumed at first that she had some horrific bowel condition, but it seemed like she would linger in the toilet and lock herself in there for brief periods of time, before coming back out and staring vacantly into space. This annoyed Robbie who voiced his thoughts of discontent to the little girl.
Then we got off the train, and waited for our pre-booked cab. And waited. And waited.
Phoned up the company, turns out that someone had written our booking for the next day - luckily we got the cab up to the youth hostel in John O Groats where we encountered the

LANDLADY FROM HELL - quotes include
"OH I REMEMBER YOU, YOU'RE THE ONES WHO INSISTED ON GETTING OFF THE WRONG STOP OF THE TRAIN" fully ignoring our explanation that we were doing a charity cycle and a cab from where she had told us to get off would have been more expensive, but never mind.
We phoned her apologetically from the cab as we were on our way, informing her that we were going to be arriving in 20 minutes (at 10.50)
"WELL YOU'D BETTER BE!" she said, and then cackled menacingly down the phone.
I don't know if it was just me, but we got the impression that she wasn't happy with us.

On another note, Robbie had been expressing his desire to get started cycling all day on the train and said as a throwaway comment: "I just want to do some cycling as soon as we get off the train"
Tom however, decided to take this literally and replied immediately with "That's not a bad shout", ignoring the fact that we
a) allready had a booking that night
b) had no way of sleeping anywhere
c) would be cycling until 6am in the morning, and then would have to cycle
it was one of the worst ideas in the history of bad ideas. It was up there with Germans voting for the Nazi party in 1933 and the disallowed 2nd goal in the Germany - England match.

Arising at 6.45am fresh faced we cooked porridge in the Youth Hostel before realising how freezingly freezing cold the weather was. I had taken the wise decision to leave my thermals in my main bag which was, at the time, in a very cramped car near Junction 44 of the M6. Thus the layers I opted to wear were
1) Sweaty vest from journey up (initially intended to throw away)
2) Sweaty t-shirt from journey up (also initially intended to throw away, and belonging to Robbie, not myself.)
3) Evans cycles jersey (AREN'T THEY BRILLIANT, YOU SHOULD BUY LOTS OF STUFF FROM THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE SO GREAT)
4) Sweaty Gap jumper (initially intended to throw away, and SEVERAL sizes too small)
5) Waterproof
6) Essential wear - Oakley sunglasses. These did feel slightly unnecessary when it was very cloudy, pouring down with rain and water was streaming off them. However, I would have been completely blind without them, thanks to their HD lenses, which meant I could see everything in full glorious 1080p High Definition. They're 3D too - everything seems so realistic when you're wearing them.
So those were my clothing decisions for the day, the others were much better prepared than I, opting instead for base layers, full fingered gloves and waterproofs.

Still, full of porridge we set off to John O Groats for the compulsory photo underneath the sign, unfortunately, due to: "recurring theft" the sign was not there, so we were left standing around a white pool, smiling like fools as an old man we had hassled took a picture of us.
But alas, disaster had struck us only too early. The cycling gods had not looked favourably on us this day, Tom was bent.

His rear was bent. Very, very bent.

And by that I mean that his rear wheel was bent, and we have in no way been making "bent" themed jokes at him all day, because that would be really mean and we're all in this together anyway.
After phoning a man who claimed he could "fix anything bike related" he took a look at Tom's bike and decided that this term was subjective. He drove poor diddums to a bike shop where he had his wheel fixed.
Meanwhile, me and Robbie had arranged to meet him at a junction 30 miles down the road, and embarked on our cycle, remarking about how it "could be worse, it could be raining".

After we met up with Tom we covered mainly flat road all the way to Tain, except for one horrendous hill, around 60 miles into our journey, the lead up to which Robbie "speed demon" Montgomery relished, and sped off down, shortly followed by Tom, myself on the other hand was left whimpering as I snailed my way down the hill at a moderate 35mph, where the other two cruised it at 45mph. My irrational fear of "fallingoffacliffbecauseiwenttoofast" kicked in as we went down the hill.
Fortunately I caught them on the climb thanks to having drank more Nurishment than the other two, and thus having much more energy and being generally better and faster all round, all thanks to the amazing power of that really, really awesome superb milk drink.

Shameless advertising aside, my earlier comment on "it could be worse, it could be raining" - after we had finished that climb, the rain started. And. Did. Not. Stop. The cycling gods seemed to have been granted Zeus' weather control powers as they threw torrential rain and wind in our faces. There was nothing else for it except to quite simply "man up" and get on with it, spurred on by my optimistic hollering of "SINGING IN THE RAIN" as we screamed down the A9.

We arrived in Tain, at Creag Dhu guest house, and several hot showers and fish and chips later, we are now settling down for a good night’s sleep.

Stay tuned for more of Team TROTTs adventures, this time tomorrow (or later, if the internet doesn't decide to come crashing down on me).

Tomorrow is 115 miles to Fort William, via Loch Ness and a LOT of hills. Hurrah!