Day 3

Cycling to Dunoon was not a pleasure. Although the GPS initially showed 65 miles, prompting a brief celebration from myself as I looked at it, I quickly realised that this was 65 miles was as the crow flies. Instead, team TROTT were in for a rollercoaster ride round the west coast of Scotland. Once again the rain poured down on us from dark grey skies.
The Glencoe valley provided us with some absolutely stunning imagery, we gazed up at the towering summits that disappeared into the misty clouds lingering above us.
After passing through some difficult climbs on the valley we were surprised to see Ben Kumar from the other team of ex-KGS pupils who were doing the same cycle we were doing, only from Lands End up (probably a more sensible option, as we’ve had the wind against us and in our faces the whole way), after stopping for a chat and a quick photo with him and Lawrence, we continued down the road and swiftly met up with the rest of their crew.
We all turned green with envy when their support van (yes VAN, not car) pulled up, and the back doors were opened to reveal an arsenal of equipment and sports nutrition, which appeared to be enough to feed an army. We took advantage of this extra surplus by jamming several snickers bars into our lycra and cycling jealously away.
Pulling up for a wee cup of tea at a pub en route, I warmed my sodden gloves by placing the two pots of tea on them, an inspired choice, I thought. Whilst we were inside gingerly sipping tea and watching the heavens pouring on the pub window. But there was no point in procrastinating, so we donned our goggles, swim caps, speedos, nose clips, arm bands, wetsuits and oxygen tanks and dived back into our route, getting soaked instantly.
Still, after a pretty boring day of getting drenched and going uphill an unreasonable amount of time, we took a detour that cut out two huge peaks that we would have to have gone up, although extended our route by a couple of miles. Still, it was a compromise that we were willing to make.
Making a toilet break at a tourist information centre before one of the last massive climbs of the day, me and Tom discovered that toilets were ‘self assembly’. The whole thing was all apart – meaning that I had to balance the seat on top of it whilst attempting to use it. Still, after an interesting wrestle I left the cubicle and informed Tom of this predicament. The door closed behind him and as I was washing my hands I heard a slipping noise and a crash, plus some cursing and the words “yes, you were right, the ******* toilet isn’t secured”.
When we arrived in Dunoon we got showered and went to the local Indian. An interesting choice as they also served European food, and since none of us cyclists could manage a heavy curry after having consumed nothing but power bars, nutritionally enhanced milk, and isotonic drinks our stomachs were feeling, let us say, fragile, (and leave it at that, you don’t want details but I’ll just say that I can’t begin to imagine the look of horror on the next poor person to walk into a toilet after Robbie has ‘visited’), we ate up and returned to the hotel, where we found out that the central heating had been turned off.
Although we had been told that it would be on for an hour when we arrived, when we got back from the restaurant it was still dripping wet and freezing cold. Never mind, I thought, and strolled downstairs to ask if they could switch it back on, or if they had a drying room. I was confronted by a large man, about 6ft 3 tall and just as wide. He appeared to be very annoyed that I had temporarily stopped him from eating chips in front of the television. I explained our predicament and asked him if he could switch the heating back on:
“No, I won’t do that for you,” He panted, presumably out of breath from having to haul his hefty frame 2m away from his television and chips. He would probably have to eat another bucked of chips just to compensate for the calories burned in shifting all that weight that far. “I’m not having the heating pumping on for 10 hours just so you lot can have dry kit”
“But we have to cycle 100 miles tomorrow, and we need our kit to be dry”
“I don’t care, it’s not my problem” He retorted. Well I thought, what will be his problem is that everyone who reads this blog definitely won’t be visiting the Mayfair Hotel in Dunoon. I may also draw an offensive cartoon, portraying fat man as the ice king who tries his best to freeze charity cyclists Ha! Vengance!