Today’s leg was supposed to be a gentle 100 miles but somehow we managed to cram in 150 miles. We set off nice and early waking at 5am and leaving at 6. First on our list of to-do’s was Dunnet head, the most northerly point in mainland Britain. We got there and guess what? … it was foggy, very foggy so much so that really we could have taken our photo’s anywhere but I can vouch we definitely were there. On exiting it was here we had our first accident of the trip.

Mark (Dad) slipped on the cattle grid and got his tyre caught in the rails causing him to come off his bike. Mum, don’t panic, it was at very low speed and Dad will deny that he actually crashed at all his bike just ‘fell over’. Luckily that was the only incident… well almost. We then continued on, trying to find the road in the fog. We were going well and then came the turning for Scrabster, “down here” shouts Dad. As the route bearer and we trusted him, down a long hill, “hurrah some down hill at last” … “oh a roundabout” … “oh this is a dead end” … arghh!! … never mind it wasn’t too far we just had to reclimb the minor mountain we had just come down. Then we were back on the right road, I soon started to feel really tired and was steadily getting further from the leader. Eventually I asked for a quick drink stop and managed to scoff enough energy boosting short bread to boost my energy levels. We then started to encounter hills, quite a lot of them. It slowed us all down but we kept going. The toughest of these was Bettyhill, it was huge and vast, it nearly killed Ian (his words). We were rewarded though at the end we found a pastie shop and got two each, along with a strong cofee. After this we hit a nice long stretch along a river it was a nice relief after the mountains we had just passed. After about 20 miles that was over and we were back to hills/mountains. We made it to Lairg where had planned to stop for the night. It was only 3ish so we thought we’d grab some food and decide if we wanted to plug on. We had a really nice dinner/lunch and the lady who run the place was really helpful which convinced us to plug on. In the back of our minds we hoped we could make it to Ian’s friends house. Which we did, so a total trip of 150 miles giving us a 40 mile boost on tomorrows journey (10 miles down due to wrong turns etc.). I could write a lot more but I am so tired, check out Flickr for our latest photo’s. Here’s one or two…