Day 13 - Tongue to John O'Groats

It seemed appropriate when the day started wet and windy, very similarly to how we started our ride 13 days ago.

There was definitely an air of excitement in the group as we set off, although also some nervousness as we were aware the last day was going to be a tough one. We started on a steep hill climb through the woods out of tongue to rejoin the coast road. We all thought we'd made the wrong decision in wearing our long leggings and jackets as we approached the top, however as soon as we were on the flat  and the wind was gusting we were quickly changing our minds again!

The road undulated its way over to Thurso, there were a few big undulations, I went so far as to state we were not undulating we were in fact cycling up mountains, big big mountains, and many many smaller ones, so we were pretty tired by the time we reached our final lunch stop in Castletown. We quickly ate our pies and drank our tea and lucozade, trying not to hang around too long and get cold in the rain.  We met a friend of molly's from work, and their adorable dog and baby, this kept me very happy :) 

We pushed on for the final 25 miles into wind and rain. We took a detour up to  Dunnet Head, the most northerly point on mainland UK and had to battle the most ferocious winds to get there. Our average speed out was around 8 mph, but our return was a speedy 20 mph!

The final few miles went very swiftly, the wind was behind us at last and we were all very excited, me and molly made up new songs everytime we saw a mile marker, the songs weren't that great or imaginative, but they kept the excitement levels up.  We sprinted into John O'Groats at about 3 o'clock, all very happy. After many many photos we set off on our bikes once more to tick the actual most north western point at Duncansby Head. On our ride up here we clocked over 1000 miles. We were greeted at Duncansby Head by molly's work friend Andy and his wife, son and dog with bottles of fizz, yay!

We returned to John O'Groats to pop open the bubbly and swig from the bottle in the car park, classy.

We're now all about to head out for a final meal together before starting our epic journeys home tomorrow! Thank you to everyone for supporting us, sponsoring us and reading this blog!