The Not-So-NC500 - DAY 6

WORD OF THE DAY 

Skirl (Scots) (noun) high pitched sound of strong wind. As in 'I cannae hear a thing above the skirl...'

Castletown > Helmsdale 
Emma's Strava Effort

Lynn put on a mean spread. The Airbnb offered cooked breakfast, fruit, cereal, coffee, fruit juice. Yes please. All of the above. After breakfast, we packed up the bikes and at around 11am, Lynn waved us off. As we were only 14 miles away from John O’Groats, I suggested we take a little detour to pop and see it, but it would have turned a 44-mile day into something closer to 70. Instead, we took a minor detour to Dunnet Bay for a view of Dunnet Head, the most Northerly point on the UK mainland, with a view past its spectacular cliffs of the Orkney Islands.

We then headed South – into a brutal headwind that would stick with us all the way to Helmsdale. We had a rough day ahead of us. Less than two miles down the road our path was blocked by a vast flock of sheep moving from one field to another. There were hundreds of them. For nigh on 15 minutes, we waited for them all to pass. Once the stragglers had been rounded up by the sheepdog, we carried on down the poop-peppered road.

I had picked up a knee niggle over the past two days and the day before had left us both feeling pretty knackered, so we set a sedate pace, taking turns at the front, battling against the wind. When we rejoined the coast road at Latheronwheel, the wind picked up even more, whipping up off the North Sea and threatening to blow us into the road and under the wheels of the unforgiving cars speeding past us.

I shouted to Hamish a few times over the skirl (see Word of the Day) to see how he was getting on and thought I could make out grunts or grumbles in return. His spirits were low, so after about 28 miles, we ducked into the first decent pub/café we came across. The Bay Dunbeath Bar and Bistro had an amazing pub garden, overlooking the sea and Dunbeath Castle. It wasn't weather for sitting outside, so leaving our bikes in view, we headed inside, enticed by the promise of wood-fired pizzas and coffee. Despite the v. fancy pizza oven, the pizza we shared was lacklustre and the coffees (v. fancy coffee machine to boot) even more disappointing. Before leaving, Hamish ordered an Irn Bru, desperate to prove he is a proper Scot… and to consume something reliable.

We remounted our bikes and headed back into gale force winds and into a climb of up to 12%, pizza resting heavily in our stomachs. Four miles on, a steep drop in the landscape took us down to Berriedale before rising over a mile at 13% through a number of sharp bends. There were roadworks going on here to remove the hairpin bends and make the road safer for lorries using the coastal route. I actually found it a really enjoyable climb; my legs felt fresh (ish) and we were surrounded by forest, which gave us momentary respite from the wind.

Not too long after, we made it into Helmsdale and stopped in town to buy dinner before making our way to our stopover. I was in the Spar, bag full of groceries and mind buzzing with what I would rustle up for dinner that evening, when Hamish burst in, momentarily breaking the three-person max rule, telling me to put it all back. He'd just rung the Airbnb to double-check its location and asked if we could cook in the accommodation. Turns out it was an old school B'n'B, where you just get a room in someone’s house, so I wouldn’t be able to cook up a storm after all… Shame.

Hamish put the final postcode into maps and off we went to drop our bags. Guys... the next 1.3 miles to our accommodation were ridiculous. We came off the main road and were biking vertically (well not quite), climbing 500ft up the Creag a’ Choire. To make it worse, a car was behind me on the way up, riding my wheel and getting agitated. I pulled over near the top and couldn’t clip in for the last push so had to push my fully-laden bike, cleats slipping all over the greasy road – I must have looked like something out of a comedy sketch.

Showed to our room, showered and hungry for food, we realised we would have to pop back out into town for dinner... FML. F*ck getting back on our bikes and doing that climb again, we decided to walk (a three-mile round trip). I tried to lift Hamish’s spirits by saying it would be good recovery for our legs (I wasn’t convinced either). Luckily, as we set out the rain stopped, as did the wind (after battering us all day, it decides to stop now!) and we had a lovely sunny walk down (down, down) into town. It actually felt bizarre to be walking, as though my legs had forgotten how to move in anything but a cyclical motion.

In town, we had two options. Chippy or a takeaway from somewhere called Thyme and Plaice. Sounds lovely. Right? It was basically another chippy and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were owned by the same people. When querying the types of pizza on offer he said “I’ll give you the list of ingredients and you make your own”:

Chicken/Sausage/Chorizo/Ham/Pepperoni/Spicy Sausage...

I managed to interrupt to tell him I was vegetarian. He gathered himself and said “Och ye we can make yer a veg pizza, sure. We have sweetcorn, onion, uummmm, sweetcorn, oh we have mushroom, have I said sweetcorn?” So, there it was, an onion, mushroom and sweetcorn pizza, with extra sweetcorn. My second pizza of the day and no more appetising. Eating supper in the rain on a town bench, we were keen to just get back, wash away the grease and disappointment of dinner and get to bed.

Thanks for coming exploring with me!
Have you got time for a little more? Click here for the Not-So-NC500 - Day 7

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