Cycling day 34: Melvich to John O’Groats

It was a relatively flat ride over to John O’Groats today, following National Cycle Route 1 all of the way. When I arrived Volvo were filming a commercial at the John O’Groats sign; they’d driven a low-emissions car from Land’s End to John O’Groats on less than a single tank of fuel. Their filming used lots of time at the sign, so it was quite a while before I was able to get my photo taken. I hope that they made a substantial, and preferably charitable, donation for the time they spent at the sign.

On my way back from the John O’Groats signpost site I met a cyclist from Stevenage Cycling Club (Stevenage is close to where I grew up). He’d just cycled a six day Land’s End to John O’Groats trip, covering approximately 150 miles per day. He admitted that he didn’t really get much time for site seeing at that level of cycling.

I’ve got a rest day tomorrow, but I’m not going to spend it resting completely. Given that I’m so close by to the Orkney isles, I’m going to take the ferry over for the day and map part of National Cycle Route 1 over there.

I’m getting a bit frustrated with my lack of Internet connectivity, and thus my inability to make blog postings. My mobile connection is extremely slow and not reliable enough in these areas of low signal strength. The call terminates after a minute or two — hardly long enough to load a single web page at this speed.