Cycling day 35: John O’Groats to Latheronwheel

Whilst cycling around the Orkney Islands yesterday I had a second spoke break on my rear wheel. So my route today was changed to call by a cycle shop back in Thurso, which I passed in my previous cycling day. After Thurso I cut back to my planned route via the A9 and the B874. Back on my planned route I came down an exceptionally quiet road and passed the Grey Cairns of Camster, shown in the photo.

The weather was particularly grotty for cycling today. Rain and quite dark this morning, followed by lighter rain but stronger winds this afternoon. This evening has brightened up nicely though, and tomorrow’s forecast looks good (Luckily — I didn’t fancy doing a day on the A9 in bad weather).

The lack of Internet access is getting pretty frustrating now, but according to my plans I should be able to get WiFi access again at my accomodation in a few days time. So, there’ll be a burst of activity as several of my blog postings go online, I upload my pending OpenStreetMap changes (after resolving the conflicts between my offline copy and the current data, which there are bound to be), and downloading my backlog of emails, and downloading some more data in JOSM to be able to work offline again (I didn’t download anywhere near enough data to cover this current inability to access the Internet. But then JOSM is far too slow for me on my netbook if I download anything more than a couple of day’s worth of my cycling coverage).