Day 2 - Bye Bye "HenterTAINment", Hello Fort Augustus!

Wow, what a glorious day it has been - great weather today, the complete opposite of yesterday and we have made the most of it! The B&B we stayed at last was great and highly recommended and the views from rooms were spectacular - http://www.morangiebandb.com/. The hosts were great and very accommodating to Dave’s jokes...we are now getting bored of the “Hentertain joke” as it has now moved to the singer who was rooster williams...we only have this for another 11 days! Our B&B hosts also gave us £10 towards the cause...brilliant. The ride from Tain to Inverness was very good, not only was the weather great the roads were mainly flat. We stopped at a place called Invergordon where a local gave a little history of Invergordon and also £3! We arrived at Inverness after 40 miles and decided to stop at a lovely little cafe overlooking the river and sat and had our lunch in the sunshine. After we set off on what can only be described a torturous climb - the biggest and longest hill in the world ever, it just kept going and going and we were convinced it was never going to end! Just when we thought we could see the top and we put a last push on to get there ....it wasn’t the top...it was very hard and painful for all of us. We continued onwards and thought that was the major climb ....how wrong we were! About 5 miles from Fort Augustus we then hit another hill although probably not as bad as the climb earlier it felt harder as we had rode 68 miles and were knackered. The last climb was hard and again when we got to the top ...it wasn’t really the top. Although we could see an amazing view of the mountains and the road ahead we could also see another huge, long climb with a steep and curving end to the top...this was again hard and painful. However, from this point on it was pretty much a downhill into Fort Augustus. It wasn’t until we turned into the campsite that it started to rain and we quickly put the last tent up - Laura and Jon had already got two of them up which was brilliant. We were setup within 30 mines then had a great shower and came back to a lovely cup of tea made by Laura...how welcome was that. We are now sat in another restaurant having our customary 1 pint and then off to bed for an early night. Tomorrow we head off to Oban, covering the same sort of mileage...hopefully less hard climbs. Our mileage today was 73, average 14.6 and we did it in 5hrs 15 mines. We hope you are enjoying reading our blogs and please add comments as it really helps the old motivation...having said that it is such a fantastic motivation to know we have raise over £11k for Cancer Research already! Also have to mention that at the cafe in Inverness a lady gave us £5 and, although this sounds a bit wrong, a guy in the campsite showers over heard Steve and I talking about the day, asked us about it and then gave us £5!

Speak tomorrow.

The Smiley Milers.

p.s. Forgot to say when were in a place called Alness we thought we would use the public loo....how wrong we were ...as we parked our bikes and waled the 500 yards back to the toilets with our stiff legs and cycle shoes (which isnt easy) the toilet cost 20p which we didnt have on us as they were in the bike bags..given we were wearing our cancer research cycle tops we said to the attendant can we go now and bring you the money after....the answer was a straight no. We only had 1 x 20p which we kindly gave to jen...the toilets were crap anyway (excuse the pun!).

If you look carefully, you can just make out Steve - in a pub - drinking HOT CHOCOLATE!!