Month: June 2016

Apologies for the lapse in posts, but between travel, rural internet challenges and my need for some R&R, it’s been hard to fit in. We’re now very comfortably ensconced at my sister Deborah and her husband Peter’s house in southern England for several days. They live in a beautiful house called Blackhall Cottage, complete with thatched roof, that dates from the 1600’s! Our days here are made up of walks through neighboring fields and narrow hedgerow-lined paths, wide-ranging conversations fueled by good English teas & ales (depending on the time of day) in their homey kitchen, and delicious meals whipped up by my sister. So incredibly relaxing and rejuvenating.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. I need to report on our last day in Edinburgh on Wednesday. After catching up on our sleep nicely and having another ‘full Scottish breakfast’, we headed for the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. Along the way, however, I found this lovely mosaic over the door to an old bank building:

As you’ll see from the photos, it was yet another gorgeous day. And what better way to spend a day like this than at a botanic garden! I have lots of photos to share, so I’ll mostly let them speak for themselves.

Not surprisingly, I took way too many pictures of rhododendrons, but you only have to put up with this medley:

From the gardens we went straight to get a cup of tea, and rest our legs before tackling Calton Hill, at the end of what they call the “Royal Mile”. It was really pretty as sunset approached, and I captured this view back to the west toward Edinburgh Castle:

On our way to dinner, I snapped one more shot, this one of the Scott Monument near Waverly Station.

Phew! That’s it for Edinburgh. We caught an 8 am flight the next morning to Bristol, where my brother-in-law, Peter, picked us up and drove us to their place in South Tawton. I’ll write more and share some photos of our visit here tomorrow.

This isn’t exactly the group shot we were picturing, but at least there are four happy faces here:

The forecast yesterday was for a likely chance of rain, so we got our earliest start of the trip. Amazingly, Sue told us later that it rained pretty good in Innerleithen about an hour after we left, but we didn’t experience any until we were very close to the end (and it was a 39+ mile/5 hour day)!

There were two decent climbs in the first part of the ride, but neither were too strenuous, especially after the previous day. Here are my teammates cruising up the first one:

The clouds were building early, which makes for good photos, but we didn’t feel like we could stop and enjoy the views much. Here’s what it looked like from the saddle, as we approached the first summit:

We did stop for a snack just over the top, and had a nice view of some huge wind turbines, a common sight in Europe.

As we went up and over the second (and last; hooray!) summit, we were greeted with a gorgeous view to the north, with Edinburgh in the far distance. I guess you’ll have to take my word for it, as it’s pretty hard to see from this photo ;-}

There were so many spectacular little spots like this along the way:

As I said earlier, it wasn’t until we got within about 7 miles of Edinburgh that we could see rain coming our way (and hear the thunder), but it really didn’t do much more than sprinkle on us. I think we all felt like we were dodging bullets.

We pulled up to the bike shop as the sun was breaking out of the clouds, and met back up with Sue soon after we arrived back at the hotel. We got settled, showered, and headed out for one last sweet evening in the city with the four of us.

It has been so great having this much time with them on this trip! Due to Sue’s travails, as we bid each other adieu after dinner, we all agreed that we have to plan another trip sometime soon.
As they began their long journey home early this morning, we were able to sleep in a bit for a change. I’ll post about our day sometime tomorrow, probably after we’ve arrived at my sister Deborah and her husband Peter’s home in Devon (southern England).

I was so tired the last two nights that I just didn’t have it in me to put together a post. The four of us have been having great fun exploring each new town we stay in, finding nice little pubs and such for dinner, and catching up on everything our kids and mutual friends have been up to, that we’re usually saying our good nights around 11 o’clock. The first few nights, I would stay up past midnight writing my blog post, but I just haven’t had it in me for the last couple (no surprise)!

Sue continues to do a great job exploring on her own while we’re riding, both in the town where we start, and then at the destination, after catching a bus there. I know it’s challenging, and that it’s tremendously disappointed to not be riding with us, but I hope we’re making up for it just a little bit with our afternoon/evening time together.

The route we chose to take to Innerleithen (of four, ranging from 18 to 55 miles!) was 38+ miles, and it was another spectacular day, at least to start. Showers were forecast in the afternoon, but we were fortunate that they stayed away for the duration of our ride.

There were two big climbs that day, the first a long, slow slog up a steady pitch amidst stark surroundings. First or second gear most of the way. Near the top, I captured this panorama. Note the clouds in the distance behind us; the tiny speck on the road at the far right is Mallory.

At the top, we found a sweet little stone windbreak in which to have our picnic lunch:

While on the top of the pass, we were surprised to see a military-style cargo plane flying low enough that it appeared to be below us. Then a little further on, while riding the lovely, idyllic valley pictured below, we heard a low roar building behind us that quickly became so loud that it scared the wits out of us. I literally had trouble holding on to the handlebars it was so frightening. It turned out to be a fighter jet, flying less than 500 feet off the ground, and it was fully sideways as it wound up the valley beyond us. I only wish I had time to snap a photo!

We arrived at our B&B in Innerleithen about 4:30, and Sue arrived soon after that. This was probably our nicest B&B yet, a newish place with quite a few rooms, operated by yet another incredibly friendly Scottish couple. Amazingly, less than an hour after we arrived, the skies opened up, and we wondered what riding in a downpour like that would be like. A little later, we found out that the rain was much bigger than a ‘normal’ one, causing flooding in town, as well as our host’s garage and car park. It was bad enough that most of the restaurants in town were closed, so we took a taxi to the neighboring town of Peebles (where it hadn’t rained at all!) for dinner. We had a lovely meal, and enjoyed exploring the village at sunset. There I stumbled onto the most incredible bed of hybrid lupine I have ever seen:

Stay tuned for the report of our last day of riding, which I hope to post later today!