Day 12: don't mention the 'P' word...

Saturday June 16, 2012, 56 miles (91 km) - Total so far: 729 miles (1,173 km)

What was meant to be a short day turned into a longer one by us choosing to follow the national cycle route to Ardrossan... A bad move that meant we cycled almost twice as far as we needed to for the first part of today..

Taking a break on the seafront...

And then, with our ferry time looming, Andrew got a puncture..!.. We quickly changed the tube and got on our way, but with 2 miles to go, we saw that the new tube was also losing air... We hadn't checked the tyre to see if whatever has made the puncture in the first place wasn't still there to make a hole in the new tube...!.. We made it to the ferry, and the tyre went flat as we walked onto the ferry... At least we made it...!

This was the closest call of the whole journey to us really making a big mistake that might have put us behind schedule and made the journey a lot harder than it would have needed to be.

Arran is just beautiful... It was a shame that the weather had been so bad all day, with light rain and a headwind... And the climb over the top of the hill was long, but thankfully sheltered from the wind mostly... And as we came down to Lochranza to get the other ferry back to the mainland, we watched it sail away...!... Dammit... So we had to wait one and a half hours for the next one... Andrew is sure that the guy left on purpose...!

Some photos of us coming over the hill on Arran, and then the ferry after it came back for us...!!

Then it was the last 10 miles of the day over another hill to Tarbert, which is a beautiful little fishing village, with a great restaurant below struan guest house..!

55 miles tomorrow to Connel, just past Oban... More hills, more headwind, but a bit of sun too...

Day 13: ohhhh Vienna...