UPDATE: Day 9 (Last day!)

On our last day we were meant to be heading pretty much straight through the centre of Scotland and making a right hand turn at Thurso, heading East towards John O'Groats, however...

Given the past day or so with my strained muscle in my quad, we looked for an alternative route with less demanding hills, and Luke managed to find exactly that. So instead, our route took us up the North Coast (NC) 500 route round the East coast of Scotland. Without a doubt, this was such a good decision. The roads were in really good condition, the hills were "manageable" and views were stunning, even though it was a slightly busier road, the cars and lorries gave us plenty of room.

Here's our Strava summary of the route below:

We were so excited to get to John O'Groats, but at the same time couldn't believe that we had actually managed to get this far over the past eight days. It was such a surreal day for both of us. For the ninth day in a row we had amazing weather too, not a rain drop upon us - we've been very fortunate with the past nine days of weather, you couldn't write it really. In fact here are just some of the staggering facts you might like to know over the past nine days before I finish up here on the Blog:

Distance Travelled: 958 miles

Time Taken: 9 Days

Time on the Bike: 71 hours, 15 minutes

Number of Punctures: 0.... No seriously, 0

Amount of Time Rained On: 10 minutes

Amount of Suncream Used: 900 litres

Would I do it again? Probably not, not in the same time frame anyway. Honestly, it was an incredible experience and enjoyed it so much, we raised so much money too (over 4.5k at the time of writing this), but boy, it was mentally and physically draining!

Anyway where was I... Oh yes, we were about 10 minutes away from reaching John O'Groats - and it still wasn't quite sinking in. We had a really nasty Easterly crosswind too, which to be honest was pretty terrifying at some points, to the point where we were on the verge of being blown off the bike! But finally, we made it though the wind and down the coastal road and into John O'Groats, we rolled down the hill, (first of all missing the correct turning) and eventually finishing up at the well know John O'Groats sign post. My mum and dad were there to meet us, who were very excited to see us! We had loads of comments too from people that were taking pictures with the sign, "Where did you start?", "How long did it take?" all of which ended up with a "That's amazing, congratulations!". We popped a bottle of Moët and celebrated with some cake and ice cream too.

Although the main cycling event was over at this point, we still had to get home! Luckily we were given a lift to Thurso - I don't think our bodies could have coped with any more cycling! We stayed the night in Thurso and then caught a train the next day to get to Inverness, although I'm not sure you could really call it a train... It was two carriages, that took nearly 5 hours (via car it would have take 2h 30m). But the views were brilliant, it went through really remote areas of Scotland, some of the stations we even had to reverse out of to get back onto the correct track.

Once we were in Inverness, it was a case of grabbing some food and waiting for the Caledonian Sleeper Train which was scheduled to leave at 20:45. The sleeper train was a brilliant experience, definitely worth doing, we managed to get lucky and bag ourselves a bigger room which we could also put the bikes into (I'll put a picture down below), It was bunk beds, Luke had bottom, I had top - which was quite a good giggle. As soon as we were settled in our rooms, we thought about going to sleep... for a split second. But then we went to the bar carriage and spent the next two hours drinking whilst staring into the Scottish Highlands that were on display for most of the evening - honestly, you wouldn't believe some of the views, plus it was sunset!

The next morning the train pulled up into Euston and we were awakened with orange juice and coffee, before finally getting into our cycling clothes for the last time on the trip and cycling across to Waterloo station. We then decided to get back to Haslemere as there were limited services to Liphook and to instead cycle the rest of the way home... I know... what a couple of cycle-paths.

And that's where the end of this amazing adventure has to end unfortunately. It's been an absolute joy writing these Blogs and I've loved hearing people enjoy reading them too. Thank you so much to everyone who has followed us through the journey, we really appreciated all the support and motivation you gave us. As of writing this today, we (you) have raised over 4.5k... that's incredible and completely blew away our expectations. So thank you!

Until next time. Peace.

At the start of the day with our Parkinson's UK cycling tops: