Day 17 - Banchory to Dufftown (56 miles)

Thursday, June 9, 2011
Today Lesley and I set off for the last leg of this journey with Lesley’s car looking like it was heading off for a triathlon. We drove to Banchory where I was unleashed to cycle to Dufftown and Lesley headed to Grantown on Spey to set up our camp for the next two nights.

Action Car!

The cycling was slow and uphill in the morning and the nearest town to lunchtime was Alford, where I had to look pretty hard for a muncherie. When I came out, it was raining heavily, so I set off with the baseball cap pulled down to keep my specs dry and the MP3 player to distract me from an unpleasant reality of still having 38 miles to go. Happily, the road from Alford was a dream road, flat and pleasantly winding, following the course of the river Don. And it stayed that way for the next 20 miles. At Rhynie I had to decide whether to take the shorter high level route or add five miles and keep to the flat. It was windy and very rainy and rather than risk exposure (!) I went the long way. There were NO teashops between Alford and Huntly, no matter how hard I clicked the ruby red slippers and wished for one, and it was a tired me that stumbled into a Huntly café for tea.
Conscious that Les was coming to look for me at 5.30ish I didn’t stay long. I asked a man with a dog where the road to Dufftown was and he said: “Oh, the road to Dufftown is like that! And he pointed to the sky. It was pretty much up for six miles and down for six miles. Les was waiting for me near the top and didn’t mind that I wanted to finish at Dufftown. It was another hour before I pulled in, dead beat.
We put the bike on the car and headed for tent-home in Grantown. I had never seen the tent before and was thrilled to find it had an office, for blogging, a double room all for me and a fitted carpet. I think we will be very happy here!