After torrential rain and hail on the way back from the registration on the Friday night we lined up with 350 other lunatics at the top of Neptune’s Staircase in Fort William under a cloudy but rain free sky very early on the Saturday morning. Needless to say both the GPS phone and Colum’s watch were relegated from the kit list due to poor performance in training.
A brilliant cycle along road, towpath and muddy forest track brought us to Fort Augustus at a quarter to eleven. Covered in mud but happy to have completed the bike part of the Bike and Hike we changed and headed off on the walk. Murray’s greater stride and ‘get this over as quickly as possible’ approach took him off into the distance. Meanwhile Colum and I passed the time playing Movie That Fish, coming up with dubious classics like Prawn of the Dead, Scampi (for Bambi), City of Cod, Goldfishfinger and so on. Attempts to explain this game to fellow Bike&Hikers tended to be met with confusion and a tendency to increase the walking pace.
We reached Invermoriston, the bronze stop, and indulged in the soup, sandwiches and cake that the wonderful people there supply. We later found out that one of the helpers had kindly filled not only Murray’s Platypus with water but also his rucksack. He didn’t realise himself until emptying his rucksack in the kitchen after the event and finding that he had carried enough water to sustain a couple of healthy sized carp for 35 miles but it didn’t do much to slow his pace and he completed the whole course in just under fifteen hours. Finishing just about in the daylight (ed: difficult to say for certain given prior confusion between the sun and the moon). Fortunately for all concerned there was no repeat of the infamous Whyte chaffing incident of 2006.
Colum and I took a more stately pace into Drumnadrochit and completed the last section well after dark. Sustained through the last 6 miles by playing guess how many paces to the next glow-stick. We finished just before 1 in the morning and Murray and Steph (our indispensable and expert support) saw us over the line.
Thanks so much to everyone who’s donated money, our total is likely to be well North of £2500 which is entirely due to your generosity! This makes such a huge difference to Maggie’s Centres and they, and us, really appreciate it. See you next year….. maybe!
Thanks so much to everyone who’s donated money, our total is likely to be well North of £2500 which is entirely due to your generosity! This makes such a huge difference to Maggie’s Centres and they, and us, really appreciate it. See you next year….. maybe!
Murray Whyte:
Minus 4 toenails
1 mega blister
1 blister on the hand! (may have been present before the event)
1 groin pull
Colum McCarthy:
1 blood blister
6 mini blisters
1 pincushion toe (kind of weird)
Mike O’Connell:
1 mega blister (still too scared to take the Compeed off)
3 mini blisters
1 dodgy knee
All 3:
Aches and pains
Who would have thought that the opposite of a car is a snail-drawn chariot.
