Day 6

Gretna to Stewarton today. Over the last 5 days I've developed a healthy scepticism about Gareth's routes. He sees avoiding busy A roads, I see unnecessary additional hills. This morning I made a joint decision to ignore the 92 mile route in favour of following the A road the whole way as they are generally less steep (easier on the knees) and quite a bit more direct (took off 5miles in this case)

The proprietor at Alexander House where we stayed in Gretna showed us a lovely restaurant last night (where I wish we'd stayed) and on returning announced that they wouldn't be getting up early to make our breakfast so we'd have to wait until nearly 8 before we could eat which meant a rather late set off time this morning.

Rather late and really really chilly! Arm and leg warmers on as well as windproofs and wooly socks! iPods plugged in and off we went, Gareth listening to the radio before he lost signal and I to an audiobook. Think we had reached the point when we were too tired to continuously try and strike up conversation. Saying that, verse 6 of the LEJOG song didn't come easily to us today, it was too tempting to include swear words to describe the day!!

After a quick supermarket restock at Morrisons in Dumfries where Gareth bought enough food to keep us going for three weeks ( I'm not convinced he thought about how we were going to carry all of it!) we set off up and down the Scottish hilly lowlands...

Lunch saw us stopping at the 'Happy Potter' cafe (do you see what they did there?) before continuing.

Today wasn't particularly tough, or long but mentally it was hard going. My knee is officially knackered, it has hurt constantly for 4days now and is at the point where I can hardly walk on it but I will keep taking each mile as it comes for now. Our average speed has dropped due to my slowness up hills with not being able to put pressure on the knee but I remain sure that I'll get through it. Gareth is suffering with sore hands and knees too but he is more of a soldier than I and never moans!

We got our second puncture of the trip today, at the highest point between Cumnock and Kilmarnock, very open to the elements, when we set off 20minutes after we were soaked and very cold. It rained pretty much all day today and we had a very strong head wind but the views were amazing at times. Simply stunning.

In addition to the rain, wind and beautiful scenery I can tell we're in Scotland, the midges are out in force and have all had a go at me. We also managed a haggis, neeps and tatties supper whilst watching team GB win medal after medal at the Paralympics at a lovely pub/ b&b in Stewarton.

Finding it increasingly difficult to write this blog as time goes by. Most evenings I'm struggling to keep my eyes open and to remember what we've done, let alone stay positive, or even interesting! I hope you're enjoying the entries. I love reading the comments during our cake/lunch breaks!

More tomorrow from Crianlarich! Night peeps!

Food Diary

Scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, sausages, black pudding, toast, egg sandwich, 4 pork pies, a bag of cookies, Babybels, mini salami, ham salad baguette, cheese baguette, coleslaw, biscuits, sweets, cheese sticks, ginsters pasty, haggis, neeps, tatties, veg and dry roasted peanuts, banana, fridge raiders