Day 8 - Loch Ness to Jedburgh

Friday 10/05/2019
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What luxury sleeping in the glam-pod, only I didn't sleep great because it was actually too warm and I kept getting woken up by one thing or another. In any case we slept in which was a bad idea as Krysia had decided to add to our already long day by making us ride all the way around Loch Ness...

Before we left, we made full use of the facilities and made coffees and a super-noodle breakfast. We set-off around Loch Ness only to make a wrong turn and ended-up in Fort Augustus... Pretty town with great boat locks, but we were in a hurry so continued up the other side of the loch, mostly slowly stuck behind tourist coaches on the slow and windy roads. We stopped at Uruquart Castle to take a couple of pics but then sped back to Inverness in order to catch the road up to the Cairngorns.

The road was surprisingly speedy and we went past Aviemore in no time. The mountains were also much higher than I had expected and half covered in snow. In fact much more snow than any of the mountains that we'd seen up until now. Really pretty views but it rained heavily and was really windy - we froze, especially as we didn't wear our full-on wet weather gear. We should have stopped to take pictures but I just wanted to get out of the mountains and closer to Perth.

We stopped at some outlet village place to stretch our legs but continued to some place next to Braemar Castle and the Bells Distillery where we stopped for fuel, food and to stand in the warming sun (that pops-up from time to time). As we had a lot of ground to cover we just rode without stopping much which is a shame as there were great viaducts, steam trains and other great sites worth capturing. We went-over some pretty bridges and were on the outskirts of Edinburgh before we knew it. We took the ring-road South and headed toward the Kielder forest where our planned stop was.

I missed the turn-off to the Kielder forest, just past Jedburgh and realised that we had at least another hour to go, it was probably gonna rain again, we had just passed a pretty town and a campsite..... so we turned back a few miles and are now in a pleasant site in Jedburgh.

We set-up our tents (only £11 each) and took the lovely riverside walk into the town in search of culture and chips. We saw Mary Queen of Scots house, the jail, the Abbey, the lovely rock stuctures and the chip shop. We had some ok fish and chips and went back for chips and haggis. It was actually ok - pretty much like the Polish kaszanka or a very rough blood sausage. £3.80 for 2 big chunks and chips. We were stuffed but found a local pub where we had some watery ale before braving the cold walk back to the campsite.

Tomorrow, we cross back into England, check-out Hadrian's wall before doing a different circuit of the Lake District (hopefully Britains steepest road too) before ending-up somewhere near Morecambe.

Mileage: 1548
Country count: 2 (GB - England, Scotland)
Beers: 47 + 1 Whiskey
Fines: 0
Bribes: 0
Ass pain: 4/10
Mechanical issues: 0.5 (well Dino's sat-nav fell-off and I had to cable tie a water hose to stop it rubbing)
Accidents: 0
Wetness: 5/10
Coldness: 6/10
Midges: 3/10