Day 15 - Montagues and Capulets

Much of day 15's news concerns the events that befell us on Night 14...

Last night, we arrived at our 'Hotel' to a warm Scottish welcome. Wet and bedraggled we all headed straight for a shower and then dinner.

The food was excellent (Amanda enjoyed a fantastic Veggie Haggis and Neeps). Dinner was followed by a delightful homemade Banoffee Pie.

Then... off to bed for a well deserved night's sleep. That turned out to be a thing of dreams. Our rooms were directly above the pub's very loud jukebox - okay so it's a pub - at least the thing will go off when the pub closes. (Amanda thought the music choice was rather good though - lots of Bryan Adams fans in Moniaive!)

What we forgot is that Scotland has liberal licensing laws with (apparently) no time limitations so this continued for some hours.

It was around 1.30am when the real fun started. From our beds we could hear a series of crashes, bangs and crunches as (we believe) furniture and humans were propelled across the bar into the walls; a proper bar brawl was in progress. It was tempting to find out what was really going on but we felt safer in our own beds.

Many words were screamed, approximately 50% of which were configurations of the f-word.

Things progressed further around 3am when a car outside crashed into what we believe was the Landlord's car followed by a person. We gathered this from the shouts of 'F***! F***! They hit him!'. This was followed shortly by flashing red and blue lights (Police) and then an ambulance.

We finally managed to get to sleep around 4am. Not great considering the alarm was set for 7am!

Our hosts were very apologetic about the 'kerfuffle' and gave very generously to our charity (which all readers of this blog will have already done, naturally).

Day 15 proper was a slightly hillier version of day 14; lovely landscapes, bracing wind, intermittent heavy showers. We even got some sunshine later on and had to remove our jackets.

PS: For those of you who have been asking, both our bums and legs hurt, even after 14 days cycling. Louise makes a face and quite a painful groan every time she sits on her saddle. (Fiona has her own 'leg over' trouble too.) But nothing out of the ordinary considering what we've put ourselves through.

Afternoon coffee was procured in a small pub in Tarbolton where the landlady saw the despair on our faces and supplied a massive plate of biscuits.

Despite, or maybe because of the tiredness, we made it to Irvine in good time where Martin arrived bringing a much needed supply of clean clothes and cheering Louise up lots.

Fiona was distraught to discover that she had left her phone charger at Moniaive but then ecstatic to discover that Tesco could supply the components to construct a new one so that the map tracker will continue to work.


We are now happily looking forward to a good night's kip! (although slightly concerned that we have a school party sharing the same corridor - update to follow tomorrow).

Planned miles: 53.1
Actual miles: 55.2
Total miles: 706.2
Punctures: 0

Steve's Helmet Humidity Index: 48% but falling rapidly
Beer of the day: Maclachlan's Best Ale