North Coast Cycle Day 3: Durness to Strathy

Another soggy, squalid start to the day in a beer-smelling tent, thanks to a minor spillage on the first night. This must be Scotland as the tourist sees it, day after day of low cloud and constant precipitation. Always a risk when activities are planned far in advance, as they must if they involve securing both the bicycle spaces on a train.

The day brightened as we approached Tongue, dispelling the morning's gloom; the road to Bettyhill was at times bathed in sunshine and the day remained dry to the finishing point of Strathy. Beers were consumed in the Tongue Hotel and the Strathy Inn.

All in all this has been an awesome but deeply fatiguing trip - very hilly, and the downs never enough to carry the next up, meaning that every uphill ends in a gruelling low gear grind.

Only a few miles remain to Thurso and the train south.