It's that time of year again - you know, biting cold winds, lashings of rain and that old favourite - horizontal washing.
My trip to Lewis has become an annual event, 2009 marking the 3rd anniversary of my extraordinary introduction to cycling on Lewis. This year windy hadn't taken holidays specially, to get away from the fierce winds and unseasonal temperatures found at this time of year...
I left Ullapool in bright sunshine. Tourism up here is having a boom - partly because of the strong Euro and partly because of stay at homers. The ferry was full, but my bike was the only proper one on the ferry
Ullapool looked spectacular in the sunshine,
and I was finally able to take a sunny pic of where the cottage we stay at is.
I rode round to windy's house, which was an eclectic mix of building and plumbing projects. windy found all his kit and explained sheepishly that if we rode the 100km I needed for my monthly target, this would be the furthest he had been all year!
We set off out of Stornoway. Leg and arm warmers for me; planning to take them off as I warmed up. We crossed the 12 or so miles of Barvas Moor without incident, in fact the 17.5 mph average made me wonder if I had dreamt having to pedal downhill last time I crossed it! At Barvas we turned right, and were making good progress when windy pointed out a cafe at Morven. Since there aren't many cafes on Lewis we stopped.
It was a gallery with exceptional apple cake! We set out again, in what had changed from a persistent drizzle to proper rain, out came the waterproof. The tail wind that helped us across the moor was tugging at us from the right. We carried on past a mix of boarded up houses, new developments, hamlets with three churches, and a roller coaster of little ups and downs. The roads are in pretty good condition and quite a lot of money has been spent on them.
Finally we reached our destination - the butt of Lewis.
A large lighthouse and not a lot else. How do they expect to attract hordes of cyclists here if there is no cafe? Or loo?
We knew we had to record our presence
and we found another cafe, this one has a webcam (I'll add the address later) so if any of you wish to come up to ride to it you can check the weather first. More coffee and cake and an extraordinary sight. One that I've not seen in 6 trips overall to Lewis:
Vertical washing. It was indeed a strange day.
We added in a short hop to Port Nis, a small harbour with Norse connections.
Our return trip was wet and into a headwind. Interest was provided by the speed of traffic heading out to Stornoway for the weekend. 80mph white vans being the norm. The trip back across Barvas Moor was an uphill drag with the sky darkening and the rain getting heavier. Some on-the-fly calculations showed the route was gong ito be short so windy started plotting circuits of Stornoway. I imagined us being cheered by Friday night drinkers as we completed our third lap of the town centre, but instead we went to the airport. Still slightly short we redirected to arrive at windy's street from the wrong end and we both conformed our computers were showing just over 100km. 100.1km to be precise.
I'd achieved my target in July with 4 hours to spare.
windy then cooked up a delicious meal and served up beer, wine and whisky. A few hours sleep and I was back queueing for the ferry at 6:30.
A great ride and visit.
Thanks again, windy!
