What Goes Down, Must Go Up!

Hazy, warm and humid when we left this morning, just before 8:00 a.m.  Note that we are saying 68° is warm.  One block of flat, a turn and then climbing; the “looks flat, but is not” type of climbing.The captivating 3000 foot mountains  had us surrounded in our peaceful valley.

The sun was trying to break through  briefly lighting the hills,  the stream beside us  adding music to our pedal up and out of the valley.  Once again, the scenery was more spectacular than our photographs can convey.

Many of the locals equate this mountain ridge to the USA’s Mt. Rushmore, without the faces.  The surrounding hills  kept us mesmerized, some starting from our road edge and heading straight up   The lochs were equally impressive  as we snaked our way up  and (hopefully) out of this valley.  Within an hour the sky greyed totally, so we missed the play the sun would have had on the hills, but it was still an incredible site.  Though the climbing remained moderate the headwind that hit us at 11:00 made the hills feel much more aggressive.

Somewhere in the morning we seem to remember a downhill, but we are sure it did not last long.  Around noon the sky began to spit, then lightly shower.  Overheated from our climbing, the rain was cooling, so the raincoats remained tucked away.  An hour later, however, during our quick stop at the first village  we had seen in 25 miles, it started to pour.  Inside, we were enjoying our first flapjacks of the trip, wondering why we had not tried them earlier.  Re-fortiefied with sugar and raincoats we began our trek around three-quarters of the picturesque loch (about 10 miles); the ferry that made the direct route no longer ran.  Within a mile of our loop we experienced the first of three very tough 18% + grades, two of them a mile and a half long.  It took us several stops resting and equally difficult restarts to make it up each one; our legs and lungs were screaming, our heart beating hard against our chests.  The view back to the loch, was gorgeous,  even as we watched the waves of rain going by.  We waited for the wonderful downhill that would take us to our stop for the evening and put an end to this day of continuous climbing.   Miles longer than expected, we finally had a one mile downhill that led us to the small village where we had thankfully found a room for the evening.  Not sure how either of us made it, our entire bodies were spent from the continuous onslaught of today’s climbing, on top of the several tough days we’d already done.

The village was a wonderful surprise; taking the only room within a 60 mile radius leaves one to wonder what you are getting into.  Thankfully, the adorable village  was about two blocks long and extremely picturesque with palm trees, it was a treat.  This trek we pedaled today is a magnificent part of the country, but it was an extremely tough one on already very tired legs.  Maybe we should have tried these 54 miles in something other than a bicycle.As we were tucking ourselves away for the evening, the sun was kissing the hills goodnight and sending us a rainbow.