............ Lands end to John o'Groats cycle ride 2014 .........: Day 19, Thursday 18th September 2014

Bettyhill - John o'Groats
The excitement started long before we got on the bikes, on our last day Beaky was putting his cycling shoes on and noticed something black on his leg, on closer inspection he saw it was a tic with half its body buried in his leg.

in an attempt to remove it he poured surgical spirits on the tic, this didn't seem to deter the black beast from burrowing further into his leg, next beaky started to burn the tick with a lighter and then pulled it out with tweezers.
Excitement over then the jokes started H asking Beaky if everything was Tic-atyboo now.

8:30 the french girl was all packed and making a start for her ride to catch the ferry at Thurso, her small bike was piled high with clothes and equipment..

We lined up at 8:45 ready for our final ride, 50 miles between us and the finish, though the ride was not going to be an easy one with continuous rise and fall of the hills.

We set off at a good speed on the level we soon caught and passed the french girl on her loaded city bike, then we reached the first of our climbs started a category 4 followed immediately by another cat 4, Andy was the first to the top followed by Beaky

then Jo W

very closely followed by the french girl, she was climbing hills on her loaded city bike better than we were on our tourers.......

As we rode on the coast was always close by on the left, the weather was not particularly nice, it was very overcast with dark clouds and a strong wind coming from the north east

Lynn and H passed us again on there way to John o'Groats and pulled into a layby ahead of us

Again we were spread out because we were climbing long slopes and hills, todays ride was going to difficult for the girls, Jo W has always struggled with hill climbing but always works hard to get to the top and Jo T was starting to feel the effects of her Fibromyalgia.
Respect to both of them as they just dug in and got on with the task without any moaning.

As we approached Melvich (12 miles completed) the winds grew stronger and the cloud closed in and it was looking like we were going to have rain at any moment.

We pressed on towards Thurso arriving around 1 o'clock the continuous wind and cold were starting to tire us.

The cloud base dropped so low the tops of the windmills were missing, the cold and damp came with it. We pressed on pleased to reach Thurso.

We were all aware Thurso was beyond the halfway point and so spirits were lifted a little.

We rode on onto Thurso and decided to look for a cafe to rest and get a hot drink, as we crossed the road to a cafe, we couldn't see anywhere to park the bikes, a lady with deep cuts and grazes on one side of her face told us if we were looking for a cafe there was one a few streets away with lots of space for the bikes, it turned out she got the grazes on her face after coming off her bike.
We followed her directions and found the cafe on the quay side

looking out to sea and castle walls protecting the castle

After a hot drink and a rest we were ready for the final push to the end

as we set off we found this bench made out of stone and to our surprise it was amazingly comfortable

While we were looking at the bench we saw the ferry leave (in the background) heading for the Orkney Isles hopefully with the french girl safely aboard.

Lunch time for the support crew was obviously a far more refined occasion

only 22 miles to go, the terrain was still up and down but not as severe as earlier, the wind kept up and the mist descended further reducing visibility, we had to stop and swap our windproof riding tops for full waterproof coats, we took very few photographs after lunch as we were focusing on completing the task, we were to close to fail.

This was a welcome sign after a long cold slog, H was waiting on the corner to let us know the official photographer was waiting just for us.

One last turn and all we had to do was free wheel down the short road into John o'Groats complex.

Big coats off, Tee shirts on it was freezing, but everyone managed a smile..........

At 3:40 on the 18th of September we arrived at John o'Groats.

Then coats back on we went to End 2 End shop where

Lisa Pennington Jo W's sister had arranged a bottle of wine to be presented to Jo W as a congratulations on completing the ride.

As we left the shop and headed to the caravan Beaky kissed Lynn and said thank you for there support, he must have been suffering from exhaustion because he decided to kiss H, luckily for you Andy was to slow to get a photograph.

The campsite was adjacent to the John o'Groats complex so we only had 2 minutes to travel to the caravan for a hot cup of tea.

Lynn presented everyone with an End 2 End medal.