Ireland-bound


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Europe » United Kingdom » Scotland » Wigtownshire » Minnigaff
July 16th 2006
Published: July 17th 2006
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I was playing a bizarre game of Scrabble in a hostel in Norfolk with a guy from Northern Ireland, a woman from Northampton and a South African. None of them had ever played before and despite me repeating the rules countless times they thought they could they could spell words backwards and count the extra scores every time a new word was added. The Irishman's first word was whore and he attempted to put wog down as his second. But he did come up with one useful suggestion after I told him about my trip. "Why don't you go to Northern Ireland?" he said.

So that's exactly what I'm doing. Cycling to Stranraer on Tuesday then I'll board a ferry to either Larne or Belfast, climb to the highest points in each of the province's six counties before catching the boat back to Scotland. It means that by mid-August I will hopefully have climbed to the highest point in the UK's 92 counties rather than GB's 86 counties.

One day in the Scottish borders really summed up the high and lows I've had so far. I had pitched my tent next to a beach on a beautiful loch, watched the sunset over the mountains and all was still and the world at peace. I woke at 4am to winds buffeting my little tent. I dozed off until I realised that the gusts were coming straight through the fabric. I was already cold, partly because the inner lining on my sleeping bag has ripped. When I opened the tent flap my beachside idyll had turned nasty. It was like one of those crappy ITV programmes about a honeymooning couple whose desert island is devastated by a hurricane. Dawn was breaking and clouds were hurtling across the sky. Waves were breaking on my beach and froth had collected on the shore. The mountains were enveloped in thick mist. A couple of poles on the outer sheet had been ripped up - hence the wind coming straight through the tent. I stuck them back in the ground with difficulty as there was only about an inch of soil until metal hit rock. I realised I'd camped on a horribly exposed site with no protection from the wind. I hoped for the best.

So I crawled back in and read my book - The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, quite simply the most stunning book I've picked up. It tells the story of Captain Scott's race to the South Pole in 1910-12. In the passage I was reading Cherry and two others tent is blown away and their only other shelter, an igloo, is destroyed. The temperature is -70F. They lay in their sleeping bags, which were frozen solid for the entire trip, for 48 hours waiting to die. But death never came, the storm abated and somehow they escaped. Few humans could contemplate such hardship today and thankfully it made my troubles fade into insignificance.

My storm was still raging at midday when I eventually packed up and cycled to meet my brother at my next mountain in Dumfriesshire just six miles down the road. The climb was easy enough even with visibility down to 20 metres. It was the cycling, 65 miles of it ahead of me, that I was dreading. I dumped my panniers in my brother's car so my bike felt like a racing machine again and I cycled like I've never cycled before, with aggression, grit and determination. After going through a hailstorm and fighting the 20mph wind in my face for the first few miles I thought nothing could beat me.

Then the high. The exhilarating high of adrenaline pumping through your veins. The high of cycling a long distance on a horrible day, a day that if I was at home I wouldn't dream about going out on my bike. And the high of slowing seeing the clouds break up, the wind drop and the wonderful clear skied evening that followed. And lastly the feeling I get last thing at night before falling asleep; the knowledge that I've given it everything I've got, and knowing that however tired I am I'll do the same tomorrow.

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17th July 2006

Travel quote.
Hhhmmm another quote! Try this:- I think that travel comes from some deep urge to see the world, like the urge that brings up a worm in an Irish bog to see the moon when it is full.  ~Lord Dunsany Relevant I think!!
18th July 2006

blondes have more fun?
is that sun-in or lemon juice on your barnet JM? I don't believe for one second it's natural...
18th July 2006

nice hair!
Is that a bouffant I see on you head in the Wigtown photo? I always thought you might have secretly admired my mullet!
18th July 2006

lack of hairdressers
Is that a bouffant i see on you head on the wigtownshire photos? I always thought you probably secretly admired my mullet!

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