Day 13 - Strathblane to Glengoulandie
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You know the score by now - I wake up early and hit the road! This time for about quarter to seven.
As the campsite was slightly off my route, I planned a new one to join it around Callander. There was a Coop in the first little town I went through. There were a couple of problems though. Firstly, there was no coffee machine. And secondly, I was so early, they hadn't cooked (or taken delivery of) all the baked breakfast stuff yet!
So I just bought some snacks and carried on.
It was surprisingly flat and I managed to bang out 20 miles or so in quick time.
Of course, as soon as I'd filmed the above, the road started to go up!
Anyway, a few short miles later and I was in Callander. I stopped at a café and had a bacon roll and a square sausage roll. That hit the spot nicely.
I noticed there was a bike shop nearby, so dropped by to use a proper pump as my tyres had lost a little air and my pump was leaking and letting more air out than I could put in!
They were super friendly, let me use their track pump and as a bonus, fixed the leak on my pump!
I'd lost a bit of time chatting to the bike shop folks, but it was worth it and I joined up with my original route feeling good about any off road bits with my freshly pumped up tyres.
So I was on NCN7 which turned out to be probably the best NCN route I've ever used. It started off nice and easy on a disused railway and got progressively more spectacular.
After following this route for miles, I came off it at Killin to get some supplies and phone the campsite I had my eye on. All was good, so I just had to bash out the last 30 odd miles.
This part of NCN7 was all on a (very quiet) road which ran alongside Loch Tay.
It was very up and down, so quite hard work, but the views were fantastic.
Once I got to the town at the end of the loch, I only had about 5 miles or so to go. However, there was a real sting in the tail (which I was aware of) with a massive climb up to almost 1000ft within 2 miles!
It was pretty brutal, but as I knew the campsite was at the top, I was spurred on to just get it done.
Campsite is nice. There's another cycle tourer in the little camping area, so we've swapped stories.
A nice family gave me a load of food. I had enough to not starve, but was considering going to the shop for more supplies, but they saved me the bother!
I've had quite a few Tunnock's caramel wafers too, so I am now sitting in my tent feeling very full!
Onwards towards Inverness tomorrow...
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