I am finally ready! My bike is in tip top shape and my camping gear is all prepared, packed up and ready to go.

All GPX files are locked and loaded and I finally have all my ferries booked!

The ferries were causing me quite a bit of stress. Probably quite unnecessary stress, but still.... As I mentioned previously, CalMac have been having problems with broken ferries and many routes have been put on hold / cancelled or replaced with alternate routes. I couldn't book anything initially (ie months ago when I got my train ticket sorted) but last week, I was finally able to. Of course - just to make things even more interesting, CalMac decided to launch their new booking system last week! A system that clearly wasn't tested very well as it's extremely buggy. Anyway, I won't bore you with all the details, but I'm basically booked from Oban to Lochboisdale on South Uist for Thursday. Tickets for Barra-Eriskay and North Uist-Harris also booked. I will have to go south first to Barra as the Oban-Barra ferry has been canned until next week. But it's no problem. I've also got a ticket from Stornaway to Ullapool. Not doing Skye now - too much hassle, been there before and the roads are not the best for cycling. So all is good from a non-cycling transport point of view.

As for my bike - gave it a good clean, replaced things like chain, cassette, cables etc. Had a bit of fun fixing a sticky rear derailleur and even more fun when I discovered yesterday that one of my tyres looked a bit dodgy. Panicking, I rushed out to the few bike shops in town that a. Still exist and b. Were open on a Sunday. Nowhere had the size I needed. Luckily Amazon Prime exists and I ordered a pair of my preferred tyres just before lunch and they arrived before dinner! Slapped them on and I'm good to go.

I packed everything up today and went for a little test ride. I've possibly over packed a bit, but I am going to Scotland! it might get a bit wet and chilly!

Having said that, according to the long range forecast, it should be pretty good! For this week at least...

So I'll be off bright and early tomorrow morning. Heading into London to get a train from Euston to Glasgow. This time tomorrow I will be camping on the shores of Loch Lomond!