The boys are back in town!

Finally home after the hardest day of the entire trip - coming home from JOG! Set off at around 8am yesterday and I finally walked through my door just after 10:30pm... groan. As you can see from the post time I'm still in 'get up at 6:30 mode' but I've got a day off and going to catch up on lots of missed Formula 1 :)

Do check back again after the 21st September because we should have all the photos together by then and I'll put a link in here.

All in all the trip went very well. Much easier than last time, mostly because I was just a lot better prepared and I had Tom there with me for support.  The weather wasn't on our side most of the time but it certainly didn't seem to hinder our progress, and we did have gorgeous weather on the last day which I think made up for it all.

The times for each day were as follows:

Day 1: Gretna -> Kilmarnock

84 miles in 7h 40

Day 2: Kilmarnock -> Inveraray

80 miles in 7h

Day 3: Inveraray -> Fort William

72 miles in 7h 10

Day 4: Fort William -> Tain

97 miles in 8h

Day 5: Tain -> John O' Groats

85 miles in 8h

That's a total of 418 miles in 37h 50. Not quite a Tour De France worthy performance but what the hell!

Most of the days include around 1h 30 of stops for comfort breaks, food, ferries, traffic lights, roadworks, getting lost, getting stopped by police (eh Tom?) etc etc.

Tom and I usually set off together after breakfast but on the last couple of days I wanted to get off a little earlier so Tom met up with me en-route. On Day 4 leaving Fort William I decided to set off at 7:30 for an early start in some of the worst weather of the whole trip. Tom caught up with me later in the morning 26 miles in, and by 12:00 I'd already covered 60 miles. I think that'll go down in my books as quite an achievement!

The hardest day without any shadow of a doubt was the last - there were hills I haven't seen since we left Cornwall - quite bizarre that the biggest hills are at both extreme ends of the country. Anyway, didn't walk up any of them so can't really complain. The wind was also incredibly strong by the coast, sometimes acting as a helpful tailwind but others (and always at the worst times!) as a headwind slowing you right down to 7 or 8mph on flats.

Saw absolutely loads of people attempting a LEJOG (or JOGLE) can't believe there are so many crazy people around!

Thanks for everyone's messages and support, they were very much appreciated and I can't wait to see all the pictures of the trip when we finally pool them from the 6 cameras Tom and I had between us!