We still had a few days off, the weather looking better down South, and with a strong wind on day 1 from the South, it occurred to me when we were in the YH in Aviemore: “why don't we do a bit of the South section of the Great North Trail? We have already done the Scottish part years ago, and this seemed like the obvious thing to do.
June this year has been rubbish, we had a week off and really wanted to go hiking but we found ourselves looking at flights to Spain. Thankfully we had a very short window of good weather and decided to go for it.
This was the trip that was not meant to be. It all started when I went to work for the all staff meeting – once a year, don't fuck up – covered in bird shit. You may think this bring good lack, but the day after I went for my usual early morning cycle to the Pentlands and crashed with a badger. He was fine but I got quite a few bruises and scratches, and sore knee and wrist. After 8 days of pseudo rest I got on the bike only to be stung by a bee. We were meant to leave that Saturday but my knee and wrist didn't think so, so we put it off to Wednesday, and on Tuesday I woke up with a sore throat, and the weather looked shit anyway – heatwave my ass! But I'm so glad we went because we both needed it a lot (especially Paul!), and at the end everything turned out perfect.
There are routes that are so good that we need to do them at least once a year. This is one of them. Lucky for us, my random day off coincided with a mini heatwave. Lately we have preferred to wait until the last minute and check the weather before booking anything, a bit risky since by then there would not be affordable accommodation nor transport available, but this time everything fell into place for this mini adventure and gosh I needed some quality time out, far away from everyone. It was immensely pleasurable, nothing went wrong and we had the time of our lives (apart from the last stream crossing incident...).
What would you do when spring is at the door and you have a few days off for the Easter break? Normally we would have gone to the West Coast, but the weather up there was not great and we couldn't be bothered with the herds of people, so this time for a change we opted for an easy cycle along the Eastern Coast, from Newcastle back home in 2 days.
We would normally have spent 1 week cycling in Andalucia to suck up the last sunshine of the year, but to cut down a bit our carbon footprint, and frankly I couldn't be bothered with more planning abroad, we decided to go up North instead, and I truly don't regret it. We checked the forecasts and the first weekend looked sunny in the Highlands, so we packed tent and rucksacks and headed for a 2 day walk, hoping to see the fewer people as possible.
