Date: 21/06/2022 Ballater to Inverness

Last nights accommodation was the 5 Star Ballater Hostel and it was luxury but it was so warm that both Nick & I didn't have a very good sleep, the mattress was too soft for Nick and he felt his back was about go. He had put his back out prior to this trip and had treatment for it but hadn't got his prescribed medication with him. He wasn't going to risk getting on his bike until he could arrange to pick up a prescription here so Norman & I set off at 9:00 am without Nick.

The weather was fine for cycling with it being overcast with not much wind. I still have this head cold that won't clear up but I'm feeling fine.
We were taking the hilly route to Inverness, up over the Lecht Ski Centre to Tomintoul. The climb over the Lecht would be Nick's first and would be the highlight of his trip, Norman had been over it a lot of years ago.

Norman & I took our first break early at Gairnshiel Bridge and then we started the climbing. Coming into Corgarff we saw Lizzie at the cafe carpark and debated whether to have a drink here, the Lecht is only 16 miles into the trip, so while Norman chose to have a drink I carried on and just a couple of miles further on the climb started with a bang, a 20% incline.
I definitely didn't have it in my legs to do this so I had to get off the bike before I fell off and walk up it. The sign said it was 3 Km to the summit, I was just hoping I didn't have to walk all of it.
Fortunately the gradient eased off quite soon and I tried to get on the bike again but couldn't get enough momentum to get both feet on the pedals before I would topple over so I had to carry on walking a little bit further to the small car park at the bend.
Unlike yesterday at Glenshee this was not one long continuous grind and apart from the very steep section I felt the climb to the summit was easier, Rodney & Janice were waiting at the top.

Now it was just a wait to see who would be next up the hill, Nick had given us an hours start while he waited to get his meds and it was the flashing light on his bike that we could see down the road, having seen what they do on the Tour de France I cheered him on and ran alonside for the last few metres to the summit.
Norman arrived shortly after, unable to re-capture his youth he had also had to come off his bike.
We still had another 60 miles to go so just had a short break here before heading off again, going through Tomintoul and stopping for a lunch break a few miles before Grantown-on-Spey.

The cloud had thickened while we had lunch and as rain was about to fall we put our waterproofs on.
We continued on the A939, climbing up out of Grantown before turning left onto a minor road a couple of miles past Dava.
It was generally downhill now though we still had some short steep climbs to do and the rain hadn't amounted to anything.
After 10 miles we connected with Cycleroute No 1 and another 10 miles on turned onto the B9006 just past Leanach to go through Westhill and we got to Bught Campsite in Inverness at 5:30 pm.

76 miles with 5300 ft of climbing in 6 hrs 29 mins, avg 12 mph.

That should be the hard work done, leaving 2 much easier days to get to the end.