Day 33: Northward Ho!

July 17, 2015

I don't remember if I mentioned this but I have been freezing my ass off lately? It's not that it is that cold. It's that it's wet, and cold enough to make the combo, well, too cold.

Actually, I haven't wanted to say anything. I was thinking that if I did complain people would say, "what a wamsy-pamsy moaner from California," and so on.

But now I am hearing locals even moaning a bit. "This is the worst winter in 15 years," I hear them say.

So, I think I now have SOME justification to say I am cold, and soggy, don't you?

The other thing is that I don't have enough of the right clothes, at least with me, I have plenty of the right clothes at home in the form of more wool jerseys, wool leg warmers, plus rain pants. And it doesn't help that I lost one of my wool arm warmers 3 days ago.

But all that is okay because I rectified part of the problem by buying a long sleeve lambs wool sweater in a second hand shop yesterday. It cost me all of 5 pounds and already has paid dividends.

Today we saw a butt load of flooding and got rained on off and on all day, but I was warm enough in my new sweater, which I wear on top of my thin wool shirt that I brought from home, plus my hooded rain jacket, leg warmers, shoe covers, wool socks. Oh, and my wool gloves, that I forgot to mention I bought in Wales because my fingers were wet and cold in my non-wool long fingered gloves.

I guess that's summer in Scotland?

Today we rode through Edinburgh, over the Forth of Firth, then north to a town called Dunkeld. We saw a hell of a lot of flooding and even had to reroute ourselves when an underpass was flooded.

And when we arrived at the campground they owner said they had to evacuate the tent sites by the river because they were worried the water would overflow it's banks. She told us to camp higher up on the bank, near a barn, which we did.

Despite all that it was a nice day overall. My sweater kept me warm during the inevitable (I am learning) on and off showers. We sampled more scones, and had more tea, and rode our bikes.

What could be better than that?

One of the bridges leading north from Edinburgh

If you look on the bottom you may notice Leo in the red jersey?

Cool! They are taking their kids on a bike tour!

Did I mention everyone is talking about the British open here, the one that got rained out yesterday? This town decorated one of it's parks with golf flags.

Flooded Perth. That's the river on the right and a golf course on the left. Well, a flooded golf course anywho.

We were supposed to ride under here. We decided it was best to re-route ourselves.

Today's ride: 62 miles (100 km)
Total: 1,347 miles (2,168 km)

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