Out of Scotland

So the last few days:

Train from Inverness to Stirling

Train from Stirling to Glasgow, cycling to halfway to Carlisle

Cycling to Carlisle and slightly out outside the city. Finally got my cycling computer working.

Hadrian's cycleway to Newcastle - approx 60 miles

Newcastle to Durham - approx 20 miles

Durham to camping outside Ripon - 50 miles

Outside Ripon to York - 50 miles

After staying Inverness for the second time, I rode to see Fort George which was farther outside the city than I thought it would be, and not worth it.

I decided I'd had enough of the Scottish weather and wasn't about to head through the highlands again, so I headed to the train station where I met another cyclist who had been touring northwest Scotland on his fathers ~40 year old road bike. He said he had stayed inside for 3 days straight due to the weather, so I no longer felt bad about doing ~25 miles and leaving skye earlier than I had planned. After a three hour train ride I arrived in Stirling.

Next morning I went to Stirling Castle and the Wallace monument, which were interesting.

If you look across the river, you can see the Wallace monument from here. Maybe.

It actually is a fairly cool monument.

Inside it they have Wallace's sword:

The next day I took the train the rest of the way to Glasgow, then headed south towards Carlisle which took two days. Scotland did its best to keep me there with a steady headwind for both days. It was interesting looking at the wind farms up on the hills and seeing every single windmill pointed into the wind in the exact direction I was heading. No wait, interesting wasn't the word I was looking for. Heading into Carlisle, I ran out of prepaid minutes on my phone and they wouldn't accept an american credit card to refill it. When I arrived, it was about 5pm on a Sunday, and nothing was open, not even the supermarkets, so I couldn't buy more minutes for the phone, which I was going to use to check if I had a host to stay with. Stealing wifi from a starbucks, I found out that there isn't a single hostel in the city, so I continued on and camped about 10 miles outside the city. Luckily, I had already loaded the map for the next day on my phone.

The Hadrian's wall cycleway is cycle route 72 and runs east/west mostly along Hadrian's wall and directly by some of the Roman ruins. This was my first full day outside of Scotland, and my first day of nice weather all day. However, the cycleway itself is designed sadistically, with 15% grades every few miles, both up and down, and the path goes miles out of the way for no reason. Mostly the path goes through farmland.

Wall and ruined tower:

Cool view of the valley, but really there was no reason to make the cycle route go up and down it constantly. In 60 miles, my bike computer showed about 2000 miles climbed, with zero net gain.

Made it to Newcastle regardless, where I hastily bought a phone voucher before everything closed, and stayed with another great host.

The following day was a short day ~20 miles to Durham where I stayed with a family friend in the dorms of St Johns College, right next to the cathedral and main shopping district. On the suggestion of my hosts, I saw the Angel of the North on the way to Durham:

The cathedral is huge, with at least 100 foot high ceilings, but they don't want you taking pictures inside.

Then it was south towards Fountains Abbey and York. There were no good cycle routes, so I ended up taking all backroads through the English countryside, which was slow. The country is hilly, and I was checking my map constantly. I did make it through a town named Catterick Garrison with a large military base and on my way out I passed this amazing sign:

All I could think of way a huge tank driving by with a "Student Driver" sign above the turret.

Fountains Abbey is another World Heritage site I visited. This abbey is huge, with the main cathedral ruins being very similar to the Durham cathedral. Both have very high ceilings and 9 alters at the front.

I made a slight detour to Harrogate to try to find a replacement part for my rear rack that fell off weeks ago, but couldn't find the store before it closed. Made it the rest of the way into York and I'm currently an the Ace hostel in the middle of town. Tomorrow I'll see a few things in York, then head further south towards Cambridge which should take a few days.