It was another extremely steep climb two minutes into this section, we were just tucking into our bars of chocolate and found that we couldn't climb and eat. I couldn't get enough air into my lungs and scoff my choccy too! Like the proverbial dummy, oot it came!!
Most of my time on this particular section I felt like a prince.. Not all regal and stuff, more like Prince Philip, you know how he walks several paces behind Her Maj. Well that was me and my view of Paul was mostly like the one to the right.My wee 30 inside leg were no match for Paul's 65's. He started complaining that he was getting a stiff neck, having to twist round all the time to see if I was still there.
This is my last sighting of Paul as he raced away as we were coming off the hill into Drumnadrochit.
Can't blame him really, this road was at least 2 miles long and was very steep. Doon the way! You should try it sometime, everybody on this road found themselves breaking into a jog as it was easier to let your momentum carry you down rather than let your knees take the pounding. Personally I reckoned it would have been easier to just lie down and roll doon the hill.
This was our view from half way down the hill of The Silver Finish Point, Drumnadrochit.
Paul as you can imagine reached the checkpoint before me, and I knew where to find him when I arrived, flat out getting the massage that he had been drooling over for the past 15 miles. No pics unfortunately!
One of Maggie's helpers walked the last few hundred yards with me telling me how wonderful I was, doing this for such a great charity, I know I know. She went on to say that she could never have got this far. I thought that she was being a bit hard on herself when in fact I told her her contribution to the event was just as worthy of backslapping as any of the Bikers and Hikers. We honestly could not have done it without them.
Anyway, enough of that twaddle. Lorraine was awol as I came into the checkpoint as the car was parked miles away and she was ferrying stuff to and from it. So I was greeted by the rest of our troops, first Lynne and Pauline and then Roy, Pauline and my mum.. Aahhh.
Here's a pic of (l to r)Pauline, Paul, Lynne and of course Pauline!
My cousin Roy.
Lorraine and my mum... Aahhh!
Now going back to the Safety Briefing on Friday night, the guy from St John's Ambulance told us "WE DO BLISTERS, BIG TIME" We hadn't to try and fix them ourselves as their 'highly trained' staff would make a better job of it! Can't argue with that. Well I wouldn't, until I presented my blisters to their only untrained blister expert. She didn't remove the talc that was liberally doused all over my feet. Consequence of that, as we all know was, my very expensive compeed plasters didn't stick. She then tried to patch this up with tape, which also didn't stick! Thanks very much. not! (Didn't actually say that to the girl as she was lovely really) I went back to our own support team and had to rip off the compeed and start again. The time taken to do this was supposed to be for my massage... no time for that now!!!
Maggie's had laid on baked tatties, stew, kedgeree fruit etc etc..
We spent nearly an hour at this checkpoint, what with my blisters and Paul's massage, before getting ready for the last section which of course would be the night section. To make sure we would manage this part, all the hikers were monitored and checked out before leaving.
Paul's checkout checklist,
Maggie's helper.. Head torch? Paul's reply.. yup - false
Maggie's helper.. waterproofs? Paul.. yup - sort of true, they were Lynne's and only reached his armpits
Every question she asked. Paul ..Yup. You could see that the girl didn't believe him but she reckoned that he was good to go, so go we went.
There was one guy who didn't get past this point as he was really out of it, he had been advised not to carry on and was presented with a Silver Medal for getting this far. He was far from pleased and stotted his medal off the wall. Disappointed is an understatement as to how this guy felt and here we were feeling great and ready for the off.
Although the 15 mile journey in was very tough, we had made great time. We reckoned that we would have come into the Silver after about 8 pm and here we were leaving for Gold at only 7 pm.
There is a link to Maggie's Official Photographs taken throughout the event and can be found click here
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