Day 1 - Not the start we wanted

51 miles from John O'groats to Bettyhill along the north coast.

It was unseasonally warm at John o'groats. In the 20s, and North of Scotland overall had been the hottest area of the UK the day before.

So rather than looking dark and gloomy as I expected John O'groats was very bright. You could see over the the island just off the coast and further to Stornoway.

We said goodbye to our support team and headed off. It's a nice quiet road across the North coast. Unfortunately we said hello again to our support team after 10 miles when the bikes crashed together knocking us both off. There was no traffic so apart from the odd cut and bruise we were fine. My bike had a badly bent front wheel. I got it to Thurso by taking the mudguard off and nursing it 10 miles to a bike shop. Will's bike looked fine but then when he shifted gears the derailleur moved into his spokes resulting in destroyed derailleur and broken wheel.

Will's bike was irreparable, parts need to be ordered and we are in the world of 3 day not 1 day delivery. His parts are high end and the nearest place that has them in stock is Edinburgh.Instead we've ordered the parts to go to Glasgow and we'll pick them up on day 6 which is a planned rest day.

So in the interim Will has had to buy a new bike (!!) to get us round the course. It's heavier and not as good.

So the cycling. We managed to finally get going again at 6pm, saying bye bye to Thurso and heading further up the coast. The north coast is sparsely populated and wild. Beautiful. We passed spring lambs, a decommissioned nuclear power station and some stunning bays. As we got further the mountains loomed up dramatically in the distance. We are taking a route to avoid too much climbing, but there is still quite a bit of climbing to do.

We arrived, stuck camp and ate some hastily cooked camp food. Then we walked up to the Bettyhill hotel, ordered some drinks and watched the sunset. The view from the hotel was even better than our campsite (which is quite lovely itself!). Let's hope tomorrow is less eventful.