"First of all I have to correct something I said yesterday. Stuart says that people cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats are not mad, it's just the ones who do not wear high visibility clothing that are mad.
The day got off to a good start today with a excellent breakfast at the Invershin Hotel where we stayed last night. It was a great stopover and we highly recommend it.
Heather and Stuart did their warm up exercises in the restaurant and then ran the first 12 miles together, which included the daunting Struie Hill. The backup team collected some donations from passers by again and the hilltop lookout points have proved fertile ground for this! At 15 miles, Stuart had a very painful blister, so he stopped and had a 40 minute consultation with Doc who drew off the fluid and dressed the blister, but it was then very painful in his shoe, so he completed the marathon without a sock on that foot, and walked most of the remaining 11 miles.
I realise I have been sending you too many photos of smiley faces, and have avoided the gruesome reality, so attached is a picture of Stuart's toes this evening. Don't look if you are squeamish. George Blair joined us this afternoon as next week's car driver, and i collected him from Inverness and we managed to make it back to the route in time to see Stuart cross the finish just north of Dingwall.
We had out first serious map-reading crisis and first lost driver today, but the route diversion was only a matter of a couple of hundred yards that had to be backtracked, and Alan was safely recovered at 6.30pm.
The temperature today ranged from 12C to 23C today and we had some rain this morning, but Heather got wet today instead of Alan. Alan had misfortune of cycling with Stuart when his foot started hurting so he ended up walking with Stuart and pushing the bike."
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