This is the story of how I learned just how far 50 miles is.
There are so many places in Scotland that I keep telling myself I’ll go see, yet it took me nearly two years to actually go somewhere other than Glasgow and Edinburgh. I woke up on the 23rd of April and thought “Let’s bike to Loch Lomond!” Go ahead and file that under the many idiotic decisions I’ve made.
Finding the loch was much easier than I thought it would be, thanks to National Cycle Route 7. I hit Loch Lomond Shores around 12pm and decided to bike further along the loch to find a less tourist-filled spot. I don’t recall ever having biked more than 15 miles in one day, so with 20 miles down at this point, I was already half convinced I would die here. When I found a place to relax, I sent my ex-flatmate a moving-out notice.
It reached a point where I wasn’t even sure I was biking alongside Loch Lomond anymore. I couldn’t see any water and there were no more cyclists on the trail, so I started getting a bit worried. So what did I do? I stopped and biked back the way I’d come from, right? No. I biked another couple of miles and eventually found somewhere to chill (to be honest, I think I would’ve been willing to chill in Tartarus by this point).
I still have no idea where I was. I couldn’t even say for sure if the water was, in fact, Loch Lomond water, but for the sake of my sanity, I like to think that it is.
I’m only just getting the hang of this selfie thing (and I sure hadn’t when this trip took place), but there was no way I wasn’t commemorating it with photographic evidence that I was there. So I set the camera on my phone on a timer and ran back and forth a few times, trying to take a picture that made me look cool and somewhat nonchalant at the same time. Free entertainment for the boat dwellers in the background.
I was on the brink of tears when the realisation that I had to bike all the way back hit me. I almost took the train, but decided against it because I wanted to prove to myself that I could pull through. I made it home around 6pm and was nothing but pleased with myself. My butt was in pain for a few days afterwards but it was worth it.
– Cat
