Day 31 - Castlebay to Leverburgh - 115 kms

Lady of the Isles on the Isle of Uist 

A day of sublime scenery, magnificent riding conditions and late drama that ended in a verbal stoush between KH and self.

The day started with a tight timeline having only 75 mins to hit the supermarket, ride back to the b&b, have a full breakfast, load the bikes and then ride 15 kms to catch the ferry to Sth Uist.

Riding like we the possessed past the pristine beaches of Barra we made it with 5mins to spare although there was a very real chance that the " full English breakfast" could resurface with only the slightest of ocean swells during the crossing.

An hour later we set foot on Uist a collection of low level islands joined in parts by massive rock causeways - this is land that looks it has only just emmerged from the primeordial ooze - a low lying land with heaps of marshes and lakes

Our mission was simple - to ride Uist's length (approx 100 kms) in 7 hours to catch the last ferry across to the main island of Harris & Lewis and our accommodation at Leverburgh.

It soon became apparent that the distance would not be a problem - a flat profile and some of the best roads in the UK even though the single sections required you to play chicken with oncoming traffic

Lunch taken KH was back on the road heading in a direction I'd given while I rested further. Setting off 20 mins later I was astonished to see KH cycling back to saying the direction I'd given him led him to a dead end - he explained this while also using a no. of unprintable
expletives.

We made good time until turning off at Lochmaddy where we needed only to cycle the last 15kms in an hour to make the ferry. Riding ahead and figuring the turnoffs were simple as the ferry was signposted with a picture of the ferry I made the embarkation point well in time only to find out that KH was again lost
missing a turnoff.

With the ferry boarding KH appeared over the horizon making it just by a few mins and looking pretty knackered exasperated that I had not waited at the turnoffs with me countering that the picture of a ferry on a road sig was pretty self explanatory.

Anyway like all good dramas there is a happy ending - we made up over a "romantic dinner" in the Leverburgh gym (having made the ferry crossing) which doubles as the towns take away shop on weekends and both vowed to keep riding the same way tommorrow !