Valentines morning, with everything ready to go up to the highlands including our 'shining' style hotel booked, we received a text message from Gavin to let us know the race was cancelled due to snow! A little disappointed, but not disheartened we did some slight rejigging, to get out of staying in hell and we headed up the road, tandem secured to the roof aiming for Laggan Wolftrax. I have to admit the foot of snow was a little putting me off, but Geoff was keen and I didn't want to disappoint him, so I got ready to head out and do my best to show some enthusiasm! Quite quickly we discovered though that tandeming is definitely not a snow sport. The snow was a little wet and even the hint of a hill meant we lost traction and were off the bike, so we retreated to the hotel and after a valentines sit in fish and chips in Kingussie we were quite ready for bed!
The next day we headed up to Fort William to the croft to see the Shirley's and Geoff's new road bike which Gavin had picked up. It was decided a road ride might be on the safer side, so we took the tandem out with John and Olga on their tandem and Gavin and James on their mountain bikes. It was a fantastic ride, winding up and down through the glens on a tiny quiet road. There were some pretty scary winding descents but all and all much more civilised than the mountain biking and it has definitely sold me on a little bit of touring in the summer!
