Dumb Run

On Saturday night we made our second attempt at the Dumb Run, cycling through the night from Dumbarton on the West coast of Scotland to St. Andrew's on the East, just over a hundred miles of... ...rain.  Driving, relentless, hypothermia-flirting rain.  Soaky steady windy rain.  Dreich belly-of-a-cloud dawn drizzle.  Sleet.  Sleet on midsummer.  Throw in a good stiff easterly gusting well over "close the Bridge" and you've got the prevailing conditions.  

There was good company on our Bataan Death March (with whisky! and jelly babies!): myself, Sam, Will, Tom and this year's special guest, Oetzi Erron: A gibbering peloton of the unhinged.  By the time we'd got sucked into the Roundabouts of Cumbernauld (novella by Terry Nation) we were about at the stage of channeling McGlashan whenever other overnight centuries came to mind.  "Suffolk?  Poofs!"  The sight of the rest of 'em out of the saddle, grinding up into the dawn cloudbase puffing steamy breath on midsummer is one of the visuals I'll carry away from this ride.

The Kirkwall Arms, about twenty miles in (after the climbing and scenic stuff is done) is garnering a Pratchett-flavoured tradition of people turning up on the Shortest Saturday Night soaked to the bollocks, whose sole purpose is to look at the weather getting worse and worse, and order more scotch and coffee.  They probably call us the Midsummer Freak Weather Appreciation Society or something.

So, we finished up after six hours' riding in Edinburgh instead of St Andrew's (75 miles completed) and the ride enters the books as "impossible" in the hope that lots of people will try it next year.  It's only 112 miles.  It is doable.  We just need to sort out some jurisdictional issues with the weather gods.