Things I learned on holiday in Scotland.

Some things I learned while I was away last week.

I can do camping (although it's much easier when it's not raining).  Now that we've got decent sleeping mats and a Trangia I can totally do it, although I prefer sites where I can bag a picnic table rather than have to cook on the floor.

I like being outside all day.  If you stay in B&B or a hostel it's two or so hours after waking before you're outside, but with a tent, you just open the side door and you're out there.  Sometimes the best two hours of the day were those two hours that would have been lost in other types of accommodation.

My painful and dry eyes are a lot less painful and dry when I'm outside all day.  The only time they hurt was when I was driving the car to and from the start / finish.  Even with the wind in them, the lack of looking at TV and computer screens was good for them.

I need to take asthma inhalers less when I'm outside all day.

I didn't miss TV at all.  Especially the news, soaps, gameshows and reality TV.  I don't generally watch these anyway, but I sometimes accidentally turn them on.

I missed the internet a bit, but I realised I don't need to be on it as much as I usually am when I'm at home.

I don't much like cycling uphill on a fully laden bike.  On the whole, this is too much effort.

I'm never going to do a 300k Audax.  We rode some of the first 60K of the Mull it Over route and it was bloody hilly.  There's no way I'm doing that at the start of a much longer ride.

I don't like moving on every day.  I don't like riding all day not knowing where I'll be sleeping that night.
Staying in the same place for two or more days gives me time to feel at home, and I feel much more relaxed cycling all day knowing that the tent is all set up for me to come back to.

I much prefer travelling by ferry than by train.  The bike spaces are bigger and it's easier to get away from nutters who you meet on board.

I don't like turning up at the train station with a fully laden bike, and trying to get on a train I'm not booked onto.  I much prefer it when I've booked a space.

I need to get the balance right between activity and relaxation.  Sometimes I really resent having to do stuff, like riding the bike, especially when we've got a really long way to go, but I usually enjoy sitting around not doing much.  I'm not sure if 46 hours of riding the bike in 11 days wasn't just a little bit too much.

Maybe I need to give Scotland a rest for a while now.  I've spent about 7 weeks there during the last 3 years.  I've been to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Moffat, Lanark, New Lanark, Innerleithen, Melrose, Kelso, Scott's View, I've cycled along the Tweed to Edinburgh, and from Glasgow to Inverness.  I've cycled round the Isle of Arran, and the Isle of Islay, and I've seen Jura from every angle, I've been to Iona and I've been to the Kintyre Peninsula and to Argyll and Bute, and I've been all over the Isle of Mull.  And I'm still only at the beginning.  It's not even the end of the beginning.

But if I try to see it all, it could take forever and it might drive me mad.  I already wake up in the middle of the night in my tent and I don't know if I'm going to Tayinloan or Taynuilt or Tayvallich tomorrow and I don't know if I've been to Lochgilphead or Lochearnhead or Lochgoilhead yesterday.

All I know is, I've seen some of it, and some of the some of it I've seen is pretty good.  But there's good stuff everywhere, and some of it is just over the next hill, so I might go see some of that instead for a while.