These cycling holidays are probably a lot like childbirth, I've decided. The conception, several months before, is easy and enjoyable. There's a period of waiting with not much to do: buying those last few things, trying not to worry about all the things that might go wrong, even though your friends keep adding to your list of possible misadventures. But nothing prepares you for the two-week labour itself, when your plans go out the window and you try to react to what nature throws at you as best you can. It's sweaty, it hurts, and bad words are sometimes used. At the end of a cycling holiday, you don't even have a baby to show for it. Just a small bag of dirty washing, a lot of photos, sore legs, and a strong aversion to riding a bike. But you will soon forget the awful time you had, and before you know what you're doing, you will be thinking about doing it again.
And another thing. You never know exactly when it will start. Take last year for example. I was all booked on the sleeper train to Inverness. Turned up at Euston and the sleeper was cancelled. Power cables down near Carlisle. This year: booked months ago for the sleeper on 9 June, at a very reasonable advance fare. But no: there is now going to be a rail strike. Probably. Rhiannon in Scottish Caledonian telesales advises me to wait until the strike is confirmed, perhaps the day before, and they will allow me to re-book. But it will be too late. And prices will have gone up. And the multitude of Caledonian MacBrayne ferries, carefully planned to get me around the Western Isles, don't run every day.
Ah well, here we go again...
