Day
32

GOING HOME

Before catching our flight, we had to get to the airport, which was about 8 miles east of the city along the coast of the Moray Firth. The main road didn’t look too inviting, so we took a quieter, although slightly hillier, road further inland. This was the B9006 or Culloden Road. After passing through the village of Culloden we came to Drumossie Moor, which is now more commonly known as Culloden Moor. We checked our watches and decided we had just enough time to call into the new visitors’ centre, which had come into view on our right-hand side. Culloden Moor is, of course, the site of the last battle to be fought on British soil, or at least the last one up until the time of writing. We didn’t have time to go up the moor itself, so we contented ourselves by mooching around the visitors’ centre. It had an excellent gift shop, with the chance to purchase everything a tourist visiting Scotland could desire. I bought some souvenirs for the family. Mick was unable to resist buying a joke tam-o’-shanter complete with ginger hair. He said he wanted to cheer himself up as he was feeling rather glum at the prospect of returning home.

It did feel a bit strange. We had been on the road for a month and it had given both of us a sense of freedom. Now we were going home and back to our usual routines. I’m not sure whether the desire to move around isn’t hardwired into our brains somewhere; after all, it’s not that long, in evolutionary terms, since human beings have taken to settling in one place. In quite a lot of cultures they still don’t. But return home we must.

Return home! The flight! We had done it again. We had become so caught up with the moment that we had forgotten we were on a schedule. We hastily remounted our bikes and hightailed it to the airport. Relieved, we discovered we still had half an hour before we had to board our plane, time which we needed in order to execute our flight action plan. Our elected airline, in common with most today, wouldn’t take cycles in the hold unless suitably packaged, so the previous day we had visited a DIY store and purchased a lot of clear plastic, some tape, a pair of scissors and a screwdriver. We now proceeded to deflate the tyres on the bikes, loosen and turn the handlebars, and wrap them up in the plastic. To save paying for several pieces of luggage we also had the bright idea of wrapping all the pannier bags in one piece of plastic and booking it on as one outsize item. We took up quite a lot of room on the concourse sorting all this out, while other passengers stepped round us, and it also took a lot longer than we thought. It was with some relief that, slightly hot and bothered now, we finally booked everything onto the flight and took our seats on the plane.

We didn’t feel quite so smug when we arrived at Bristol. We had been a bit stingy with the tape, so the plastic wrapping around our panniers had fallen apart, causing all the contents to spill out. Luckily, the staff were very helpful and retrieved all the composite parts for us. When our bikes were offloaded, after everyone else had collected their luggage from the carousel and gone home, we realised, to our dismay, that the bicycle pump we had faithfully carried with us on the journey in case of punctures, had a fitting that was the wrong size and we were unable to reinflate the tyres.

I marvelled at our incompetence. Mick said less of the ‘our’ as it had been my responsibility to buy a lightweight pump. I retorted that he should have checked it before we left, as he was Maintenance. The recriminations continued for some minutes, after which I phoned my sister, who gallantly drove out to the airport with another pump.

Once the bikes had been sorted we waved her goodbye again and cycled into Bristol from the airport. Mick was still wearing his tam-o’-shanter, with fake ginger hair splaying out from under the tartan cap, and was garnering quizzical looks from passing motorists. It was early evening and, as we coasted alongside the harbour into the centre of town, we passed waterfront pubs and bars, their tables thronged with people enjoying the late-spring sunshine. As we passed them, Mick looked at me.

‘Is it,’ he said, ‘too early for a pint?’

 

 

Stats
Miles: 28
Total miles: 1,312
Wonderful cycling trips: 1 (each)!