Sign of the times...

Dover - Shetland Day 34
Nairn - Cromarty

Distance cycled: today 78.5km, total 2003.9km
Ascent: today 774m, total 13,864m

Highlight: beautiful sea views with mountainous backdrops along the way today, particularly of the Moray Firth from high vantage points in the Black Isle. And another major moment of the trip clocking up a total of 2,000km just before the end of the day.

Lowlight: not much today, although finding my way across a very busy and road works strewn Inverness was too much fun. I think I won't be passing through anywhere with much more than a 1000 people for the remainder of the ride - hurrah!

What else? Hitting 2,000km of cycling in one trip is a big personal achievement for me and not something I thought I'd do. However this is the blink of an eye compared to some of the other endurance cycling records out there. One which particularly caught my attention was the duel for the one year record (yep, you read that correctly). An Australian chap set the first record of 100,837km in 1937. An even crazier Englishman Tommy Godwin set out on 1st January 1939 to get it back, cycling a 4 speed steel framed Raleigh to and fro between Stoke on Trent and Hemel Hempstead. He equalled the Aussie's record after 299 days and went on to complete 120,805km by the year end averaging 331km per day, in 18 hours cycling. He had a particular arduous day on 21st June when he knocked up 581km! To prove his insanity he decided to go to set a new record for the 100,000 miles which he did on 14th May, 500 days after starting. Kind of beyond belief really.

Photo: the Cromarty Firth is a good place to gauge the health of the North Sea oil and gas industry. I can see double figure numbers of 'stacked rigs' from my B&B bedroom window, which suggests it still has some way to recover.