Ride Earth

Just a quick note before you start reading. This is the last day’s entry of my (Andrew’s) journal on our Scotland trip May 06. I suggest to start at the beginning scroll to the bottom of the page or have some common sense and start on day 1. I did warn you. Don’t try and blame me when it makes no sense.

 

In the morning I felt refreshed and ready to go. We walked into town to investigate train possibilities to Inverness. However, no train went directly from Fort William to Inverness. We could only get one to Glasgow and that would be an extra twenty five pounds. Learning this we headed to the bus station and managed to get a ticket for eight pounds with our bikes to Inverness leaving at four thirty. Our bikes would have to be packed up for the journey. We got some cardboard boxes from the supermarket for wrapping the bikes and I had a reel of trusty duct tape. We packed the bikes outside the hostel and improvised, using a supermarket trolley to roll them down the hill to the bus station when four thirty came around.

 

In the bus on the way back to Inverness I started a conversation about the tunes that had been going through our heads when riding. We collated a list of tunes. Tom started with one, then Mark chipped in and so forth until we had a list of the most unlikely music akin to a jukebox in a service station on the highway to hell.

 

To be completed:

 

Simply Red – If you Don’t Know Me by Now.
Too Many Broken Hearts in the World
I’m Spinning Around – Kylie Minogue
Tubular Bells – Mike Oldfield
Ulmate home boy car- human traffic film excerpt
Pendulum – Another Planet
I’ll See you when you get there – Faith Evans
Ride of the Valkyries
Paul Simon – Boy in the Bubble
Its Time to Burn – Storm
Pixies – Gouge Away
Mission Impossible – original (from film 1)
I’ll take the high road, you take the low road.
Push the Button – Sugababes
Rock with You – Michael Jackson
Dragnet Theme Tune
Cat Stevens – Father and Son

 

I slept for the rest of the journey to Inverness, in a state of contentment and the necessity of needing rest awaking only to nibble on a banana and fire a kalashnikov out of the roof in victory. I re-awoke as the bus came to a abrupt stop in the bus station at Inverness. Mark, Tom and I reassembled our bikes creating a mild amount of interest and pedalled back up to the Inverness MacBackPackers.

 

The evening spent in the hostel offered some time to reflect on the journey. It had indeed been epic and incredibly inspirational. It had demonstrated that one could live quite successfully and cheaply, travelling on a bike and living out of a rucksack and it also offered many benefits compared to other forms of transport such as motorised transport and alternative lifestyles. I was forced to absorb my surroundings because I took it took a greater amount of time to traverse them therefore appreciating them to a greater extent. The experience was more visceral and wholly satisfying with each section and development offering a different storyline, interest, and challenge. The change of perspective and mindset of the trip and route from the beginning when we had planned it to completion was very interesting. It had been easy although creative to put together the route. Travelling the route benefited from the preparedness of mind due to preparation and previous experience meaning that although rewarding and challenging it was within our capabilities. The progression overland on the bike was reflected by a progression and development within myself that one wouldn’t get with the transitory, disconnected nature of driving or flying. The deep feelings and instincts inside myself which came out during time in the wilderness were fascinating. I felt as a group we developed roles, the social construct changed with minimal outside influence to a collective spirit of sustenance, competition and survival rather than that of conditioned roles by the media, parents or peers.

 

The journey back from Inverness the following day was relaxing. It felt like it went very quickly. I had a great deal of information in my mind to digest and collate. Where does one go from a trip such as this offering many benefits, a revitalisation of the soul, and a desire inside to continue exploring?

Download the Google Earth map for Northern Excursions - Ride Earth Highlands Expedition

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 20th, 2006 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Europe, Run-up Diary, Scotland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.