Day 12

We were expecting a tough first half to today, and indeed the driveway from last night's hotel ended at the bottom of a long, killer hill - so no chance of a gentle warm up!
We followed the road through a few tough climbs through Tomintoul and Grantown on Spey. It has hard going but no worse than yesterday.
After Grantown things were supposed to get easier because we were leaving the Cairngorms. And sure enough the hills thinned out and we were cycling along relatively level roads across high moors. We knew that there would be no shops or pubs after Grantown until Culloden so we bought some pasta salad and cakes to eat along the way. Around 2 when we decided to stop our "challenging" afternoon began. It had started raining so we had our lunch sheltering from the rain under a tree. About half an hour later Andy realised he had a puncture and repaired it by the side of the road while I helpfully took a photo of him. While doing so we heard thunder nearby and soon we were cycling along in torrential rain in the middle of a thunder storm. Unfortunately the repair to Andy's tyre didn't take so he had to repair it again while sheltering from the rain in a barn. By this time the rain had stopped but the roads were running with water like rivers. We cycled through some areas of road where the water was above our pedals, needless to say we were soaked through again.
As we approached Culloden again it was clear Andy still had a slow puncture in his tyre so we sought out a Halfords in Inverness to buy a couple of new tubes. After Inverness we crossed by suspension bridge to the Black Isle where we are staying tonight. We had to cross to the North coast of the Black Isle and while we were climbing over the inevitable hill, just as we were beginning to dry out, the heavens opened again and we turned up at our B&B soaked through and dripping all over the place like a couple of drowned rats.
To add to these challenges we had some equipment failures this afternoon. The Satmap screen went dead and I assumed the battery had simply run out. But when I put normal AA batteries in in Inverness the Satmap refused to come to life. It is dead as a Dodo. I am leaving it in the airing cupboard tonight to see if it dries out and works tomorrow. This is a device the manufacturer assured me was waterproof and could be dropped in water and would keep working.
So we were reliant on Andy's HTC Touch HD phone with Memory Map on it but the phone is not waterproof and eventually that failed too.
On a positive note the B&B is very friendly and has super views. And we had a very nice pub meal again this evening. I think I am going to have to make a conscious effort to cut back on my eating after this trip - 2-3 cooked meals a day is fine when you are cycling all day but I will blow up like a balloon of I continue eating like this.