Day 4: Kilmartin to Oban - And let it rain.

I wandered over to the church to admire it just after getting up. The church was nothing special but the graveyard was rather nice. There were a fair amount of boring modern graves but there was also a nice selection of old medieval grave stones, I seem to remember from like the 14th and 15th Century. It had a nice view out over a sheep pasture backed by some hills. The weather seemed nice enough, slightly misty rain but nothing awful.

Then after breakfast, not pleasant at all. We had no fixed timeline for the day, no ferries, no particular time to leave, no time we needed to be somewhere, so it took a while to get moving. Did I mention rain yet? All hell hadn't broken loose yet but it was starting to warm up a bit. Everybody slowly started moving towards their bikes, putting stuff on, seeing if things were sealed. DA had figured out the previous day how the covers fitted on my panniers, which was good since I would have been even sorrier. As it was, fun fact, did you know if you have a tiny hole in the bottom of your pannier and you spend all day riding through puddles, whatever you put in the bottom of the bag will end up looking like soup. It is true and I have documented proof about that.

We set out and then made it all the way across the street to the Kilmartin House Museum. Historic and somewhat interesting, but mostly dry and not raining inside. DT dazzled us with his musical talents on the singing stones and we learned all about what goes in cairns and what people think the cup and ring things mean. And we dried off from our half a block of riding in the rain. And we headed out again to brave the rain. Some left and I wavered, tempted by the promise of a hot tea and a scone. Jam and cream, of course. We sat in a pleasant dining room covered in glass looking out over the sheep pasture (borderline bog) and watched the rain and the sheep clomping through the mud.

I am kind of delaying writing about the ride this day because for the most part, I don't remember it. It was straight up the A road to Oban. I know the rain must have stopped for a few minutes because I have a few pictures without pouring rain. Was this the day with the crazy descent that nearly blew me off my bike? I was already paranoid and holding on against the wind and as we came over the ridge and saw the water below, the crosswind nearly blew everybody off the mountain. I can't remember if this was the right day though. Scary stuff though, panniers act a lot like sails in the crosswinds.

I don't even really remember getting wet but just being wet for days afterwards. And the most crushing thing, I didn't cry when trains got canceled and delayed getting to Arran, I didn't cry when I finally had to leave the nice museum tea shop and ride all day in the pouring rain, but, sniff sniff, I rode 30 miles, sniff, in the pouring rain, sniff sniff, dreaming of a hot shower and you are telling me there is no hot water? It came on later but I was just too crushed and depressed to try that all over again. You know, the first cut is the deepest.

And how sad is this, 30 miles in the rain, already dripping soaking wet, we walk over to the grocery store to stock up for dinner. It was just way too much to walk back in that rain. Yeah, I'm a little bitter too at the bad people who stole our taxi, that was ours and you took it and you will have to suffer the karma for that act through lifetimes. I do think that a lot more places should install those hot air blowing door things. If I could have put my panniers under those, they might have dried out a lot sooner. The replacement cabbie was chatty and full of useless knowledge.

Nice dinner that night, cooked over across the rainy street in the other kitchen and brought back as quickly as possible before it became waterlogged. Much wine was consumed and lentil stew and a large stack of postcards were written and off to bed. Apparently Oban is a lovely place, it has an odd folly at the top of the hill, a fake coliseum, and probably has other stuff, but it was hidden under a blanket of heavy rain. Oh well, maybe another time. 28.90 miles for the day.