August 2, 2011
Through Midgets, Rain and Fairweather.
In the morning too, the midgets were out and keen. They forced me to remain in the tent while eating breakfast, and pack all that I could cocooned inside before unzipping, quickly throwing out all the packed bags, then emerging myself to face the waiting cloud congregated above the tent opening, ready to attack. They instantly engulfed me, especially going in for the kill to suck blood from the temples. I was defenceless, putting up with their sharp pricking sensation: all I could do was swipe them away with a free hand as I struggled to fix my stuff on the bike trailer and get moving: making a getaway from the torment as fast as possible.
I cycled under low dull skies on narrow single road, open to rough sheep pasture, and apart from the scattering sheep, the only other thing on the road was the humming of a quadbike with a stern looking Shepperd aboard coming up the hill as I freewheeled down the valley to the village of Barrhill. I turned onto the main A road to Newton Stewart in the village. Barrhill is a little place; one street of attached stone-houses either side of the main road with one shop and on the way out a church and churchyard on the hillside. The cloud then began to close in more completely and I hadn't got far when it began raining.
I pressed on sloshing through puddled road as the rain came down heavily and persistently. Feeling cold and miserable, I stopped at a hamlet where there was a turnoff that I had planned on taking as it looked to be, on the map anyway, quite a pretty way, but as it was an unpaved road it would've been a quagmire on such a wet day. I remained there in the shelter of a parasol sticking up in the middle of picnic table, which still had a full ashtray and empty glasses from the previous evening as Is sat in front of a pub, while contemplating the alternative. The only way was straight on to Newton Stewart and there turn for New Galloway.
I rode into Newton Steward dripping wet and glad to warm-up in a cafe where I remained till noon when it stopped raining.
I continued on riding under a brightening sky with brief spells of sunshine. I lunched by the lake in Galloway forest at the National Trust cafe with a plact to say it was opened by the Queen, and later descended down and past through the Town of New Galloway. The afternoon was rapped up riding over pleasant green hill farming countryside on which the sun at last shone brighter with fleecy cotton wool clouds now presenting no threat of further rain. I passed through the hamlet of Thornhill and then after more miles reached the motorway from Glasgow, where I pressed on on the road parallel, south through a narrow valley with steep slopes planted with pine-trees and slow rotating blades of wind turbines on the hilltop above. The sun was setting when I at last reached the town of Moffitt, glad to have reached my gold for the day.
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