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@GideonPARANOID
Had to sack off the Second City Divide due to the weather.
Went up to Glasgow on the train on Saturday & rode out to Lanark through countless windfarms in gorgeous sun. Bumped into a group who were coming into Glasgow, having done the route, who told us how excellent it was & tough in sections. Filled us full of excitement for the week ahead, but we knew the weather was going to change, & by 'eck it did.
There was a board in our hostel in New Lanark with a weather forecast on it - rain every day for the next ten days. It was fine in the morning so the now two of us set off (one friend just went to the train station to head home as his cold had got worse). First twenty miles were great, but while we stopped near Abington to fix a puncture, the weather came in. Friend joked at least it wasn't lightning & literally the next second there was a flash. From that point we climbed to ~550m through a wind farm through strong winds & strong rain, dropped down again & headed past the Talla reservoir. I've done the climb at the end of that reservoir over to Megget twice before (& the LSF sticker I put on the sign the first time is still there!), & it's rained both times I did it, but nothing like we had then. Absolutely horrendous. Soaked to the skin & shivering when we arrived at the halfway point café a little down the road. Couldn't face another fifty miles of wet with a bovvy at the end so sacked it off & rode down to Lockerbie & got a train home. Annoyingly, weather was much much nicer when we left the mountains, so it felt like we abandoned for no reason, but it really was horrible up there.
Going to try it again at some point, maybe next May. It's unfinished business now!
In other news, got solar panels fitted on the house yesterday, & today is similar rain to we had up in the Scottish mountains on Sunday. Not getting much draw from them right now! We would've been aiming for Greg's Hut on Cross Fell today - fat chance of that happening, would've been dangerous attempting in these conditions.
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