After the hurting ride of the last day today I planned a shorter trip of about 70 kilometres. I thought I would have much less metres in altitude as well but I was wrong. At least, they were balanced over the distance in a more consistent manner.
And then the prospect of the upcoming day of rest in Oban was refreshing mentally. Well, but to be refreshed on the journey I had to actually start it. It took me hours to finally get going. The usual small café was to nice and easy and warm to leave and the prospect of burning thighs again did not help either. At noon I finally made it to the small supermarket at a gas station to buy some food and drinks for the way. But in front of that, just while I tried to find a suitable place for my stuff in my luggage bags, a guy came up to me. He told me that he had seen me the evening before on the camping site. And he had the urgent need to tell me, to beg me to never stop traveling on bikes. He did so years ago and regretted it ever since but was not get it going again. We went on to talk about automobiles, Asia and advertising for nearly half an hour. What an easy start to the day‘s trip.
What had been planned as a short transitional leg was exactly that for the first one and a half hours. Quite paths through wide fields and along the Crinan Canal, and the realisation of music being a enjoyable companion made the first 25 kilometre an fast and easy flight.
But due to a reason I could not remember anymore at all I integrated a sight into the route. This was quite enjoyable from a historical perspective, but the path to the castle itself was pure torture: Rocky and vertical in a square angle. Well, kind of. But then again, the Carnasserie Castle was a scenic ruin and the former castle was the place from which the first protestant bishop started to spread the word to the isles. The tower was in quite a good condition and so I decided to use it as the place for my lunch snack. A pity, from an acoustical point of view but then again a good anecdote where the gardeners who did their deafening deeds then and there.
The day from there on was full of great views and heavy but manageable climbs. What a shame that I - arriving in Oban - overlooked the signs to the camping site. So I drove on, missed the target by far and extremely fast, since it was all downhill. Well, it came to no surprise, that I had to pedal strongly to be able to build the tent for the next two nights.
A great character was the warden at the site who vaguely reminiscent of Lurch from the Addams Family. But what I remember most, was his dry friendliness and most of all his fast electric scooter which he used to be everywhere on the site at once.
The town of Oban by the way is quite vibrant. Especially, when you think about the calm attitude of the area around. I was not long enough on the road to suffer a cultural shock, but there were people on the streets of of nowhere. As a quite original feature Oban has a replica of the Roman Colosseum. Reads like a joke on the first sight. And on the second as well: A rich banker from town, John Stuart McCaig, commissioned the building at the end of 19. century to keep the workers of Oban busy during the winter months.
This day gets a special award for hard work to honour the protestantism.