2007 Race Closes
06 July 2007 - We give out prizes; we eat and drink; we dance until we can’t dance any more. I’ve had a ball this evening and apparently a lot of other folk have, too…and the best bit may be that I have a bed and an en suite bathroom all to myself in the very comfortable and hospitable Cross Inn. We’ve done it!
Day 5 starts with a swim the length of Coll beach and then a paddle in very lumpy conditions. Broad Bay can be very exposed in the NE wind that it turns out to be, rather than the N-NW that was forecast. Any thoughts of paddling back and around Tolsta Head are quickly canned. Many of these people could do this easily, but not under race conditions and Jeff wisely decides we will quit while we’re ahead.
After this, he is off to the ferry at noon anyway - en route for another sort of kayaking in the U.S. of A! Martin, our Chief Marshall had to leave yesterday so numbers are depleting - but we are nearing the end.
As the paddlers brave a big swell, I get up once again after less than 5 hours sleep to put out checkpoints. Various people were supposed to mark out our little course for runners and bikers in Stornoway’s well-wooded Castle Grounds - but it, too, didn’t happen. I suppose I have been walking/running/biking here for more than 16 years so... using the Stornoway Trust’s own diagrammatic map of the grounds I put out all the CPs as per Gavin’s instructions. I am told later that they are all in place except one on the little ‘ring trail’ below Gallows Hill - hard to find anyway, as it is so overgrown after all our sunshine and rain of the last few weeks. Lars reckons it is a few meters out and I agree that it certainly might be - but anyone on the right trail will have had to pass my marker, hanging in front of them on a branch!
Afternoon spent zipping between Back-Stornoway-Point-Ness (Butt of Lewis) I’ll have done nearly 1,000 miles in my feisty little Ford Ka by the end of this week. I am barred from use of our estate car now, having written off a Vectra at the start of Heb 2006!!
Briefly, I get to see two or three teams arrive at the Butt of Lewis lighthouse. As with all aspects of this route, this part is imaginative and I am in awe and admiration of Gavin’s ability to make the course testing on the ground, but relatively simple to understand on paper. Yes, Gavin please do another route for us next year!
Instead of running en mass up the road to the lighthouse (sometimes, in past years, clad in fancy dress) Gavin takes all team members on a cunning route up the west coast a little way and in round the back of the lighthouse (yes, guys I did put out those CP's, too. It was great: I weigh at least a stone less than I did at the start of the week. I MUST take up running!). Teams arrive victorious from around the lighthouse cottages’ walled garden. Each team gets a roaring cheer from those assembled: marshals, other competitors and the odd tourist…
Meanwhile, back at the hall… and that was another saga 2007: two halls not completed by builders, slipped by, when the littler, older Ness Hall and its cheerful guardian Fiona Morrison stepped into the breach at the last moment. It turned out to be a great venue for a Ceilidh prize-giving. David and Eunice MacLeod and their stalwart band from Great Bernera Hall once again turned out a meal that even Gordon Ramsay would approve... why doesn’t he come and do our event? He’d love it!
We give out prizes; we eat and drink; we dance until we can’t dance any more. I’ve had a ball this evening and apparently a lot of other folk have, too... and the best bit may be that I have a bed and an en suite bathroom all to myself in the very comfortable and hospitable Cross Inn. We’ve done it!
Next week there is a lot of work still to be done on the complex Results sheet, which still has not gone out, but everyone is home safe and well. No major injuries. My maternal instinct is appeased! I go to sleep thinking up ideas and improvements for the Access Sport Heb 2008...