Day 1: John o' Groats to Loch Moy

I slept quite well in the pod and woke up to my alarm at 5.30 am, which surprised me because I had been wide awake at 4.00 am and hadn't expected to get back to sleep. 
Having got there at gone 11.00 pm I'd not had chance to shower, so wanted to shower before I left as I would be bivvying on night 1. As a result, there was more faff time than usual and I cycled down to the famous signpost at just before 7.00 am. With no one there I took a selfie and was off. 
I'd been so eager to get going though that I forgot to press 'start' on my Wahoo and so missed the first 3 km or so. The target for the day was Loch Moy, about 20 km south of Inverness, a total of 218 km and 2,050 m of climbing. This was ambitious because my longest ride up to this point has been 200 km. 

Despite the headwind I had a massive grin on my face at the joy of finally getting going, after months of obsessing about it. The A9 was quiet, the weather was fine (apart from the headwind), and I couldn't believe my luck. 

Hydration was a restocked-whenever-I-could litre of water and litre of electrolyte, and fuelling was mostly from cereal bars (which I quickly became sick of after day 1!) I stopped for a pasta lunch from a Spar in Helmsdale, and to re-apply sun screen.
Aware of the dangers of overdoing it on the first day, I stopped under a tree at about 140 km, North of Invergordon, to rest and stretch. 
Dinner was from ALDI in Inverness, and then the 20 km to Loch Moy. Whilst I had planned to bivvy by the loch, it turned out to be inaccessible, so I rode on a few more kilometres and found a discrete-ish spot just over a fence. After the important hygiene routine to avoid saddle sores (baby wipes and Sudocreme) I did more stretching and then settled down to sleep. 
Day 1 was done and I was happy. 

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