Day 10
June 20th - From Stewarton to Dumfries

The weather certainly took a turn for the worse today. I was woken at 6am by the sound of rain outside the bedroom window that wouldn't close properly. By the time I went downstairs for breakfast it had got even heavier and everyone found it highly amusing that I was going to cycle 60 miles in it. I had a continental breakfast because the kitchen was being refitted and finally got on the bike at about 10am by which time the rain had eased a little.
My cunning plan from now on was to stick to A-roads as much as possible so I headed for Kilmarnock to get on the A76 to Dumfries which was around 60 miles away. After 6 miles I reached Kilmarnock and noticed that the gps had decided to die early on me today. I swore at it but that didn't help so I had to turn it off and on again and remember to add 6 miles on at the end.
As I got onto the A76 the weather improved and the sun was breaking through in places. It was really hard cycling to start with, into the wind and constantly up and down (mainly up) - nothing as steep as last week but with my knee still aching a bit from yesterday it was enough to slow me down. Apart from the hills the road was really good, it was wide with a space for cyclists to the left of the white line. I went through a few quaint villages and the scenery reminded me a lot of South Devon.
At about the 40 mile mark I was coming into a small village called Sanquhar when the back of the bike suddenly felt a bit rough. My dream of getting from John O'Groats to Land's End without a puncture was over. It took me about 15 minutes to fix it and get going again and at least it wasn't a waste of time packing those spare inner tubes. Soon after this the sun came out properly and it was boiling hot. I decided to go for shorts for the first time in the whole trip and my knee felt a lot better for not having lycra pressed against it. The good weather didn't last long and as I reached the town of Thornhill the heavens opened and I dived into a cafe for what I can only describe as a bucket of coffee. I had 14 miles to go to Dumfries and the rain was pretty constant the whole way.
Dumfries seems like a nice place but a bit overly-proud of its links to Robert Burns. There are statues of him and roads named after him and he wasn't even born here ! His only connection with Dumfries is that he lived here for 5 years. On arriving I found the tourist information office and phoned one of the b&b's from the list in the window. Ironically, it's called Torbay Lodge. The lady who runs it very kindly (and bravely) offered to put my socks in the tumble dryer for me. The forecast for tomorrow is for more of the same but, if I don't get any more punctures, I should make it across the border into England which will make me feel like I'm getting there. Lunchtime tomorrow is the half-way point in time on this trip and today's 64 miles makes it 585 in all so another 40 will put me at the half-way point in distance. All of a sudden I don't seem to be that far behind schedule but I do have some hilly areas ahead of me.

The Routemap

The Speed (in blue) and the Elevation (in green). The first 6 miles of the day are missing.