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To The Hills of Harris

John Laughlin / 06.07.2005

It was a day of mixed blessings in the race today. The early ferry from Berneray to Leverburgh on Harris meant an early start to ensure that kayakers were deposited in time before the tight squeeze onto the small inter-island ferry. The Caledonian MacBrayne guys worked wonders fitting several large square pegs into a not so large round hole and everyone made it on time despite the early start.

The paddlers meanwhile were working hard in great calm conditions across the Sound of Barra on an adjusted route that followed the ferry. Out front in his familiar position is James Block of 2x2 but Calum Urquhart is very close behind and anything could happen before our finish in Great Berneray on Friday. James knows this well after benefiting from 11th hour boat damage to his closest rival in a previous race, that gifted him 1st place.

On land the race began with a grouped start mountain bike blast on Toe Head which saw myself and John Houlihan get off to a flying start, dropping the rest of the field, but I broke the first rule of navigating and followed John the wrong way at junction as our runners were situated at different sides of the first hill.

This put our Tim Lenton in that morale destroying at the back of the field, although he soon made up some time on a hill run between the next two points while other teams chose to take a longer cycle route around the hills.

Unfortunately we threw the time away again by failing to have our swimmer in position for the faster than expected incoming biker; it was just one of those days! First out of the swim was Claire Gordon from Burach, who, like us, then sent two runners over Roineabhal, just East of Leverburgh to bag some points. It was a really beautiful run and fun steep descent with only a brief pause for a quick chat with the BBC film crew at the controls.

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