German reliability and Lee the cobbler

Another interesting day. We all agreed we were going to head north. We started by trying to find the smallest castle ( Hermit's Castle, Achmelvich)  n Scotland. We thread our way down a small beach track, and came to a fork in the road. Williams headed one way and Mark headed the other. We met back 20 mins later both having spoken to some locals who told us it was about a 10 minute walk and not really worth it. Being a lazy bunch of fat middle aged blokes we chose to just have a look at pictures on the internet instead. 

So here you go, save yourself a trip and enjoy these images shamelessly stollen from google.

 

 

We headed out on the B869 and got temporarily separated due to stopping for photo opportunities. 

 

   

While we waited for Stobart, Glitter and Lecter to catch up we had a quick check of the bikes. Forsyth was a little unimpressed with the excrement that Williams had thrown up on his bright yellow bike. 

 

 

 

Here we can see Glitter giving us a friendly wave as he goes by or at least that's what we think he was doing!

From here on things started to go a bit pear shaped. Or to be more precise, Richard Forsyth started to go a bit pear shaped.

 

 

 

That red stuff that looks like the the inners of some road kill on Richards front wheel is actually coming from his front wheel bearing which decided to give up the ghost, the BMW reliability curse hits again! Using Williams over priced and quite frankly shite SAT Nav we located the nearest BMW dealer in Inverness and set of at a careful a careful pace to get it fixed. The careful pace quickly turned to a full out race once Forsyth's Dementia kicked in and he forgot about his failing front wheel. 

We stopped at a hotel trapped in time to call the Dealer and make sure they had the part and for a cup of tea. Gavin Glitter got quite tearful at the smell of the place saying it reminded him of Nana Glitter. We hope this was the smell of pee he was referring to.

 

 

It was difficult to tear Forsyth away as it "reminded him of home", the owner of the "hotel" sensing another paying resident opportunity.

After about 5 attempts we finally managed to get hold of someone at the BMW dealer only to be told they would have to order the part in. A bearing for Christ sake! And they don't have it in stock, typical BMW service. 

Stobart did some ringing around and managed to find another motorcycle garage who said they would fix it today if we brought it in.

A short blast to Inverness and the BMW was fixed. Forsyth's problem never stopped there though, his boots which he had had "since I was a lad" decided that 40 years of use was enough and disintegrated. Little did we realize that we had a cobbler in our mists though. Lee Lecter Hughes got his leather cobblers bag out and set to work with all his tools right there in Aldi car park. We were astonished and only 30 minutes later and with much craftsmanship the boot was repaired to 'almost as good as new' and certainly another 40 years of life left in them.