TGO Challenge day 11

Tuesday 24th May, 2011
Tarfside to North Water Bridge
16.9 miles 682 ft
Surprisingly, the next morning, most of our kit was about dry. I was impressed, seeing as my rucksack had been soaked through and my boots were just ridiculously wet, again. I used David’s big woolly socks that were padding my collar bones to stuff my boots and they successfully sucked up a vast amount of water. My dry bags also appear to be excellent at their job and my borrowed sleeping bag had been dry when I’d climbed into it the night before.
It was a nice day today, all day. Even the breezy bits! We left Tarfside just before 8.30am, Mick and Gayle having already vacated the room and headed off about 7am. They like an early start. We soon reached the Retreat where we stopped for breakfast. Yet again, I just couldn’t quite manage to eat. Damn these nerves of mine! Colin joined us, but managed to finish and leave before us as we took a last moment to enjoy with porcelain. We were soon on our way and successfully found the track down to the bridge across the river. It was a very different river today.
A great stop for breakfast
Not so raging
 We made good progress all day, had the odd snack, water, gear faff and got to Edzell in time for a late lunch at the Tuck Inn, which was smashing. We bumped into lots of Challengers, Colin, Frank, Jim and all the boys whose names I have forgotten. It’s an age thing.
After lunch, we had to negotiate the Unsafe Bridge we’d heard tell of. Sure enough, there were barriers, but we soon scaled those and made our way across, oops! The loose board was right at the other end, I found out. There followed a bit of a road slog to North Water Bridge, but I didn’t really notice as I was behind Laura so wasn’t focussed on the long straight road.
Well, we got to the other side
Tent village
Tent city
There were many Challengers at the site and yet another pleasant evening followed with showering, washing, dinner, chocolate, spectating table tennis (oh Mick, that was sooo close!) maps perused, plans made and route agreed. Me, Laura, Mick, Gayle and Jon would head out together to finish in St Cyrus, a day ahead of schedule for me. Amazing.