For the last week, I’ve had no toilet. I’ve had workmen digging holes at the house to move some water pipes. When they started digging, they cut the fibre broadband cable. A couple of hours later they cracked a clay pipe.

“I think that’s the pipe to the toilets,” said my wife, “What are we going to do about the toilet?”

“Never mind that,” I said, “what are we going to do about the internet! We always have the garden. You can’t access Netflix behind a bush!”

Five days without a toilet has meant some visits to my mum’s house, a local gym and the Morrison’s down the road. It’s been annoying and requires planning but largely we’ve survived. Just like I survived the Relentless bike leg, which was also annoying, required planning and made me cross my legs for hours on end after getting battered by the bike saddle bouncing up and down on the tough gravel tracks.

The bike course starts with a long climb uphill. I’d borrowed a gravel bike from Iain TwinBikeRun’s wife as I didn’t have one of my own and organisers had banned mountain bikes.

The bike was comfy but heavy and it had, at best a 32 gear as its lowest setting, and it was still not enough for some of the climbs. Unable to get much purchase on the gravel beneath, wheels spinning but not moving, I had to walk large parts of this first section.

When a downhill did arrive it was almost vertical downhill through reeds, heather and a slope so steep I had my brakes on full to have a controlled fall rather than controlled descent. It felt like it was going to be a long day…

The course is split into two roughly equal loops. The first starts at Carrick Castle and finishes back at Lochgoilhead, the second loops round towards the Rest & Be Thankful (or, to give it its full name, ‘the Rest & Be Thankful is Closed due to a Landslide’) before coming down to Lochgoilhead again.

The first loop is steeper with more short climbs and steep descents in its first two thirds, but the final third is a long descent, which (almost) makes up for the pain of the start.

The views across Loch Goil and into Argyll are undeniable and the weather was almost perfect. However, even with a forecast that it would be dry all day, the west coast of Scotland never disappoints and we had almost an hour of a steady dreich downpour. Even if BBC weather tells you that the sun has expanded by billions of miles and the world was about to be incinerated, it would still rain in Kyle of Lochalsh.

The second loop starts with another long, but not steep climb. The roads also improve, except for a couple of sections with heavy shale and stone that made it difficult to ride. Those sections are short and only take a couple of minutes before the track reverts to a well worn fire track that is clearly used regularly by the Foresty Commission.

The second lap also has a couple of section marked as “gnarly”. And by gnarly they mean no track, steep drops and very technical riding through some woods. Nothing dangerous and nothing to cause any concern unless you decide to ride them because you have the bike handling skills of a professional downhill MTBer.

By this point we barely saw another rider. For a while, the end of loop 1 and the start of loop 2, we kept swapping places with another rider called Michael. But he must have had a second wind and left us for dust after an hour or so riding nearby.

The final few miles are through a wood to the south of Lochgoilhead. This bit is also marked “gnarly” and had been christened ‘Glen Gruel’ by the organisers. This section had only had a very narrow track at best and I spent most of it walking, or riding with my legs sticking out to act as a stabilisers in case the bike wheel slipped and I fell.

It was slow going but given the rest of the race was slow going too, I enjoyed this section more than I thought. It made a nice change just before the finish. A bit like getting punched in the gut instead of repeatedly getting kicked in the head. “Well, at least that’s different,” you think.

The final two miles are an easy, if slightly rocky, descent into Lochgoilhead and transition at the village hall.

Overall

The weather was ideal, the route was varied, but a gravel race is not for me. The slog of going uphill is not offset by the reward of coming back down. I don’t mind climbing but I’m not a good descender on a bike. I spend most of the time coming down, braking hard, which isn’t fun. Then, when I’m on the flat, I don’t enjoy the randomness of gravel and the possibility that any moment I could get a puncture from a stray rock, which could then lead to being miles from a main road and rescue, if I can’t change the tyre. Instead I spend the entire race being mildly anxious about all of it.

So, with that in mind, when we saw a man prepare a barbecue at the village hall and the choice was to continue or to eat a burger straight from the grill, there was no choice at all. Mmmm, cheeseburger.

Lochgoilhead and Lochgilphead are completely different places. Unless you’re Iain TwinBikeRun and you’re trying to book a hotel thinking they are the same place. In which case, booking a hotel in one (Lochgilphead) is not at all handy when you are meant to be swimming first thing in the other (Lochgoilhead)!

A quick change of booking and we had a hotel closer to the start line with entertainment – a band played on Friday night – and art. If you can call a random drawing of Renton from Transporting on a shelf in a stairwell ‘art’ especially when every other picture was of deers, glen, moors and shortbread tin covers. Maybe they just order a job lot of “Scottish images” and no one spotted that the junkie from Leith was not exactly a Highland bus tour for the over 70s material.

I liked the band though. Especially as the band turned out to be one man with a guitar and a back track of classic songs all sung in a voice that can only be described as “my God, please don’t do the accents!”

He sang ‘We come from a land down under”, with an accent that can only be described as Skippy The Bush Kangaroo and ‘No Woman, No Cry’ with an accent that Nigel Farage would deport.

Speaking of race hate, I hate a gravel race. Several years ago we entered the Dirty Reiver, a gravel race in Keilder which, after 70 miles of hitting every stone of every track, made me realise that a bike was a viable form of homemade vasectomy. You can read more about the race here.

Why I entered The Restless, I don’t know. I think I was intrigued by the possibility and novelty of racing an off-road triathlon. The Restless being the first off-road triathlon organised by XTri, who also run Noresman and Celtman. It also helped that the race was relatively close to home in Lochgoilhead, only 90 minutes from Glasgow. Or 120 minutes if you book Lochgilphead.

The swim course looked nice, a sea swim in August with Castle Carrick providing a backdrop that could be used on the wall of a Scottish hotel. While the bike course looked manageable at 35 miles rather than a full 56 miles that a normal middle distance triathlon would require. The final run was also intriguing with a good summit and view promised.

Registration

Once we got to Lochgoilhead, registration was straightforward. We could register up to 7pm the night before and bikes could also be dropped out at transition 1 rather than set up in the morning. Given the strong midges on the west coast I could only hope the person watching over transition had a hazmat suit to keep the wee blighters away.

Transition 1 was around five miles down the coast from Lochgoilhead and was next to Carrick Castle, a 14th century tower that sits on the edge of Loch Goil. It made an impressive backdrop when racking bikes on Friday night.

After racking up, we went back to registration and attended the race briefing. Again, a very well organised event.

Swim

The swim start was 7am, practically a long lie-in compared to other XTri events. As Carrick Castle has no parking, competitors are bussed to the start.

“Unfortunately there’s only one bus” they said at the race briefing. “You’ll be split by number into a group of 53 and a group of 31. The bus has 53 seats. so we can’t take everyone in one go nor could we get a second bus!”

Turns out hiring a bus for Lochgoilhead was one of the hardest tasks the organisers had to solve.

Luckily we were in the second group and had an extra 30 minutes sleep before having to catch the bus from Lochgoilhead to the castle.

Catching the bus was straightforward, with lots of parking nearby in a yacht car park/yacht yard/don’t know the proper term for where people park yachts on land. Land marinas? Earth docks? Who knows?

Also there was plenty of toilets, unusual for for most races where finding a toilet is harder than spotting a monster in Loch Ness.

We had around 30 minutes to wait between arrival and the swim start, plenty of time to get everything set up in transition and check that our bikes hadn’t been stolen in the middle of the night after security was eaten alive by midges. Luckily, they must have survived the night and our bikes were still racked by the castle.

The swim started in the water and we lined up in-between two canoes. The route had been shown as a short swim down the loch before passing around two bright yellow buoys, before returning up the loch, in front of the castle before reaching another fixed buoy, turning and returning to the castle and transistion.

When we started there was only one buoy, and I wonder if they had problems with the second as the course turned out to be shorter than it’s anticipated 1.8km. I didn’t mind as it meant I felt strong throughout the swim as I’d trained for the longer distance and was getting the benefit of a shorter course on longer training.

There were around 85 people starting, from an initial field of 104. The organisers confirmed at the briefing that their target had been 100 people as they thought that would be the capacity for the event. I think they were right, while their was plenty of room in the swim, as we came back to shore and started the bike, there were some narrow and steep paths that could easily cause bottlenecks if more people were leaving and trying to get passed one another.

After a period of warm weather, the loch was warm (for Scotland) and almost flat calm. My only criticism would be that the final fixed black painted buoy is not as easy to see against the dark moor west coast background as a the yellow inflatables. I’d add a yellow inflatable to this buoy too, just to help with sighting.

At transition, I took my bike from the rack and got to start my ride on…. a woman’s bike. Iain TwinBikeRun’s wife’s bike to be exact. I didn’t have a gravel bike so had borrowed her gravel bike to use instead.

How did I get on? Second part next week!

I ran home on Tuesday and passed the set of Spiderman: No Way Home, currently filming in Glasgow city centre.

The film had cordoned off a street while filming what appears to be a chase involving Spiderman and a tank. I could see the tank and what appeared to be Spiderman standing on top of it. Various modified cherry pickers carried big banks of lights and I could see crew bustling about as they got ready to film.

Earlier, Mrs TwinBikeRun, who works on the street, was blocked from leaving her office at lunchtime by one of the crew. A man in a hi-viz jacket stopped her and said: “We’re just about start filming, can you wait until we’re finished? You should also get your camera out.”

“Why?” said Mrs TwinBikeRun, “do you not have people to do that?”

They didn’t laugh. 

I played cricket once, I think. I have to say “I think” because, until this week, I wasn’t sure if two hours standing in a field qualified as playing a game of cricket. 

I was working in London and my office had a cricket match arranged against a team from PWC, the accountants. One of my colleagues asked if I wanted to play. I said “no”. They said “we’re desperate and we know you’ve got nothing to do tonight as you just told us you had no plans” and I couldn’t argue against that.

I ended up in a taxi to a cricket club in Greenwich and, from there, to what I was told was an “absolutely vital role of standing right here, next to the boundary, and throwing the ball back if it comes near you.” It didn’t. I spent two hours standing in a corner of a field watching a game of cricket in front of me. At some point, we lost. I only knew this because everyone started to leave and headed to the clubhouse and, only when they reached it, did one man jog back and say: “sorry, I should have said, that’s the game over. We lost.”

Until now, I thought my lack of involvement meant I couldn’t say I was a cricket player.  Unless… “Do you play cricket?” People could ask me and I’d say “Absolutely. You tell me where to stand and I’ll stand with the best of them!”

I thought cricket should involve some element of skill. A fast throw, a curly bounce, a big hit. Not just the ability to stand and watch and not scratch my bum out of boredom.

Yet, it turns out that international cricket is identical to amateur cricket: you also need a man to stand as far away as possible and do nothing for hours on end. 

This was my first time watching cricket. I was lucky to win a pair of tickets in the ballot for the third day of the England v India third test at Lords cricket ground in London. I meant to check the rules of the game before going down and to bring headphones to the ground to listen to Test Match Special (which I knew was a ‘thing to do’) but having forgot to do both, I had to work out what was happening from the action itself. And what I could see was this – there was a player standing on the boundary at all times and it looked like his job was just to throw the ball back when the ball was near him (not very often) and to sign autographs, as one player did by running to the stand and back while the game was still on. 

I could do that. 

I did do that. 

I could be an international cricketer!

(Except for the bowling bit as the players who stood for hours here also appeared to be the one who were best at bowling. I can’t even throw a party, never mind an off-stump in-swinging left-hand googly).

Here’s my tips to a day at Lords:

Tickets

I entered the ballot by selecting a random stand and with no idea what the difference was between different options and seats. You should check. We had tickets in the Compton Stand (a new stand that faces the club house) however it’s top level has only a tiny cover. We were in seats that were exposed to the sun on one of the hottest days of the year. Every time a cloud passed, everyone would cheer.  But, because that only happened every hour or so, we only managed to last 60 minutes before needing to take a break by getting a drink, going for a walk round the stadium or just finding some shade and crashing for 10 minutes before going back.

Dress code?

There’s no dress code at Lords except for certain areas, but there is a general ban on fancy dress and, it turns out, on flags. A man next to us had an Indian flag which he used to cover his knees. A steward asked him to remove it. “Can I not have a flag?” The man asked. The steward said, indicating the rest of the stadium, “can you see any other flags here today?”. There were none. “Fair enough,” said the man, “but you can wave a flag at the Oval”. “Are you at the Oval?” said the sarcastic steward.

Food & Drink

We bought a hamper in advance, which we collected when we arrived. It was excellent, with snacks for breakfast, a full lunch and scones, a cake and macaroons for afternoon tea. It was also pricy, and it appears most people had brought their own food as we didn’t see anyone else with an ‘official’ hamper. 

There’s plenty of food options around the ground and plenty of bars for drinking. There’s also lots of drinks station to get water for free, though naturally these were very busy given the weather. 

We, like most people there ate and drank through the day while watching the game both on the pitch and on the big screen.

Watching the game

From our seats, which were almost as far as you could get from the action, we could see the ball most of the time. I worried beforehand that all we would see is someone’s arm and then we would hear a thwack and would have no idea where the ball was going. The faster the ball the harder it was to see but it was never a problem.

There were screens around the ground showing replays and match info, which made it easy to check what was happening once we worked out that “Ah, the asterix beside their name shows which one is batting!”

There’re breaks in the play for morning and afternoon tea along with 45 minutes for lunch. This helped break up the day and gave longer breaks away from the sun. 

Atmosphere

We thought the atmosphere was good with English and Indian fans mixed in together but a couple behind us said “typical restrained Lord’s atmosphere” at one point of the day. We had nothing to compare it against so perhaps other grounds have better ‘chat’. We enjoyed it.

Travel

Getting to and from the ground was straightforward. To get there, we went to St John’s Wood underground station, and it was just a short walk of a few hundred meters to the ground. To get away, we walked for longer (15 minutes) and went to Marylebone where there was no queue and we got on the underground straight away.

Overall

As a seasoned expert, well, as someone who knew the word “cricket” and not much more, it was an enjoyable day and one that was easy to pick up what was going on. If golf is said to be a good walk, spoiled. Then cricket is definitely a good picnic, enhanced.

I like sports that end on time. Sports that you know when they will finish when you start watching them. Athletics will be near to or close to a world record time. The 100m is not going to be three hours long. Marathons are not going to be 20 minutes. Football is 90 minutes. You can plan around sports with a deadline, you know what you need to do and how long you need to do it.

Tennis on the other hand can last 60 minutes, it can last three days. That’s a commitment I can’t make when I’m sitting down to watch TV. I want to know when I’m going to be finished.

So, when I was lucky enough to get Centre Court tickets for Wimbledon I was wondering whether I would enjoy it or not. I thought I would enjoy it, I don’t mind watching a big of tennis. A bit. I didn’t know what it would be like to watch a game that might never end…

Before the games though, what was the experience of Wimbledon like?

First, getting there: this was straightforward. A busy, but not packed underground to Southfield station, a short walk to the grounds, a short queue to get in (though remember a photo ID for security if you’re the ticketholder) and then we were in the grounds. All very straightforward.

Second, what to do first? Mrs TwinBikeRun is a Wimbledon veteran who enters the ballot each year and queues early in the morning in the years she doesn’t get a ticket through the ballot. She said we should go to Courts 18 or 12 as they have high stands which allow you to see not just the court itself but other courts around the ground. We arrived at 11:20 and Court 18 was already full but Court 12 had spaces and we picked two seats right at the top, which was a good choice. It was 31 degrees and, at the top of the stand, there was a slight breeze. It was still tough in the direct sun but the breeze made a small but very happy difference.

Third, what’s going on? No idea for the first few games. It was a woman’s match with a British player, Heather Watson, in action. It’s was a decent game but I spent most of the time watching the grounds and other games and people.

Fourth, why were you not in Centre Court: it turns out it doesn’t start until later in the day (1:30pm) but the rest of the games start at 11am. We used the time to watch the first game and then get something to eat before going to centre court.

Fifth, what was the food like? Decent. We went to a large food hall below Centre Court for lunch of a wrap (basic, expensive but good quality) and we had a pizza later (much better than expected, crispy and decent dough) and mac & cheese (awful, pasta in a weak cheese juice, not sauce). There are queues, but everything was a queue and we never had to wait too long. 10 minutes at most.

Sixth, and drink? Water, lots of water. They had an Evian stand where you could buy a bottle for £5 and then get unlimited refills but there are also lots of water taps where you can water for free. We had two 750ml bottles at all times and must have drank 4 – 5 litres through the day to survive the heat.

Seventh, and Centre Court: fantastic, though we were lucky to be on the western side so had the benefit of shade from the roof. Even so, I used a small fan to cool myself. Though others there were more ingenious: one man had a cap with a fan and solar panel built into the rim, while another had a panel fan which they attached to the seat in front of them.

And, finally, how was the tennis? We saw the number 3 seed knocked out by an unseeded French tennis player and Novak Djovick suffer a slight scare as he fought to overcome an unseeded American. Both games lasted nearly seven hours. And I have to admit, I was never bored, but I was also not completely caught up in it either. My mind would wander. I’d try and spot famous people in the royal box (An Australian day it seem with Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchette and Rebel Wilson all in attendance), I’d watch what Cliff Richard was doing and tried to spot other British starts in Trevor McDonald, Alexander Armstrong, Justin Rose and Andy Murray’s mum, Judy.

It was easy to leave and get back into Centre Court. We had a break for dinner (the pizza and mac & cheese) and what was noticeable was that as the day went on, the crowd changed as ticket holders left and were replaced by fans who bought tickets that were resold. The atmosphere was certainly rowdier and louder as the day went on, but maybe that’s a result of people drinking or the fact Djovick is more well known and has his own fans out in support.

Overall, definitely an enjoyable day, and a great experience but, as the match didn’t finish until 1040, it was nearly 12 hours of tennis, whichI think may be enough tennis to last me the rest of my life…

Oh, and for getting home, it was a walk back to Southfield where the organisers ensure everyone remains on the pavement (“Get off the road, the council doesn’t let us use the road!”) and they control the number of people crossing roads to ensure that the station is able to cope with numbers. We only have five minute wait before getting on a train.