The 2014 Challenge, day 10: Feshie - Geldie again (13)

Victoria Bridge was a welcome sight ... but it was only when we got there that Maggie returned and reported that yes, there was room for me, and she had booked me a place at a cost of £20. Was that OK? It was indeed OK, and I was more than happy to stop short at Mar Lodge and not have to press on to Braemar tonight.

Lucy, who professed incomprehension at the ability of other Challengers to be so bright and breezy at the end of a long day (it has to do with pacing ourselves, Lucy - and the fact that we didn't spend the first few days of the Challenge gambolling about like a spring lamb in order to mock the efforts of our elderly fathers) invited us to agree that it would not offend against the spirit of the event to accept a lift in a Panda from here to Mar Lodge, and back to here in the morning: she would still have walked the whole way across. This, undoubtedly, was true; and would have been no different from my accepting a lift back up from the Boathouse restaurant to my point of departure from the main road. The problem Lucy faced, however, was that the elderly father whom she had so loved to mock in the first few days of the Challenge was not contemplating riding the Panda from Victoria Bridge to Mar Lodge and back, and evidently if she did he would never let her hear the last of it. So, in the end, she was persuaded to walk the last few hundred metres up the carriage drive to Mar Lodge.