After a night on the transition area and a battle against the midges on the morning, I drove to the bike section with the target of taking pictures of the leading teams. There is still a long way to go but the podium seems quite defined. I chose to go close to the control CP24. It was a perfect spot for many reasons: there were no midges thanks to a little wind, wonderful view, sunny weather, network connection which permits to follow the trackers and an unobstructed climbing road to see them arriving. Then, for each team, I start walking next to them as the slope was sufficient to follow them by foot. The final approach of the control was not obvious, so I was able to anticipate their moves and take pictures with different angles without disturbing or helping them.
When the leaders were gone, I came back to the transition area. It was midges-land! They were everywhere… The midges nets were very useful even inside the building. To make it harder for the mental, it was raining and the night was coming. After the editing of some bike’s pictures and a good meal, I decided to go to the car park at the end of the five sisters. The aim was to be ready on morning to climb on the other direction than the teams to take pictures of them. On my road, I chose to make a stop at the Donan Eilean Castle as there was a control there and it’s a classical scene of Scotland . Ligéraid came few minutes later. The timing was not anticipated but was perfect! Once at the car park, conditions (midges, rain and type of ground) make it too complicated to use my tent so I slept on my car.
To download and use the pictures, everything is detailed here. The links to the other galleries are here.
