Sport Relief bike ride and Carrbridge loco removal

Yesterday was insane. On Sunday night at 8pm I got a booking for a job in John O'Groats, over 160 miles away, and I had to be there for 8am. The job was covering the start of the Sport Relief celebrity bike ride.

The agency that I was covering the event for supplies photos to a lot of celebrity magazines and tabloid newspapers, so I tried to get photos that those publications would be interested in, such as this shot of David Walliams signing autographs:

Current media darling Miranda Hart:

And some gratuitous butt shots of Davina McCall:

Fearne Cotton kept a low profile and I didn't see her come out to mingle with the crowd at all, so there wasn't much opportunity for good pics of her:

Local school kids had turned out in force to give their support, so once the celebs had set off I got a group shot of the kids to send to the local paper:

So that was the John O'Groats job done.

On the way home I headed for the scene of a road accident near Invergordon, but it had been cleared up by the time I got there. I stopped in Inverness for a couple of hours to do a bit of shopping, then continued south.

And by pure luck, the time spent in Inverness meant that I reached Carrbridge just as the derailed locomotive was being taken away by road. I did a U-turn on the A9, headed back to the first layby, grabbed my camera and ran back along the A9 to get some shots of the loco and the queues of traffic. Maybe there's a good reason for the timing, but I thought it was quite bizarre that the loco was being moved at 5pm when it would surely cause a lot of inconvnience to motorists.

It was a very long day. I got home at about 6:30pm, sent the loco pics off to the papers, had a quick bite to eat, and sat on the settee for a game of Grand Theft Auto. I woke up 2 hours later, still sitting upright on the settee. I'd pretty much been running on adrenaline for the past 24 hours. Went to bed and slept for 11 hours.

Would happily do the same again tomorrow