BBC Sport's Andy Nicolson and Paul Redgrove, and IT colleague Jon Cook, are attempting to get fit enough to ride l'Etape du Tour - an amateur mountain stage of the Tour de France in the Pyrenees this summer.

Read their last diary entry and watch the video.

Here, Paul previews their trip to Scotland for the Etape Caledonia.

It's now about five months since we started training for l'Etape, and the weekend sees a culmination (of sorts) to all those miles. Sunday is the first real test for us with the 81-mile Etape Caledonia in Highland Perthshire.

It'll be payback for all those days in the cold and rain, almost getting run into ditches by fellow road-users, actually getting run into by a fellow road-user and having to pick the kids up straight after long rides rather than lying down and dying!

But come Sunday, we'll be amongst our own kind; fellow pedallers who have been through it, comrades of the road who know what it's like to suffer on our busy highways. On Sunday we'll be as close to cycling heaven as is possible in this car-obsessed country - for the Caledonia is the UK's only closed-road event. Bliss.

Are we worried? Not a bit of it - the training's going well, and my last big ride was 60+ miles into a headwind and I felt good. Bike sorted? Yup, works a treat, rides well and the saddle's almost comfortable... hang on, what's that noise from the rear derailleur?!?

The training, it transpires, is the easy part. Getting there and finding somewhere to stay has proved a logistical test all of its own. A quick scout around Network Rail's site came up with the cheapest fare - each - at about £150!

Drive? The wife insists the car stays on the South Coast for her to ferry kids around, Andy's motor is in the garage with a blown head gasket, leaving the invisible man, Jon, or more pertinently, his old man, to come to the rescue with the loan of his Citroen C5 complete with bike rack. (Here I must, to avoid accusations of product placement, point out that there are many other cars available to purchase from reputable dealers!)

Accommodation, naturally, also presented its own challenges... "What, you're fully booked? The whole weekend? Cycle event? No kidding!"

No problem; we'll camp. "What, no groups of men allowed? But we're cyclists, we're not rowdy!" And so it went until we managed to book a static caravan - with a separate room for the light-sleeping Mr Nicolson. Welcome, we hope, to the Faskally Caravan Park.

On Friday morning we'll be up with the larks and setting off for Pitlochry. Hopefully we'll have packed everything from gels to overshoes and covered every eventuality from inner tubes to chain kits... wait, new mitts, back to the local bike store... again!

And if everything goes to plan, you'll be able to follow our ride live via SportsTrack, who are rigging Andy up with a GPS monitoring device.

Are you riding the Etape Caledonia? If you are, look out for us and say hello - it would be great to put faces to names and perhaps even include you in our film of the day (if you're willing!).

And if you are riding the Cally, how are your last-minute preparations going? How much kit are you taking to cover anything and everything?

Lastly, if it's this bad just to get to Scotland, what's it going be like getting over the Channel to Pau and l'Etape du Tour?!?!