Land's End to John O'Groats

It’s just over a couple of weeks since we’ve got back, and I’ve finished sorting out all the ‘photos and so on – there are descriptions of each day below which you can access by the links under the schedule. Here are the details of what we did – just the facts..:

Money raised for Oxfam: still counting, but set to be over £1,000 between us!
Miles cycled: 858.25
Average mileage per day: 70.06 miles
Longest day: 98 miles (Day 13, Onich to Dingwall)
Shortest day: 43.64 miles (Day 1, Land’s End to Blackwater, although there were also the 13 miles it took us to get to Land’s End from Penzance!)

There are other things of note that are unrecorded or unquantifiable: Bananas, flapjacks, Mars Bars, and sundry snacks eaten, number of times we wondered where the hell we were, but most of all: people who were amazingly kind in their proffering of directions, support, water, cups of tea, food, entertaining conversation, and sponsorship for no apparent reason other than just being nice people. Often during the two weeks, our expectations of human nature were surpassed...

Despite the accident which overshadowed the ride, it was an exceptional experience, and I'm really glad we did it.

Day 1: Land’s End to Blackwater (43.64 miles)

We start the day in Penzance, and after the first of two weeks’ worth of big breakfasts, saddle up just after 9am to cycle the 13 miles to Land’s End. It’s a relief after months’ of discussion and planning, and the best part of the day before on the train, to finally get on a bike and start turning the pedals, and we enjoy cycling next to the harbour in Penzance. However, after a long and steep hill out of Mousehole just outside Penzance, we’re quickly reminded of what many people have told us – that the route through Cornwall and Devon is probably the hardest part. This end of Cornwall certainly doesn’t seem short of hills.

We’ve been pre-warned that Land’s End is more of a tourist destination than something to inspire the intrepid traveller attempting to journey from one end of the UK to the other, and so we’re ready for the big signs, exhibitions, and shops. We bypass all this (other than for Al to have his picture taken underneath a giant Tardis…), and head for the cliffs. We stop to enjoy the view, before having a couple of ‘photos taken to prove we were there, and by eleven o’clock we’ve started our ride from Land’s End.

The novelty of the landscape is fresh for us – the hills, plants, and coastline look alien, the mist rolling round the hills in the near distance add an element of mystery, and the road we take to St. Ives is an inviting road to cycle. We make good progress, and around lunchtime we’re dropping down into St. Ives, picking our way through the tourists to the harbour. We sit on a bench overlooking this, eat pasties, and drink tea.

Lunch over, we’re back on the road, and after stopping briefly at Portreath, head towards our first stop at Blackwater, outside St. Agnes. We’ve not gone far, when we’re flagged down by a motorcyclist to help him right his motorcycle – he’d just managed to start it into a wall. Cycling round the country, righting wrongs… that’s us!

One of my concerns about the ride had been the navigation. This has gone very well so far – I’d made up route cards for each day, and this has worked well. However, once we leave the B road we’re on to navigate the minor roads, we miss a turning, and then it starts to rain. A stop at a house for directions sets us in the right direction, and we’re soon walking our bikes up the drive to Briardene Farm, with a cup of tea waiting for us.

We don’t have long to get cleaned up, as there aren’t many places to eat around here, and the recommended transport café closes at seven, so we’re out quickly, given a lift down by our host for the night, and are soon eating fish and chips and reflecting on a successful first day. I’m pleased, as I felt it was important for our morale that our first day went well, and we stop at the pub on the way back for a pint of Tribute.

Day 2: Blackwater to Tavistock (74.81 miles)

If our first day leaves us feeling that this ride is achievable, our second day is a dose of reality. It started with us meeting one of the ‘characters’ that popped up on our ride. We’d been told by our host that there were a family staying the night who were also cycling from Land’s end to John O’Groats. We’d joked about this, as we were told it was a family of four – Mum, Dad, and two boys – and couldn’t imagine what sort of boys would want to do this with their Mum and Dad. We met the family at breakfast, where they exude a disgusting level of health and jollity, and we are immediately shown up for our comparative lack of geographical knowledge, grasp of our route, preparation, and organization. The two boys don’t say anything, and sit their eating their breakfasts. They are soon nicknamed the Flanders…

Our route today takes us along the coast to Newquay, from where we turn inland, up the hills, and then onto some busy roads towards Bodmin where we have planned to stop for lunch. I don’t enjoy these roads, and am tired from concentrating on the traffic when we stop. We can only find a service station, and don’t think much of Bodmin. We sit on a bench, eating service station sandwiches, and thinking wistfully of St. Ives harbour.

The afternoon’s roads are quieter, but with more climbing, which suits me but not Al. We head to Liskeard, then Callington, where we stop to check the map. It’s apparent at this point that while my navigation is better than we’d expected, my judgement of distance is not. We’d expected today to be sixty miles, but it’s clear that we’ll end up doing more. Keen to avoid cycling any more than we have to, we decide to ask at one of the nearby houses to check our directions. The people we ask go to some pains to make sure we’re on the right track, even ringing ahead to the B&B we’re staying at. Nevertheless, we’re tired by the time we reach our stop for the night at Acorn Cottage, a few miles out from Tavistock, having done about 15 miles more than we’d expected, and finally passed into Devon.

When we arrive, we find a small party in the garden – it turns out it was the 30th birthday of one of our hosts, John, the night before. We’re invited to join, and after having got cleaned up drink a beer with them. With no taxis around, John offers us a lift into Tavistock to find some dinner, and some good advice on places to eat. No fish and chips tonight – we have a big meal of pasta, and another nice pint of Tribute. With still no taxis in evidence, we somewhat sheepishly give John a ring, as he’d offered to drive us back if this had happened, which he duly does. We met many people who were tremendously kind to us on the ride, but Kate and John were exceptionally so – and they keep a great B&B in a lovely part of the world. We go to bed grateful that we’d chanced upon it.

We’ve cycled just over 118 miles.

Day 3: Tavistock to Watchet (87.23 miles)

We bid farewell to Acorn Cottage early, knowing we have a longer day ahead of us again. We drop down into Tavistock, and pick up the road into Dartmoor. Dartmoor was an area I’d particularly wanted to include in our ride, and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s a hard cycle ride to cross it, as we climb country lanes out of Tavistock, and then take on hill after hill as the sun ambles ever higher into the sky. But the moor seems beautifully isolated, with the odd sheep meandering its way across the road, and I enjoy the climbs, and the eventual view when we crest the final hill and stop for a rest, elated with the sense of achievement.

After we’ve dropped down from Dartmoor, we push on to Crediton to stop for lunch, which, while it’s an easier ride, nevertheless can’t come soon enough. The look of rage in Al’s eyes when I speculate we have five miles to go, when he’s convinced it’s three, is terrifying, and I realise I’m not the only one in need of a break… It turns out to be about four miles to Credition, and we stop for an ample lunch of sandwiches and coke in a café, and speculation with the locals about the number of fire engines flying down the High Street.

Leaving these matters of import to greater minds than ours, we leave Crediton on the road to Tiverton, and after the left hand turn onto this road, are faced by a hill straight away. I’ve quickly come to realise that my legs don’t like stopping too long, and I usually find things hard going first thing in the day and after lunch. This is the first time in the ride that my legs really start to feel the bite. We’ve now cycled over 150 miles, and I feel like I’m doing this climb on empty. Thankfully we’re soon over the back of the hill, and I start to feel better, but we’re only just over half way, and this is starting to really feel difficult.

Once we’ve reached Tiverton, the route becomes slightly easier, and for the next twenty miles we keep up a reasonable pace as we follow the River Exe through the Exe Valley, with the trees that line the road providing some welcome shade. I find it hard to relax though, as I know from the map that the Brendon Hills lie between us and our destination for the night, and that they don’t look like a kindly range. My eyes are continually drawn to the right, where the hills loom over us, hoping the route will take us through the foothills, rather than over the back of the hills.

Finally we reach Bampton, and I know that we have about fifteen miles to go. One of the judgements Al and I have realised on this ride is that there are delicate judgements to be made about each other’s psychological state. Whereas I really dislike cycling on the busier A roads, with less training and carrying a rucksack, Al has been finding the days harder, and particularly the climbing. I decide now is the time to break the news of impending hilliness to him, so I stop to prepare myself for the climbing, sorting out my food and ensuring I’m comfortable on the bike, and tell Al that I think the last section is going to be hard. He takes it better than I thought he might…

We nearly miss the sign for our turn, as someone had taken the sign away from the direction we’re approaching, and when we look to the milepost, someone has rubbed out the second digit for the distance to Watchet, so all we know is that the first figure is a ‘1’. We joke that it’s probably ‘19’. A mile later it becomes clear it was. For the second day I’ve misjudged the distance, and rather than just over seventy miles, we’ll have done nearer ninety.

The journey through the Brendon Hills is hard, with the climbs both numerous, and a mixture of the long, and the short and sharp, including a couple of 14%s, but when we eventually reach the other side, we see the descent to the coast:


That night we sit outside the Star Inn in Watchet, tired, but drinking a pint of Barn Owl, and waiting for our fish to be cooked, looking towards the harbour. There are worse things to do in life. It’s the sort of evening that lifts the spirits after what, in retrospect for me, was physically the hardest day of the ride.

We’ve done 205.68 miles.

Day 4: Watchet to Bath (60.04 miles)

We’re in a good mood as we leave Watchet. This is due to be one of our shorter days, we feel like we’re out of the ‘foot’ of Britain, we’re anticipating some easier terrain, we’re due to meet Al’s wife Helen, and his son Thomas, at Bath Youth Hostel, and they’ve promised to take us out for a big dinner.

The road doesn’t disappoint, and we keep a high pace up on the road to Wells, where we stop for lunch. We’re keen to get to Bath.

Seven miles from the youth hostel, just after Norton St. Philip in the hills around Bath, our short easy day suddenly gets longer and harder. A spoke goes in my back wheel, leaving it out of true and unrideable, particularly as we know there will be some steep descents in Bath, so I need my brakes functioning properly. Without the tools or the skill to do this job, it doesn’t take us long to decide we’ll have to call Helen and hope she’s reached Bath already.

Luckily Helen has, and by twenty past four, she and Thomas have found us, put my bike in the back of the car, and we set off to find a bike shop, waving to Al as he pushes on to complete the final seven miles to the youth hostel.

All our accommodation has been booked in advance, so we can’t lose a day on this ride. I need to have my bike ready to ride the following morning, and we have a somewhat anxious search round Bath for a bike shop. By the time we’ve located one with the right spoke, we’re five minutes too late and it’s closed. We manage to speak to someone who works there though, and they promise to look at it first thing the next morning.

By the time we get back to the Youth Hostel, get cleaned up, changed, and back down into Bath to find some dinner, it’s eight o’clock. I’m worried about the problem with my bike, and a day that was supposed to be a bit of a break from the long days, has suddenly become much longer, harder, and stressful. Nevertheless, it’s great to see Helen and Thomas, and once we’ve eaten, things seem much better, and we reflect that we’re lucky that if we were going to have a mechanical problem we couldn’t deal with, today was the best day for it to happen.

I’ve cycled 265.72 miles. Al’s cycled 7 extra miles…

Day 5: Bath to St. Briavels (46.28 miles)

Our fifth day was also supposed to be a shorter day, but there’s no lie-in, and not just due to some of the snoring coming from the people sharing our dormitory… I meet Helen for breakfast, and we’re back at John’s Bikes in Bath for nine o’clock. They’re as good as their word, and by half past my wheel’s in one piece, and they’ve assured me that I was just unlucky, rather than the problem being symptomatic of something more serious.

Helen and Thomas have agreed to meet us again in St. Briavels – partly for practical reasons, in case the problem with my wheel should prove to be more than bad luck – but also because it’s been really cheering to see them. By 10.30 am we’re back on bikes, having agreed to see Helen and Thomas (now officially our support team…) in Yate for lunch.

Today the main issue will be navigation – we have to get round Bristol on quieter roads, and down to the Severn Bridge. We’re therefore being careful to make sure we get our turnings right, and I’m cycling gingerly on my newly-repaired wheel. I’ve kept my panniers, as I want to be sure the wheel holds up under load, but Al has given his rucksack to our support team, which makes things much easier for him.

With no problems on the way to Yate, we set off again after lunch feeling much happier. Cycling across the Severn Bridge has been one of the things I’ve particularly looking forward to on this ride, and as we catch our first glimpse of the towers above it, marking our passage into Wales, we start to feel more positive about things. It’s odd picking up the turning onto the Bridge, joining the M48 traffic briefly, before finding the cycle lane, and setting off over the Bridge, where I relish the familiar views that rush by as you cross it by car. The other people cycling across the bridge, and the workers on it seem to be that much friendlier to us too.

Reaching Wales has been a thought that’s preoccupied me, it comes as something of a surprise to realise how close we are to finishing for the day. We quickly pass back out of Wales, into Chepstow, and then pick up the turn to St. Briavels. The road takes us up into the hills again, and whether it’s the shorter day, not having his rucksack, or the thought of seeing Helen and Thomas at the end of it, Al tackles the climb strongly. For the first time I struggle to stay on his wheel, before finally having to drop off, and he flies into St. Briavels. We’ve both enjoyed the day’s riding, and all the anxiety of the previous day has dissipated away.

We’re also amazed by the Youth Hostel at St. Briavels – when we’d read it was St. Briavels Castle, we hadn’t realised that, well, it really was a castle. A proper one! We’re there ahead of Helen and Thomas, so park our bikes in the courtyard, where I check the gearing on Al’s bike which has been playing up, and Al finds out about our room – I’m going to be in the ‘Hanging Room’, while Al and his family are in ‘The Oubliette’.

We get our relaxing night, after all, this night. After dinner at the Youth Hostel, we play with Thomas in the grounds (who tells us there are five ghosts in the castle), and then later, as St. Briavels isn’t far from where he lives, I meet Chris Jones for a drink in the pub next door, and catch up.

We’ve now done 312 miles. My speedo no longer seems to be able to cope with the number of hours we’ve been cycling, so my last recorded average was 12.9mph.

Day 6: St. Briavels to Knighton (65.18 miles)

We wake the next morning to find the castle surrounded by mist, a persistent rain soaking everything. It’s clear we’re going to get wet today, and we could well be starting in wet clothes – we’d washed our clothes the night before, and the hostel’s drying room hasn’t done much drying. We have a rushed breakfast, before trying to dry all our clothes off under hand dryers in the toilets before packing.

Eventually we’re ready to wave goodbye to Helen and Thomas (Thomas tells us we look like “warriors”), and set off into the mist. We drop straight down into the valley at the foot of the Black Mountains, and follow this to Monmouth. By the time we’re out of Monmouth, the rain has stopped, and we pause to put away our rain gear. We’ll be spending the day weaving in and out of the border between England and Wales, but there’s nowhere obvious to stop for lunch, so after midday we start keeping our eyes open for a café or tea room.

This ride was conducive to a number of things, and one of those was compiling lists of things. When we stopped in Grosmont, at the top of a steep hill, we didn’t realise we were about to find a definite contender for the honour of heading our list of ‘Top Five Lunches’. The tea room we’ve stopped outside looks at the slightly fussier end of tea rooms, so we try and tidy ourselves up a bit, put on our best winning smiles, and enter. Things are soon looking up when we’ve got our tea, and found out that not only do they do a cheese ploughmans with a choice of three Welsh cheeses, but these three come from a whole menu of cheeses. This is all topped off by the fact that the boy serving us looks like me at about age 14, and Al has to try hard not to point and giggle at this fact. We have a nice chat with a few people there, who wish us luck on our journey, before we have to leave.

By now we have developed a fairly good system of riding together. Most of the time the person in front has checked the route card, is watching for the right turning, and gives warning in advance when they’ve spotted it so that the person behind is ready for the turn. If there’s some distance between us, the person in front waits at the junction. The system fails horribly around Dorstone. I’m in front, watching for a right turn towards Brewardine, with Al pretty close behind. I see the turn late as it’s a sharp turn on a corner, so I just indicate and make the turn. Round the corner I see the sign indicating that the hill is going to be 1 in 4, and a glance over my shoulder, see Al, so I start tackling the hill. Unfortunately, when I’d seen Al, he was going all the way round the corner, having missed me somehow. The hill is as nasty as the sign suggested – it kicks up hard at first, flattens out a bit, and then just when you think you’re getting to the end, kicks up again. I know Al is still finding the hills hard work, so I expected to wait at the top. Just not for quite as long as I do.

Deciding something must be wrong, I reluctantly start going back down the way I’ve come. I half expect to see him stopped at the side of the road, using industrial strength language about the gradient of the hill, but by the time I get to the bottom and there’s no sign of him, I’ve started to worry seriously. Unsure of what to do, I decide to start carrying on down the road past the turning. On seeing someone mowing their lawn, I ask whether they’ve seen another cyclist on this road. They look at me like I’m mad. I get directions to the nearest payphone, and start across a churchyard, as directed, to find this. As I’m doing this, I spot a flash of yellow from the road, and start shouting Al’s name. The relief is tangible, as are Al’s apologies when he realises quite how tough the hill I’ve now had to do twice is.

After this minor drama, the rest of the day is reasonably straightforward, other than my legs having another off day for the last hour or so. The final climb towards Knighton is hard work, and I really start to suffer. The sight of the George and Dragon, where we’re staying for the night, is welcome indeed.

We’ve now done 377.18 miles.