Preparations

There’s less than a week to go until we leave to start our ride now, and I think we’re pretty much ready. The accommodation was booked some time ago, the route has now been checked in some detail, we’ve re-routed some sections (we’ll now take in Dartmoor and the Shap Fells), our credit cards have been duly employed in the purchase of various bits of Absolutely Necessary cycling gear, and it’s raining incessantly. Everything is in place.

We’ve also been doing a fair bit of cycling over the last few months.

In Al’s case, between looking after the kids, he’s cycled down to the allotment a few times. The courgettes are doing very nicely apparently. The last few weeks have seen his road bike retrieved from the attic, and he assures me that the number of training miles is now in three figures.

Most of my cycling training was directed towards preparation for this year’s Dragon Ride, which I rode with Dave and Matt at the end of June. We’d done this ride a couple of year’s before, but as the organizers proudly announce on their website, it’s now ‘Longer routes with even more climbs than before!’. Great. We duly opted for the ‘shorter’, 85 mile route.

I do love that ride though, through some beautiful Welsh scenery, and taking in several long mountain climbs which are great to tackle. This year, despite the apparent certainty of torrential ride, the weather was remarkably kind (to the extent that I managed to get slightly sunburnt), my pace surprisingly quick for me, and I was pleased to only find myself starting to suffer on the final climb of the day. They even gave us Welsh cakes at the food stops! Certainly the way to this cyclist’s heart.

I haven’t really done too much specific training for this ride, other than continuing to ensure I’ve put the miles in. Over the last few weeks I have tried out my new set of panniers, which are going to carry all my clothes, equipment, maps, and, most importantly, my new book. Having been used to cycling on a lighter ‘racing’ bike, without mudguards, rack, and panniers, I have been testing what difference the weight and air resistance makes. The scientific method employed was to fill each pannier with a dumbbell weight, a football, and a wad of old clothes. My conclusions are that the added weight and air resistance slows you down… genius.

I’ve also been trying long rides (50+ miles) on consecutive days to get used to the shorter rest time, and this weekend has given me ample opportunity to remind myself what cycling through monsoon-like conditions is like.

So all in all, I’ve got just under 1,000 miles under my belt this year, slightly ahead of where I’d normally be, and I’m reasonably confident that I can do the ride physically, even if I’d rather not have to drag my panniers up some of the climbs, or get absolutely drenched. It’s the navigation I’m worried about. Have I mentioned that neither myself nor Al are very good at reading maps?.. oh.

Onwards to Penzance on Friday.

70 a day

Next week I’m going to set off to cycle the length of the country with my friend Al.

It seems like a pretty major undertaking, so we thought we’d keep a record of our attempt, and hopefully this website can also serve as a way of keeping anyone who’s interested (reasonably) up to date as to where we are, how we're doing, and give you a few pictures to entertain you. I say reasonably up to date, as the idea for this came up when I noticed a few of the places we were booking to stay at said they had access to the internet, and that’s what we’ll be relying on to post updates. So this could be somewhat sporadic…

Anyway, a few details of what we’re trying to do. On Friday 27th July we’re taking the train down to Penzance (assuming we manage to negotiate the tricky matter of our national rail system’s arrangements for taking bikes on trains), and, the following morning, getting on our bikes and cycling to Land’s End. We go from there to John O’Groats. That’s in Scotland. The ride will go through England, Wales, and Scotland, and be a bit over 1,000 miles. We’re aiming to do it in 15 days, which means we’ll be doing an average of 70 miles a day, and that we should be rocking up in John O’Groats on Saturday 12th August. The ride will be unsupported, so we’re carrying our own gear, and we’ll be staying at various Youth Hostels and B&Bs along the way. Oh, and a pub. Needs must when the Devil drives, and all that.

This is an 'as the crow flies' map of our route (click here for a closer look):

Well, that’s the ‘what’, ‘when’, 'where', and ‘how’. The ‘why’ is rather more difficult, so I’ll cop out and say it was Al’s idea anyway. To be honest touring cycling’s not really my sort of thing – you have to carry loads of gear, read maps, and it all seems to be a pretty slow way of getting round. My perfect bike ride involves very little stuff to carry, someone telling you where to go, zipping round at a fast (okay, fastish) pace, and ends with Mexican food and margaritas. I can’t see there being too many days like that on our ride. However, I am hoping to see some beautiful sections of countryside, travel through places I would otherwise have probably never been to, and see the British landscape change and develop over two weeks. I’m also hoping to be eating Mexican food and drinking margaritas at the end of it all. Any advice on good Mexican restaurants in John O’Groats gladly received.

It’s taken quite a lot of our time organizing so far, and is going to be a test of mine and Al’s physical stamina (variable), tolerance (low), and navigational abilities (laughable). So we thought it would be nice if something came out of all this other than exhaustion, a frosty silence between us, and an intimate knowledge of areas of Devon that aren’t on our planned route; so we are going to try and raise money for Oxfam. If you’re so inclined, you could click on this link and sponsor us; we’d be very grateful, as they do some good things. I’m sure you know this, but if you’d like to brush up on that, you could look here.