Day 1: Land's End to Blackwater

Hi everyone - sorry for the lack of activity here, it's been a case of time being shorter than we'd hoped, and access to computers harder. However, both these things aren't a problem today for reasons that will become clearer, and so I thougth I'd give you a quick idea of how each day went. I can't put up 'photos here, but hopefully I should be able to add these later.

The first day started shortly after a nervous night's sleep, a big breakfast, and a pretty easy farewell to Penzance. We took the 13 miles over to Land's End at a slow pace, but couldn't help but notice the climbs involved, particularly out of Mousehole.

Land's End is a bizarre place - both in the sense that it's odd looking out to sea there and thinking there's not much there, and the fact that it's run almost as some kind of theme park. We only hang around long enough to take a couple of 'photos to prove we've been there, and then set off shortly after eleven o'clock.

The road to St. Ives is a fantastic road to cycle - we watch the mist swirl round some of the hills in the distance, the landscape looking so different to the Oxfordshire or Buckinghamshire countryside we're used to, and the ocean constantly on our left. We even see a strange Cornish wicker man, with the injunction 'When in Cornwall, buy Cornish produce' written on him. Presumably with the last visitor who ignored this locked up inside.

With our legs feeling fresh, the climbs and descents are fun, and we reach St. Ives for lunch. We quickly drop down the hill into the harbour and eat pasties there, before continuing on the road towards St. Agnes. We're staying a little way out from there, and despite some difficulty finding our B&B, we're there in good time, soon eating dinner, and feeling that this ride is perhaps not the impossibility it had seemed.