Three years ago in 2009 I had the idea of cycling Land's End to John O'Groats. It was a challenge that appealed to me and from looking at the various blogs on the internet of people who had done this it wasn't something that seemed too out of reach of the everyman. People of all ages and abilities have managed it and pretty much all of them seemed to love the experience.
But events conspired against me so I had to shelve those plans. Well, it's three years later and I am now able to pick those plans off the shelf and dust them off. So on the 14th of July I will be heading down to Land's End and hopefully thirteen days later I will be riding into John O'Groats. That's the plan anyway. The truth may turn out somewhat different, we'll wait and see.
I'm not much of a touring cyclist. I do cycle to work every day but considering it's only three miles away I don't think that counts as a particularly long distance. So what preparation have I done? Well, pretty much none to be honest. I have cycled to Oxford before (three years ago) from my home in Ealing which is a distance of about 55 miles and didn't find it particularly troublesome but to do this challenge I have to be averaging about 80-85 miles per day. Could be tough going but I'm hoping that I will cycle myself fit in the same way that Eddie Izzard ran himself fit when he did all those marathons back to back with very little training. Talking of which I do go running and average between 25-30 miles a week, and that can be doubled if I'm training for a marathon or half-marathon so I'm pretty much banking on having a decent engine even if the muscles involved are fairly different.
I'm going to be doing this solo and unsupported, which will be a test to see if I can stand my own company for two weeks without going mad. The classic way is to be solo, unsupported and camp every night but considering I am in my forties and not my twenties and would rather go glamping than camping I've decided to pay for a little luxury and stay in hotels and bed and breakfasts (besides I think it would be a bit of a task to tow a yurt behind me).
I've booked all my hotels and b&b stops in advance so I really do need to hit my intended miles every day otherwise it's going to cause no end of headaches finding alternative accommodation. Also, my train back from Wick in the north of Scotland is pre-booked so I have to get there on time or it will be a very expensive trip back and considering bikes need to be booked onto trains well in advance it could be very inconvenient.
At the moment my main concern is the weather. When I originally planned this I thought that July may be too hot a month to do it in. How wrong I was. Now my thoughts are whether to take a snorkel and flippers! The forecast is looking not too bad but I really can't see me going thirteen days without a hint of rain. Just as long as I don't end up in flooded areas I reckon I'll get away with it.
I'm going to be blogging as I go from my iPhone. Most of the overnight stops have free wifi and were chosen pretty much because of it to save me from using up all of my limited 3G data. I've also added an app that allows anyone to follow my current position. I've set it to update every 15 minutes so you can see in near real-time which part of the country I'm in (just click on the Where am I tab at the top).
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