Day 8 - the last day, Lowestoft to Land's End

Well, here you go, it's not the Land's End we started at but is a house 18 miles north of Lowestoft in the delightfully named Scratby, near Great Yarmouth, but hey, it shows up on Google if you search for 'Land's End'. The route's here.

We cycled a total of 500.41 miles including the journey from Penzance to Land's End (and the run down to Cape Cornwall) so an average of 62.5 miles per day but if we take off day 1 and 8 which were primarily travelling days, it's 458 miles in 6 days or 76.4 miles per day, 10% more than when I did Land's End to John O' Groats. Similarly, we were riding for 44 hours in total giving us an average speed of 11.37 mph... pretty cool really.

Day 7 - the, sort of, last day....

from Cambridge to Lowestoft, 92 miles and fairly gruelling really. Both of our bodies are struggling, Tony's knee and the soles of my feet, also, 'look into my eyes' this hayfever, or whatever has been affecting me, has made me look like I've done three rounds with Joe Calzagi... wrecks!

The route's here.

Day 6 - Oxford to Cambridge... another pretty long one...

Pretty long but at 81 miles quite a lot shorter than yesterday... thankfully. The route is here.

It was a bit of an odd day actually, we passed where Spencer, one of Tony's firends, used to live and popped in to see Bibi another of his friends, we then had lunch in Dobby's garden centre in Milton Keynes - 20 miles from where we both live!!

Day 5 - the long one...

Glastonbury to Oxford, at 94 miles is our longest ride.

Today is the day the coincidence of the year happened. It's Birg's birthday at the end of June and I bought her a place on a glass blowing course (hey, she wants to do it!). I didn't know much about the company apart from the fact that they're based in the west country: the course isn't until September so I intended to look more closely nearer the time. Anyway, Tony and I are happily pedalling along these various backwater roads on the way to Trowbridge and I'm just looking around taking in the scenery and admiring a rather large farmhouse set back from the road which happens to bear a large sign saying 'Liquid Glass Centre'. That's it! We're in the middle of nowhere and just happen to pass the place where Birg will be attending her course!! I couldn't get over it. We popped in for a look around.. totally bizarre.

Day 4 Okehampton to Glastonbury

It was a long old slog out of Okehampton with a 4 mile steep climb to contend with. Other than that it was a fairly noneventful day, we got to Glastonbury in time for dinner and spent half an hour walking around town looking for somewhere to eat... they're all closed... apart from an Italian that was so hot I couldn't cope with it... we ended up eating in a curry house... which seems a bit of a pity really as I think of Glastonbury as being the British heartlands... I'm obviuosly wrong!

Day 3 a short one...

The plan was to have a short ride today as I suspected I was going to be suffering from the rigours of yesterday... I was right.

So, it was 48 miles from Padstow to Okehampton or, to be more accurate, Sourton Cross - the route is here.



The first thing to do was to cross the River Camel on the Padstow - Rock ferry which was something I'd been determined to do since missing the last crossing by a few minutes in 2004 when cycling from Land's End to John O' Groats - it was good fun.


While not as tortuous as the previous day, it was still pretty demanding with the first 20 miles being a steady uphill slog. The weather's been improving ever since yesterday morning and I found my long... Hugh Grantesque (well, that's what Birg says) locks, squashed inside my cycle helmet, coupled with lots of uphill struggles and warm weather is making my head feel as though it's about to explode.


We stopped for lunch in Luanceston, Tony got a sandwich and a paper, I went to the first hairdresser I could find... the before and after shots are below...



We went for a beer in the 'most unusual pub in Britain. I will vouch for it, The Highwayman is certainly the most unusual pub I've ever been into, but it was also empty... at 8pm on a Saturday night... it did make us wonder how they made a living.

Day 2... the hard bit...

Today is the one I've not really been looking forward to... the north Cornish coast: 64 miles from St Just to Padstow and very hilly.

The rain was absolutely tipping down as we ate breakfast so an executive decision was made to delay our start for a while... it's silly getting soaked right at the beginnig of the day...

It was still misty as we set off but at least it was just wet air rather than rain but it did mean our view of the coast wasn't that good for about the first hour or so, after which things started improving.

This is the elevation profile for the day, we gained 5914 feet and lost 6235 feet during the day.

To see our full route and the profile etc, click here.

It was just as I remembered it (Hell!) especially Watergate Bay where I took 1o minutes composing myself before setting off, it didn't seem to bother Tony (smart arse!)

Dinner in Padstow was fish and chips at Rick Stein's fish and chip shop. It was nice but, for £25 for fish and chips twice and a couple of glasses of wine (hey we weren't going to drink tea after today's exertions!) I'd have rather gone to Charlie Chan's in Towcester.

Day 1!!

Well, here we go then.... Land's End... it's just unfortunate the guy that owns the plot of land that includes the famous sign post now takes the interesting bit - the top with all the distances etc. - home with him (see the photo of us with 'the post'... as opposed to 'the signpost'. I have to say I find that very petty!!

Well, the train journey was all OK, I ended up working for most of it with Tony asking, 'Are we there yet'... hmm!!

the cycling was pretty hard, considering it's only a relatively short distance, we cycled through Penzance and round teh coast to Mousehole before cutting inland and.... up.... up.... up. It was as I remember it last time... bloomin hard!! Here's the GPS track data if you're interested... click here.

We got a beer at Land's End and had our photo taken with the naked post before making our way to St Just which was pretty flat... thankfully.

After dropping off our kit we headed down to Cape Cornwall where the Atlantic splits to become either the Irish Sea or the English Channel but the water was pretty calm so there wasn't an awful lot to see. The GPS track for this short run is here, it's actually quite interesting to see the drop from St Just down to the coast(ish)

Less than a week to go and...

.
I bottled out today.

The train tickets I booked a month or so ago were from Oxford to Penzance with a change at Reading. The change, at only 7 minutes,was pretty tight and I've always been a bit worried about the lack of time to get two heavily laden bikes from one platform to another via stairs (perhaps), a bridge (perhaps), other obstacles (perhaps) on what I seem to recall from one visit a few years ago is a large station.

I'd done lots of research, trying to find out which platform the train would arrive at and depart from (once again frustrated by the lack of information avialble... but don't get me started!) and am very grateful to Martin Joyce who drew a plan of the platform layout... but... today I asked Birg to drive us to Reading rather than Oxford: it was always going to be pushing it, if the first train was delayed by only a minute or two it would have been a real problem, we'd have had to wait 2 hours for the next train and had to pay full, on the day, price for the tickets so... good old Birg... Reading it is please dear.