A few more pictures

Lands End

A full river Tamar on the Devon/Cornwall border.


The last cafe stop near the cathedral in Truro.


Chepstow
The best value cafe near the centre of Lancaster, all day breakfast and tea for a about £4.


A bit wet in Whitchurch.
A sunny afternoon in beautiful Glencoe.
More sheep than cars on the old A74 from Glasgow to Carlisle.


Ben Nevis in the background at the Commando monument near Fort William.





Time out for the Devil's Porridge exhibition near Gretna.
The steepest bit, a back road route I took into Hamilton south of Glasgow.


On my way up to the youth hostel at JoG I took a diversion to the most northerly point.

The good things

In case it's useful to anyone in the future below are a few of the things that went well and that I'd recommend.

My bike - Giant TCR C3, only problem was a little play in the headset nearing Carlisle, tightened it up and it was all OK. Gears were fine and even made it up a short 18% hill coming in to Hamilton from Glasgow. One thing I noticed since the ride is that the second water bottle I fitted seems to have made a small dent in the carbon frame where it rubbed. I didn't realise carbon frames were that delicate, hopefully it isn't in a stressed location and won't ever give way.

The Topeak QR Beam EX Rear Rack ( I replaced the carbon seat post with an alloy one before using this) with a Topeak MTX Trunk Bag Ex worked fine and the bag seemed very waterproof unlike my old handlebar bag which gets a bit wet these days.

Punctures - None. I'd recommend my new Continental tyres.

My lightweight Montane waterproof jacket that I originally got for mountain running.

My lightweight fleece that was useful as an extra layer on the bike and for keeping warm in the evenings.

Cafes - especially their all day breakfasts and cake. Not so easy to find an open one in Tavistock and Liskeard on a Sunday morning.

Sending the bike up to Scotland by courier although the post office would have been cheaper but they say 3 to 5 working days so I'd left it too late to use them.

Setting up a blog and a just giving site. I didn't realise at the time how many people were following my progress on the blog, if I had I'd have made more detours to find internet cafes and keep it updated more frequently.

Travelling light. I wore an old pair of trainers on the journey up to JoG and then threw them away, making do with a pair of flip flops for the evenings worked well.

Things I'd do differently next time

Spend a bit more time beforehand looking into the Sustrans National cycle routes so that I knew where I'd be able to follow one of the routes. There are lots of NCR signs out there which indicate quiet roads but unless you know where e.g. route 91 goes from and to then you don't know whether to follow them.

Try to get a cycle computer that works even in the wet. The new Cateye Velo 8 I got in Carlisle gave up in the rain leaving Exeter on day 6. Fortunately I had a GPS as a backup to see how far I'd gone.

Suss out the GPS properly before hand. I'd borrowed a Garmin Forerunner 305 (thanks Andy) and I was hoping to download my route when I got home but it seems there was only room on the GPS for the last 2 days. Looks like I would have needed to download it every couple of days to have saved it all.

Take more pictures and video while I was riding along, the one video clip I took with a small digital camera in Scotland after Bettyhill was Ok. I guess it's not a good idea to do this except on the really quiet roads!!! I might have taken more pictures if the camera hadn't been wrapped up in plastic bag to keep it dry a lot of the time.

When the camera on Meg's phone stopped working I should have tried the obvious and turned it off and on! It seems Ok now.

Keep the phone charged every night, especially if I use it to listen to the radio. It ran out of juice on the last day which was a bit of a nuisance.

Think a bit more about what was going to happen at the end and what time I wanted to get there. With the wind and things I didn't get to LE until 18:13 which meant it was a bit of a rush to then get some food and drive back home to Swindon on a Sunday evening.

For maps I relied on pages torn out of an old road atlas and photocopies of OS Landranger Maps borrowed from the library for the more complicated bits like Glasgow and Lancashire. This worked well although next time I won't leave page 28 of the road atlas at home! Although this did give me a good excuse to stop at a petrol station near Ludlow and by some flapjack in return for studying their maps.

Next time I would try to update the blog as much as possible and get more photos on to it during the ride. When I got back home I was amazed at how many people had been looking at the blog during the week.