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.

Trampolines, Floods and Mirrors

You see trampolines everywhere these days! I first thought this on the bus north from Inverness, these four were seen from the Avonmouth bridge near Bristol.








I wanted to go over that bridge in Ludlow!







Same bridge from the other side. Click the image to get a closer look.







Something to do while waiting for the lights to change.

Stats and Route summary

Start: JOG
Day 1: Alltsigh Loch Ness YHA - 168 miles
Day 2: Glasgow Govan Hill - 151 miles
Day 3: Carlisle - 110 miles
Day 4: Chester - 140 miles
Day 5: Welsh Bicknor - 118 miles
Day 6: Moretonhampstead - 135 miles ( 3600 metres climbing)
Day 7: Lands End - 115 miles ( 4025 metres climbing)

Total 937 miles

Average speed approx. 14.5 mph
Average "saddle time" each day approx. 9:15

The End

115 miles from campsite at Moretonhampstead to Lands End, up and down, up and down, up and down........
The hills were bad enough but the strong headwind made it the toughest day by far, journey time of just over 11 hours.
Great to see Suzie, Megan and Anya waiting at the finish.

Day 6 - A trip down memory Lane

About to go down to briefly meet Rog, and camp near Exeter, hopefully not in a flooded field! Haven't heard this morning how he's doing but he rang last night and was fine. He'd reached Welsh Bicknor for the night and was hoping to set off early this morning to try and avoid some of the rain! The plan is then to drive to pick him up at Lands End on Sunday, fingers crossed:)
Suzie

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And added later.....

Day 6 started badly when I left my watch in the bedroom after I got up and my roommate for the night had to come downstairs and find me when the 2nd alarm on it went off at 6:10, oops! I left Welsh Bicknor YHA, lovely location but a bit out of the way and accessed by a very bumpy path, at 7:10 by going over the temporarily "closed" bridge, (not me who moved the barriers honest!) my personal risk assessment decided it was acceptable for me and my bike! Going through the Forest of Dean didn't seem that great an idea at he time as the wind, rain and hills made it fairly slow going.
Got to Chepstow at 8:40
Stopped to pick up some bananas then carried on over old Severn Bridge on the cycle path and down through Severn Beach. Recognised the road leading to the old quay where I remembered we used to get the old ferry from to cross to Wales when the first bridge was still being built back in the late 60s.



Through Avonmouth and over the bridge to Pill where I lived from the age of 3 to 9.
Rode round the village a bit, past the creek and shops and then back up to our old house.


Then it was off on the back road to Clevedon that runs near the M5, a bit narrow and muddy on places but quiet. An all day breakfast in a Clevedon cafe where the staff were making the most of the last day of being allowed to smoke on the premises. The new smoking laws were coming in to force the next day on July 1st. Next off to my birthplace, Bridgwater, joining the A38 at Brent Knoll. NO SMELL these days as you approach Bridgwater, I've just discovered on Wikipedia that the cellophane factory closed in 2005. Kept going through Bridgwater as I wanted to get to Taunton for a stop. The A38 was very busy around here, lots of holiday traffic, Suzy said later she thought there had been a problem on the M5.

Found a cafe eventually in Taunton for some coffee and cake then diverted off the A38 to visit the churchyard in nearby Trull. Joan was my Aunty, it was sad that she wasn't still here to hear about my trip, I'm sure she would have been really interested. A shame the anti smoking laws didn't come in 50 years ago.



Stopped just up the road to take a picture of the cottage Joan lived in.

I fell off my bike here on the slippery drive opposite, luckily I was doing 0mph at the time! The front wheel just went sideways as I stopped on the damp mouldy paving stones.



Onwards then to Cullompton where I had my Scottish money refused in the co-op so had to pay by card before then stopping on the bridge over the M5 for a few minutes and seeing Suzie and the girls pass by underneath. Through Exeter and up the hilly B3212 to Moretonhampstead where the family had a tent waiting for me. It was a relief to have got a bit of Dartmoor behind me.
A long day in to the wind and rain, although at least it was warm, 135 miles 12.25 hours elapsed time with about 10.25 hours in the saddle. Average speed approx 13mph new cycle computer packed up just after Exeter!
A lovely meal at a Cafe/Restaurant in the centre of town on the right just before the crossroads as you come from Exeter.
Roger