New beginnings

After the bike ride, I found it hard to get motivated to do very much riding or running. Some family issues were a distraction as well and by March it was all rather stop-start.  The fund-raising is nearly done and we're a couple of hundred pounds short of the £5k target, which I'd hoped to reach by the end of April.  People have been very generous and I wasn't keen on asking the same people yet again so Judy and I will be spending a couple of days at the Castle Combe Steam Rally (May 30 and 31), selling very special items whose value may not be immediately obvious to all but will, we hope, be happily rehomed by the close of the rally.

In January I made a list of things I wanted to do by the end of 2015: big or small challenges to stop me getting into a rut. Among other things I planned to knit myself a sweater (started four times, became a cardigan and will now wait until cooler weather), go dancing twelve times (ten times to date), go to Upfest or another festival (I tend to avoid crowds), go camping (daunting in so many ways, drive for more than an hour, see a friend I've known since ee were seven (she lives in Morecambe so I might combine that and the driving one) and to finish the fund-raising.

I bought tickets to the Kaiser Chiefs gig at the Harbourside, thinking that if the crowds got too much I could get out easily.  An email last week has blasted that into insignificance when I opened it to read that I'd won tickets to the Latitude Festival.

crowds
camping
driving

They should all be ticked by the end of July.

I now need to learn How to Go To a Festival. Am I excited? Just a tiny bit.

Ending at the Finish.

It’s all over. I have that post-marathon feeling of wondering what to do next, though there are still plenty of loose ends to be tied and plans are in hand for some more fund-raisers, but on a smaller scale.

We did it, each in our own way. Six of us set off from Land’s End, including Sam who stayed with us to Cheddar, having done just one 40 mile ride on her new bike plus a couple of shorter ones. Her determination was impressive and it got me up several hills later on. The rest of us carried on and were joined by Angela and Wilf from Bristol for two and one days respectively, then Spike met us at Ecclefechan. He’d cycled from the Isle of Lewis, worked for a couple of days, ridden to the border then back north to meet us. May’s injury prevented her from riding as much as she’d have liked and I realised just how slow I was so had to have a lift on some days.

The weather was incredibly kind to us: never too hot and hardly any rain, though I remember with fondness the fifty yards in Shropshire and the mile or so in Caithness when we had the wind behind us, rather than the in-your-face one that we had for most of the rest of the way. If that man in a van in Cornwall happens to read this, I’ll apologise now for the language I used as we came over the brow of the hill and got the full force of it.

Judy worked out a wonderful route for us and we eventually conquered the Garmin glitches which have appeared recently. I use the word “we” in its widest sense here as we relied on Rob and his laptop. Even the urban parts were relatively easy, thanks to his skills at piloting us through the traffic, but the true gems appeared in rural Lancashire and Scotland. We enjoyed the King Harry ferry, whizzed past the bus stop where Judy used to leave her bike on the way to school, called at Ashton Court, marvelled at Bewdley, went through Frodsham where I’d had a caravan holday, went near where Rob was brought up, didn’t see the Loch Ness monster (but did see the Loch Ness Ness), were overwhelmed by Glencoe, stunned by the bleakness of the Flow country and relieved to see the signpost at John O’Groats.

The places we stayed varied enormously: from comfortable to quirky, from large rooms to tiny. One of the latter was so small it meant that the occupants (Sam and me) had to get on the bed to close the bedroom door. We made up for it the following night with a bathroom about three times the size. Rob’s night of illness was followed by sharing a hostel dorm with a Lambrini-swigging man in a state of emotional fragility. All part of life’s rich tapestry.

The culinary Tour of Britain started well with home-made saffron buns and chicken pie in the packed lunch at Land's End, continued to home-made jams in Gloucestershire, Jenny’s wonderful picnics from Cheshire northwards (and I challenge anyone to find a better picnic spot than ours in Glencoe on a sunny day) and finished with possibly the best breakfast in Scotland (full cooked, with haggis and black pudding, followed by huge Scottish pancakes). Sad that I didn’t have time for a second pancake.

So, what else is there to say? I’m very glad I did it, if not quite in the way I originally intended. I’m relieved that everyone had a bed for the night. We didn’t lose anyone, or at least if we did we found them again. I saw and did things I’d never have dreamed of and the experience will stay with me for a long time. One person said to me “I feel privileged to be able to ride in such a beautiful part of the country.” I’d echo that but add that I was fortunate to have such a great group of people helping us achieve our goal.  Thank you, Judy, Rob, May, Ness, Sam, Angela, Wilf, Spike, Ed, Pete, Gail, Sarah, Brian and Jenny. We couldn’t have done it without you.

“If all else fails, a total Pig-Headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through" - General Melchett 

 

I've restarted the blog but had to change the background, which was cyclists at sunset looking into the distance. We had our own version of that at Land's End, when we set off. It's one of my favourites and we did our own version.

Nearly there.

Two days to go. I’ve been on my last training ride, I’ve checked (and rechecked) the accommodation, I’ve fitted my lights, the energy bars we ordered have arrived and Judy’s sent me the links so I can download each day’s route onto my Garmin.

It would be lovely to say all this has gone smoothly but that would be far from the truth. Some of the accommodation hosts now seem like members of the family. I’ve spoken to them so much about the many changes we’ve made to our bookings (one less, two more, take one of those off, no we’d need another single bedroom, three more people).

I had a rear light fitted to the rack. The batteries had corroded and the light wouldn’t work but we had a new spare. It needed to fit on the seat post but I had a bag on the rack so the light wasn’t visible. I spent an hour or so trying to find one that would fit on a rack and eventually managed it. It may well be possible to fit that light on the back of my rack but only if you have hands the size of a small pixie with a two-pixie team of assistants. I've put the light on the seatpost and removed the bag,

The energy bars arrived. We had ordered four boxes, two of Raspberry and Apple, one of Tangy Apricot and one of Pineapple and Ginger. I checked the order and all seemed fine. Unfortunately the two single boxes had suffered a personality crisis in transit and had joined the Raspberry and Apple Party (The RAP – I bet the music was good) so we have eighty of those. An email exchange followed and we’re waiting to see what the outcome is. With luck we’ll have replacements before we set off.

Down/uploading the route seemed easy, once we’d stopped doing it the wrong way and followed instructions (which are daft but I didn’t write them). It worked quickly and easily and all was well – until I checked my Garrmin and found I only had six of them on there, instead of the fifteen we needed. We have a Plan B (and C and D, I think) if we can’t manage it so all will be fine. If GPS, satellites and our combined IT skills fail we’ll have them printed out on paper.

I’ll pack soon. Most of my kit is ready so it’s just a matter of sorting it out and making sure things go in the right place. I’m keeping the weight down as much as possible so that and packability are the criteria for everything. The deodorant I’m taking weighs 1 gram less than the one that’s staying here, as does the microfibre towel. That’s 2 grams saved. “Small incremental gains” as someone once said.

Wish us luck and a tailwind – we’ll need both. 

Oh Blimey!

In twelve days six of us will be meeting at Land’s End. All of a sudden, the start date is looming on the horizon. It’s too late now to gain much from any long rides, to regret miles I’ve not done and we’re down to the questions which may not have answers until we’re on our way: have I booked the right number of beds in the right places? Have I got everything I need for myself and my bike? where is my passport? Why on earth did I decide to do this? Why didn’t somebody stop me before it was too late?

After fifteen marathons, I should be used to these sort of feelings: the ticking clock in the back of your mind that never really switches off, the double-checking of everything, the uncertainty of whether it’s better to have the pink top or the blue one, followed by the certainty that the final decision will depend upon how much each weighs and it’ll be the lightest that wins. (I’ll admit it: I did once weigh seven pairs of shoes before a marathon to see which were lightest and therefore which would make me faster. It was the only time I got under five hours for the distance so it obviously worked.) The five grams of weight I might save could be the difference between getting up a hill or not. The cake I eat before I start up the hill may have a greater effect.

The first place we’re staying will give us home-made saffron buns in our packed lunch. This made me think of each day and the route now goes along these lines: pasty, cream tea, cheese, cider, oatcakes, Eccles cakes, Chorley cake, mint cake, Moffat toffee, soor plums, tablet, shortbread, haggis, whisky and finally Jaegerbomb with ice (that last one’s another story!).

So, two weeks today we’ll be on our way to Exeter, having left Land’s End two days before. We hope to arrive there before the iconic signpost is removed for the night but in the meantime I have an alternative.

Wish us luck!