Just rolling

Here are the main stats for our ride, covering the entire ride where all four of us were present, i.e. from getting off the train in Penzance to arrival in John O’Groats on Day 21.

Total distance covered: 993 miles
Time rolling: 91 hours 30 minutes
Total altitude climbed: 42,400 feet (excl. days 18 and 19, as I don’t have those numbers)

Average speed: 10.85mph
Ave. daily dist: 49.5 miles (excluding Day 21)
Highest daily average speed: 12.2mph

Ave. Full English Breakfasts per person (excl. Sophie): 12
Pubs visited: 13
Pubs visited while wearing skin-tight lycra: 10

Albert’s highly accurate rendition of our route across Britain.

I’m writing this in a posh hotel in Inverness, one day after completing the End to End (I guess it’s Day 22), but I didn’t think the blog would be complete without some account of the events of Day 20.

Day 19 was fairly uneventful – we left our disappointing castle hostel and rode a routine 42 miles to Helmsdale, where we were greeted by our most basic hostel yet. By this stage it was starting to dawn on us that we were going to make it to John O’Groats. With just one proper day of riding left, only accidents, mechanical failures, freak weather or other unforeseen events would be able to stop us. But we didn’t really believe that all of these things could happen in turn.

Well, Day 20 dawned a warm cloudy day with favourable winds and just 53 flat miles to ride. Then things started happening.

Surprise 1: The Hills. We were not expecting to have to climb 800 feet solidly straight out of breakfast, nor did we expect 20 miles of continuous coastal hills before lunch. But that was ok – these days we laugh in the face of 13% gradients. I kept telling myself that it wouldn’t be right if the last day were an easy day…

Surprise 2: The Freak Weather. After lunch, we turned north on a dead straight minor road across a huge flat plain. Suddenly, the wind turned into a howling crosswind coming from our left-front, so we closed into a two-abreast formation and struggled on at 6 mph. That was ok – we had plenty of time. But then it started pouring with rain, and the rain was whipping our faces and eyes from the side. It got to the point where we could no longer keep our eyes open, or our bikes upright, but there was nowhere to shelter on this field. So we got off our bikes and crouched beside them, with nothing but panniers to shield us from the driving rain.

Surprise 3: The Crash. As the rain slowed, we got back on our bikes into the wind at 6mph. I noticed a car creeping behind us, which we hadn’t heard due to the wind. I called a halt and stopped by the side of the road. Unfortunately, stopping from 6mph doesn’t take very long, so Sophie ran into my panniers, and James ran into Sophie’s. As usual, Ed was safely out of harm’s way – not sure how he always manages that. James’ wheel drove straight into Sophie’s bike, bending itself into a pringle shape and breaking a clip off Sophie’s pannier.

Surprise 4: The Puncture. This was never going to stop us, but it just felt like the cycling gods were having one last giggle at our expense, testing us to see how much patience we had. With just 10 miles to ride to John O’Groats, Sophie got her first puncture – after 980 miles, it felt like an insult. We patched it up and got back on, and soon we were cresting a small rise in the road to catch our first glimpse of the north coast of Scotland.

Feeling incredibly relieved, we finally rolled up to the John O’Groats youth hostel, just three miles short of John O’Groats itself. We were too tired to celebrate – that could wait till tomorrow, when we would officially complete our journey.

After leaving Inverness this morning, we followed the A9 cycle way north (I think it’s NCN route 1). We were soon off the main road for the day, and headed over the Cromarty Firth into Evanton for a simple bacon butty-and-cake lunch at the Cornerstone cafe (another Christian Cornerstone cafe—we found one in Melksham on our west country ride last year).

After lunch, Sophie demonstrated that she had been keeping her powder dry for the later stages, setting a blistering pace on the front up some huge hills, and more than once eliciting calls for mercy from behind. Indeed, for the time Sophie was on the front, our average speed was over 12mph, which is phenomenal for a section with so much climbing.

Towards the end of the day, we passed through Ardgay and Bonar Bridge (cue Ed offending the locals).

We are now comfortably ensconced in our supposedly haunted castle/youth hostel. No ghost sightings yet, but the food is awful and the showers tepid. Rather reminiscent of boarding school, really.

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday we were riding a cold, very wet 45 miles alongside Loch Lochy and Loch Ness. Ben Nevis was invisible through the fog, and to paraphrase James, words could not express the extent of our wetness.

Today, the sun shone on the Great Glen, and our 26-mile run along Loch Ness to Inverness could not have been more pleasant. Upon arrival, we were treated to a large, well-earned lunch at Pizza Express by my parents. Lunch was followed closely by afternoon tea – clearly their priorities are similar to ours. Later, we had dinner, and thus our ‘rest day’ was complete. We also nearly visited Inverness castle, but luckily we didn’t, as it looks rubbish.

Here are the latest statistics on our journey:

Distance covered: 827.3 miles
Time rolling: 76 hours 52 minutes
Average speed: 10.76mph
Highest daily average: 12.1mph

Here is the table of misfortune, detailing how many times each of us has fallen foul of / committed the following injustices.

I’ve been asked a few times what I’m thinking about when I’m spending five-plus hours a day in the saddle. I guess my thoughts fall into two categories:

1. Cycling-related
2. Completely random

On the cycling-related front, if I’m following someone’s wheel, there are three things I think about: how fast or slowly we’re travelling, how far away from their back wheel I am, and what gear they are in. When I’m leading, I tend to think about how fast I’m going and whether it’s a reasonable pace for the group, what gear I’m in, and how technically competent my pedal stroke is.

This latter point relates to an ongoing theme that seems to dog my thoughts, which is a complex trade-off between maximising energy-efficiency and maximising training benefits. I know, these two things are basically opposites, but I still find myself going between being massively over- or under-geared, or sprinting out of the saddle, or climbing in the drops, and being as smooth as possible, climbing gently in a low gear and smoothing out my pedal stroke.

I also obsess over the gear of the person in front—especially if they’re riding a different configuration to mine. I ride 30-42-52 teeth on the front, and a 12-25 block on the back. Sophie (and Ed I think) have the same block, but 26-36-46 on the front. This means that I spend a lot of time trying to match gears by multiplying numbers by 30/26 or 42/36.

When it’s raining (like it was all of today) I obsessively rehearse just how I’m going to take my bike apart and clean it when I get home. I’ll take the wheels off, give the chain a degreaser bath, expel the water with WD-40 and re-oil the chain. I’ll wipe all the crud off with a cloth soaked in dilute degreaser. I’ll replace those rusting allen bolts on my stem with shiny new ones. And so on.

My final bit of cycling-related obsession is that of bike noises. Any long-distance cyclist will know what I’m talking about. The merest hint of chain rubbing derailleur or jockey wheel squeaking is enough to trigger off thoughts of retrimming gear cables or the above “cleaning” theme respectively.

So, as you can see, there isn’t much time to think about solving the world’s problems, or even my own, come to that.

That being said, however, I do sometimes wander off and think about random things. Like:

1. How many calories are there in a fig roll?
2. What fraction of the distance from the earth to the moon have we covered? (Oops, cycling-related.)
3. Why have they never found Nessie stuck in the sluices in the locks at the end of Loch Ness?
4. What am I going to do with my life?
5. What would a world without air travel be like?
6. How do they make neoprene?

So, as you can see, I spend a lot of time absorbed in deep and very important thoughts. Which probably explains why I’ve missed seeing the Loch Ness Monster.

There is a Nessie mural in the hostel here though.

G’night.

It’s been a running joke that whatever time we aim to leave, we always take an hour longer. So now someone will say, “we’ll aim to leave at 9”, and everyone will snort derisively.

Things have slowly been improving in this respect, however. Today we arrived in Glen Nevis (in the shadow of mist-shrouded Ben Nevis) at 5:30pm, a full two hours earlier than usual. We owe this to our speedy 25-minute picnic lunch (encouraged by a drizzly gale on Rannoch Moor) and perhaps a little to the 30mph tailwind that accompanied us from Glencoe to Fort William.

That wind was against us for our descent through the actual valley of Glen Coe though, which made it quite difficult to dawdle and take in the dramatic scenery—all sheer rock walls and babbling burns and windswept scrubland.

Still, spirits are very high this evening, as we managed to get the laundry on, shower and book our whole onward journey before 7pm, leaving us for the first time with the chance to relax in the evening.

Tomorrow we ride the 40 miles to the Alltsigh hostel on the infamous shores of Loch Ness. We’ll keep you informed of any monster sightings!

Much jubilation as we crossed into Scotland yesterday morning, despite the cold wet weather. Both yesterday and today were pretty scenic, though the ride yesterday took its toll – 68 miles by the time we arrived at Wanlockhead, the highest village in Scotland, 1531 feet. It’s in a mining area with lots of rolling hills. Yesterday’s ride was also enlivened by an encounter with a fellow end-to-ender who is travelling from John O’Groats to Land’s End, playing golf the whole way.

Although we hoped that today would be lighter, it turned out to be a 50-mile ride to the youth hostel in
Glasgow, much of it through the romantic suburbs of Glasgow. We were plagued by freezing head winds both today and yesterday, and are hoping this will not become a feature of our onward journey. We fear we have seen the last day of shorts and short-sleeved jerseys.

Morale was high as we completed our first five hundred miles, helped by plenty of sunshine and a strong tailwind. For once the distance was shorter than projected – a mere 45 miles over reasonably level ground. We had planned to cycle 25 miles before lunch, but fate intervened when we spotted the well-named “Pudding House” near Cockerham. In the ensuing frenzy, everyone had coffee and cake, except Ed who had cake and cake. This sped us on our way, though not enough to keep up with the older but feisty cyclist who kindly led us at high speed through Lancaster’s cycle routes.

We took a minor detour to have a look at Morecambe Bay, followed by BLT’s at the local Bolton-le-Sands pub. In the afternoon we entered Cumbria and shortly reached the halfway mark of our epic journey. The landscape changed to rolling hills – very lush and green, but we anticipate demanding climbs tomorrow.