Just rolling

Sophie and I went for our final training rides this weekend. Sunday was just a 24-mile amble through Richmond Park. Monday was a more serious 40-mile affair, starting at Haslemere, passing through Liphook, then turning onto the A272 to Midhurst, Easebourne, Tillington and Petworth, along the South Downs. We had a short late-afternoon break in Petworth Park before heading back to Haslemere.

Average speed was 12.4mph. Not too bad considering my fully-loaded panniers and the rather, ahem, “undulating” nature of the course.

Unfortunately I’m totally knackered today (“caloric debt”) and am not too confident about stringing 20 of these rides together on consecutive days. Too late to back out now….

Well, I’ve just completed my last real day of training. A modest 17 mile ride to make sure the bike still works after an unidentified creaking sound developed yesterday. Creaking gone, bike happy.

I know I’m taking a nine day training-less break before le grand depart, but at least I haven’t spent the whole month of August relaxing in southeast Asia… ahem. Anyway, if we trained too much it would just erode the challenge, wouldn’t it? Ascending the hills of Cornwall and Scotland with an effortless grace wouldn’t lend half the satisfaction of the agonising slog that we’re expecting…

I’ve just received the London – Penzance tickets—the first physical evidence of our journey.

I’ve booked the outward tickets (London—Penzance).

Well, apparently there is planned engineering work on the line between Edinburgh and Newcastle on the weekend we’re returning from John O’Groats. The upshot is that we’ll have to catch the 6:23am train from Wick, and the journey includes a replacement bus service from Edinburgh to Newcastle. But can we get four bikes on the Wick-Inverness train? And will the replacement bus service take bikes at all?

I have actually considered booking EasyJet tickets back to London from Inverness, but they require bikes to be packaged in bike boxes or bags. I’m not confident that we be able to buy them in Inverness on a Saturday morning. This is quite apart from the fact that they cost £80 each.