Epiblogue

"For goodness sake, McAdder. You're not Rob Roy. You're a top kipper salesman from Aberdeen."
(Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder the Third)

I'm not Bradley Wiggins. I'm a museum curator from London. I am having trouble remembering this a week after the event. Judging by the frequent emails and Facebook correspondence, the rest of the team is having difficulty adjusting to normal life too. Colin has sent through designs for a commemorative cycling shirt; John has been messing about with the template on his blog; Maria has circulated a map of Britain made up of all of our names and of the names of the places we visited.

On Thursday, I had to present a one hour object-handling seminar at the Museum and was standing there at the start facing 30 Harvard alumni, with 25 pieces of metalwork covering 500 years on the table, thinking, "Oh God, what do I talk about? My only conversation is about cycling."


Nick and me at the finish in AdoptionUK T-shirts

Why We Did It

It will take a while to come down from this adventure. This endurance challenge was something I had always had in the back of my mind. The sense of fulfilment from it is wonderful. But that is the selfish reason. There is a more important one ...

The group raised over £95,000 for charity. Nick and I have raised over £9,000 for AdoptionUK, a charity that makes life better for children who have suffered trauma, loss and sometimes severe neglect. As adoptive parents, this charity is close to our hearts. Adoptive children have special emotional needs. For many children, their early life trauma can lead to emotional, behavioural, educational and developmental difficulties which may also affect their ability to form secure attachments and relationships. Staggeringly, 20% of adoptions break down. Like all adoptive parents, we are determined that our children's early experiences will not inhibit their potential.

Adoption UK does not receive central government funding but relies solely on the generosity of members and supporters to make adoptions work and to promote loving and supportive relationships between children and their adoptive families. 

To find out more about the work of AdoptionUK, please visit:  http://www.adoptionuk.org/

My Supporters

I have been totally overwhelmed with the support I have received from my sponsors. I set out to reach a fundraising target of £3000, but have now exceeded £5000. The support continued through these pages, and the comments and interaction with friends and family reading the blog gave me a massive psychological boost each day. And then I got back to work and was greeted by balloons and bunting in my office and two boxes of Millionaire's Shortbread. I am lucky to know people like this and am extremely grateful to everyone.

My office on my return: look, I cycled in.

The Group

Photo by Jo and Sarah 

LEJOG was the best thing I have ever done (... apart from getting married and having a family). (Phew ... that was close.) I trained really hard for the ride as I really wanted to enjoy it, and cycling all those miles before work, and the Sunday rides to Brighton and back, really paid off. I had two fantastic friends with whom to share the experience, in John and Nick (although John stretched this friendship, during the 12-hour van journey home, when he revealed an almost total ignorance of the words of both Morrissey and Edmund Blackadder, but an extensive knowledge of show-tunes, which he performed with complete abandon for several hundred miles). And the wider group was wonderful. Every member of the team was committed to the team. I find it extraordinary that after such an endurance test, everyone made it over the line in one piece. I put that down, as I mentioned in previous posts, to the camaraderie.

The organisers, DiscoverAdventure, were excellent too. I had one or two grumbles, at the end of long days, about some of the route planning, but Jen, Ian and Lahcen worked tirelessly to make the tour a success. I would absolutely recommend the company to anyone else embarking on a tour like this. They take away all the organisational worry and leave you to concentrate on the cycling. If you are thinking of tackling LEJOG, John's blog contains excellent advice. Most of what I know about cycling was taught to me by John, so the advice is worth following. Click here.

I write this on my 46th birthday. One of the reasons I signed up for the ride this year is because I thought, beforehand, that in 5 years' time it might be too late and that I might not be able to hold my fitness sufficiently. Several riders in the group dispelled that myth for me. Alastair, at 65 the oldest member of the group only took up riding this year and did LEJOG as a retirement present to himself. Don, at 61, lost 4 stone for this ride and rode at a quick pace and finished as strongly as anyone. Pete, father of Andy and a football referee, got straight back on his bike after a nasty fall, and made it to John O'Groats without showing any signs of fatigue. And, of course, Philip, at 61, mountain-biker extraordinaire, kept pace with the fastest group the whole way and then declared at the end that he didn't feel comfortable on road bikes. He is as strong as an ox. He may not like filtering in urban traffic (and, indeed, may be the first person to cycle from Land's End to John O'Groats on the pavement) but he is a hell of a cyclist. I wouldn't fancy my chances against him on a mountain bike. These people I found inspirational.


LEJOG medal courtesy of Philip, whose generosity matches his cycling prowess

Craig too. He showed us a picture of himself a couple of years ago looking 20 years older, before he took up cycling. He deserves his LEJOG achievement as much as anyone for all the hard work and focus. Lizzie had some tough moments battling a knee injury and fatigue but was still smiling and wisecracking at the finish. Bryan was also a true LEJOG stalwart with his nightly awards that set the tone for the team's camaraderie. But he missed a trick. In awarding Tommy and Micky the prize for greatest contribution to LEJOG he should have treated them to a night at the Royal Hotel in Thurso. Second prize could have been two nights. But I guess it's unfair to name some and not others. All were fantastic. This group made LEJOG truly unforgettable.

I am already talking with John and Nick about London to Paris next year, a 3-day ride which will give us something new on which to focus. Being away from family is tough all round and I would not sign up to be away so long again. My wife and son have given me unbending support the whole way through this. I am very lucky.

Did we really do this?

This blog closes with a line, not from Edmund Blackadder, but from Tim Vine:

"I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I tell you what. Never again."

Although ...