Separation Anxiety: Penzance

Three rather nervous and incessantly chatty cyclists met at Bromley South Station at 9.45 this morning.

Me, John, Nick

Nick and I are acutely aware that, although we are trying to raise money for a charity that aims to bring families together, we are leaving ours for two weeks to do it. The goodbyes were horrible, but lugging a colossal rucksack and a bike with sharp edges down the stairs to the platform among tutting and sighing commuters (well, they should have been at work by then), soon focusses the mind on getting there, rather than leaving.

At Paddington we spotted two minor celebrities. London News Arts Correspondent, Will Gompertz, was cycling in a strangely eccentric and windswept manner to complement his hair style. And then the fast and determined woman, who sat in the sofa we had our eyes on in the coffee shop, was joined by BBC Royal Correspondent, Nicholas Witchell, who, we later discovered in the paper, was 60 today. Happy birthday Nicholas Witchell.

The 12.06 from Paddington was completely chaotic with a party of schoolkids sitting in every booked seat on the carriage, and then moving, when asked, to other booked seats from which they were asked to move again. And again. And again. And then they started singing. This was even worse than sharing a train carriage with Michael Gove to Birmingham last year, and left us feeling that this might actually be the hardest day and that 70 miles over Dartmoor would be a picnic.

Heading towards hell.

I spent much of the journey editing an article for the Journal of the Antique Metalware Society about a 19th-century doorstop in the form of Cerberus, the fierce, 3-headed dog who guarded the gates of hell, refusing to let anyone out. (I do actually enjoy doing this sort of thing.) I was beginning to wonder if Cerberus might be guarding the train door, especially when we saw the compartment into which we had to stow our beloved bikes. It was unbefitting.

John's smoky image editing adds nothing to the ambience

We were at Exeter in a bit over 2 hours. It took another two hours to get to Penzance where we were met by Ian of DiscoverAdventure. At least we now know he is from DiscoverAdventure. There was a moment of doubt after we had put the bikes in his van. The unmarked van seemed to be full of non-cycling related gear. I am sure I saw a washing machine. And a dog basket. Ian picked up our bikes and piled them unceremoniously on top of each other and shut the door. This treatment of our precious bikes reminded me of an old school friend's experience peering through the curtains as the vet walked out to his van with the family's recently expired Afghan in a sack over his shoulder, slung him in the van, slammed the door and drove off. 15 minutes later we saw a different van with DiscoverAdventure on it and were convinced we'd been had. Ian turned up later in the Longboat Inn. But we are experiencing separation anxiety (ahem ... for our families too) and will not be happy until the bikes are back in our custody in the morning.

John and I have also been separated from Nick who is staying at the far more attractive Lugger Hotel on the promenade. The Longboat is on a busy intersection right opposite Sounds Nightclub. This makes us look forward to the start even more.

We have met most of the rest of the group. There's Don from the Wirral, whose wife, Lynne, is driving much of the route with us; Craig, from Preston, who recently did London to Paris; Vajran, a Buddhist doctor who knows the human body inside out and will be a hugely useful member of the team as our middle-aged aches and pains emerge; Simon, also known on Facebook as the Dorset Motivator (I was expecting someone as loud as Mr Motivator but with a west country accent but he wasn't at all); Matthew, who has just sold a house around the corner from my place, and his girlfiend, Lizzie, and her work friend Maria; Colin who has insisted he is going for a run each morning; and Bryan with whom I have not had a proper conversation yet but he seems very nice. After an initial bout of verbal circling with questions about relative mileages and injuries everyone relaxed into conversation about the morning to come.

The evening ended with a lovely phone call home. God, I miss them. I am trying to focus on tomorrow which has been 15 months in the planning. John, Nick and I are feeling the  butterflies.

Beautiful

One day to go. The bags are packed and ... well ... the bike is ready. Oh the bike. I'm not oft given to quoting James Blunt but:

 "You're beautiful. You're beautiful, it's true."

Click to enlarge

Cappuccinos and butterflies

Only one more day at work until the off. Sleep is a bit of a problem at the moment. I am always happy to talk about the bike ride to anyone who'll listen at 3 in the morning. This leaves me needing an extra coffee on the way into work so I can keep awake to talk about the bike ride throughout the day. The coffee stop provides a good opportunity to sit down and talk about the bike ride.

This is our coffee stop in Hyde Park. I pounced on a woman walking past to ask her to take what feels like a momentous photo: our last coffee stop before the bike ride. It was quite an effort to get her to stand in the right place so we could get the bikes in the background. "No, not there, there. No there." And then she was off before we could talk to her about the bike ride.

It's not what you know ...

One of the many joys of adoption is that when your child reaches school age, you get to meet the parents of other school children and they sometimes give you free stuff. A big thank you goes to Steve Dykes, CEO of DecathlonUK, for helping me out with some Btwin cycle gear.

Nice Gear

Steve, you have rescued me from the contempt of cycling purists like cycle 'mate' John, who dismissed what I thought of as rather stylish running shirts with, "You just look like a runner on a bike", and I thank you for this.

The Training

Most of my training has been commuting every day to South Kensington from near Biggin Hill in Kent, usually with LEJOG team mate John. It's a 40-mile round trip and takes in some beautiful parts of London ...

Westminster: that's me that is ...

 ... and a few not so beautiful ones:

Lewisham

Long summer days this year meant early morning rides around Kent before heading into London. Some days covered over 80 miles with the return journey in the evening, meaning my wife has hardly spoken to me for months but has had to sit through the evening news with me next to her, my head tilted back, mouth open, dribbling and snoring over Huw Edwards, if you know what I mean.

My favourite weekend ride is Brighton and back which I have only done twice so it might just be a novelty. It's 106 miles and takes in the dreaded Ditchling Beacon. If you live south of the Thames and ride a bike, you are not officially a cyclist until you have done the Beacon. Leaving home at 6 on a Sunday morning gets me to a greasy spoon under the colonnade on the beachfront for breakfast with the drunks heading home from the night before. I look a bit of a plank sitting next to them in my lycra so it's a good incentive to get back on the bike and come home.

Cyclists are obsessive, worse than runners. Some are inclined to do mad things. I am glad that I have just about prepared myself for LEJOG without doing anything silly like riding 114 miles to Southend and back at midnight in the pouring rain like John.

The Challenge

We will be cycling LEJOG in 11 and a bit days covering almost exactly 1000 miles. We set off from Land's End at 9.30am on Tuesday 24 September and arrive in John O'Groats by late morning on Saturday 05 October. The last day is the 'bit day' - a quick 30-miler to give us time to have our photos taken by the End-to-End sign, throw our bikes in the sea, and jump on the coach back to Inverness for a chafing and blisters party. Here is the route:

Click to enlarge

From Day 3, we cross the Severn Bridge and head up the Welsh border, passing through Wigan and Preston, skirting the edge of the Lake District, and then heading up the west side of Scotland. We follow the fault line towards Inverness before heading directly north to the coast.

We are riding with a tour organised by DiscoverAdventure. 21 riders are currently entered. DiscoverAdventure look after everything except the cycling so we don't have to carry our luggage or arrange accommodation. Most nights we will do B&Bs, with the odd Travelodge thrown in and even a youth hostel. Sharing a dormitory all night with 20 other smelly snoring and farting cyclists and then having to fill the coal buckets in the morning is not my idea of heaven but I am hoping I will be too tired to care.

Most days we will cover between 80 and 100 miles. Day 2 is only 70 miles, but that is the dreaded Dartmoor day, a day with no flat surfaces, only nasty inclines and hair-raising descents with wild horses and sheep blocking the roads at the bottom, not to mention man-eating big cats lurking on the verges (or was that the Beast of Bodmin?). It will be the hardest ride I have ever done. Well, that is what everyone keeps telling me, from the organisers to colleagues whose relatives have done LEJOG, and even passers-by in the street. I can see what they mean:

Day 2 Profile: click to enlarge

We drove Day 2 a few weeks ago on the way back from Cornwall and I was exhausted in the car. The one thing that is helping distract me from Day-2-Fear is enjoying team mate John's sheer terror of it.

Part of the endurance test will be writing this blog each day. It will be my LEJOG Blog Slog. An even greater test of endurance will be yours, reading it. I thought I'd say it before you did.

Terminology: JOGLE or LEJOG

JOGLE = John O'Groats to Land's End
LEJOG = Land's End to John O'Groats

By choosing to go south to north it means not that we are trying to take advantage of the usual prevailing wind, but that we can use the joke about it being harder because we are going up the map. I said this to one of my neighbours and he believed me.
(Shh ... Nigel, it was Wayne.)

Haggis and Cornish Pasties = JOGLE

Cornish Pasties and Haggis = LEJOG



Why?

The altruistic reason:
AdoptionUK helps make life better for children who have suffered trauma and neglect. It is a charity close to my heart. If you would like to know why or learn more about Adoption UK, please visit my sponsor page at:

http://www.justgiving.com/Angus-Patterson

The personal reason:
Well, it seems a more productive use of my mid-life crisis than to get some leather trousers, buy a motorbike or have an affair. One of my Land's End to John O'Groats team mates, Nick, and I were discussing our crises one day in June last year, listing all the things we had never done but wished we had. He mentioned Land's End to John O'Groats. I said, 'Let's do it.' He said 'Yes'. I then asked cycle-commute partner, John, and he said 'Yes' before I had even finished the sentence. I thought middle age was meant to teach you caution.