Day 2: Liskeard to Cullompton

Total: 66.3 miles
Time in saddle: 4 hrs 57 mins
Average: 13.2 mph
Max speed:  44.6 mph
Cumulative total: 141.9 miles
Chafing score: 1/5 (nice) 

Ha! Guess which numpty looked out of his window at the glorious blue sky this morning and thought, 'Great, I won’t bother taking the rain jacket today'?

This was the feared Day 2 over Dartmoor. We decided a steady, disciplined pace, reserving our efforts for the uphills and enjoying the downs, was the best strategy. John, Nick, Philip and I set off from Liskeard at just after 8am. The views towards Plymouth, the deep valleys hidden in mists but the summits glowing in the sun, were wonderful. While I was enjoying the Cornish sun, my 76-year old mother (sorry, mum), was, at the same time, preparing for her Driver Awareness course after being caught by a speed camera. I hope she was rehabilitated. Cyclists like me need protection from people like that.

We were back on the manic A390 again, but it became much more scenic as we approached Callington and Gunnislake. The descent from Gunnislake was a white-knuckle ride, especially as there is a sharp right hand turn at the bottom that takes you over the lovely old bridge across the Tamar and into Devon. We all took turns to pose by the Devon sign having collected our first county.

First county done

A couple of colossal hills took us to Tavistock and the morning tea stop. Bryan appeared in the van with what appeared to be a serious problem with his rear wheel and the four of us went with him to Tavistock Cycles to get it fixed. This entailed accidentally entering a one-way street the wrong way and cycling 100m to a chorus of “It’s a one-way street” from the eye-rolling locals. After the fifth one I blurted out, “It’s alright. We’re only going one way.” That’s London behaviour. I’m sorry Tavistock. Full marks to the shopkeeper who refused to accept payment when he heard we were cycling for charities.

Outside Tavistock Cycles: a shop run by a man with a good heart

And then it was up onto the Moor. 

Philip (left) and John head up onto the Moor

The warm sunshine soon turned to a pea-souper and the cold grey roads headed up and up, occasionally down, but more often up. We had a big descent into Postbridge, one of about five 40-plus mph hills during the ride, and had lunch in the village hall.

L to R: John, me (in radioactive top), Nick

Click to enlarge

And then the mist turned to rain and we got drenched for the rest of the day, taking extra care on the slippery roads when skirting round the wildlife. John insisted on stopping on the Moor in the rain to get a photo of Highland cattle. For some reason he said, ‘You’ll thank me for this later’. Eh?

 

The descent from the moor to Moretonhampstead was super steep on winding roads, as taxing mentally as physically, but I had the presence of mind to say ‘Hello’ to the shop in the town where, 8 years ago, my wife bought a hoe. We then hit a series of horrendous hills to Exeter in atrocious conditions. One of the hills was about a mile and half long and a 17% gradient. So hilly was it that at one stage our average speed for the day was only 10.9 mph.

We really pushed on after Exeter and the last 45 minutes or so was completed at over 20 mph in the teeming rain, all of us thinking of the hot shower that awaited us at the Padbrook Park Hotel in Cullompton. Philip who is cycling with John, Nick and me, is 61 years of age. He has a background racing mountain bikes. His strength is awesome.

We were the first of a fitful set of drowned rats to arrive. The bikes are stored in a large dry room and we spent a loving 20 minutes, still shivering in our wet gear, cleaning them and restoring them to perfect order. 

The Padbrook Park Hotel is a good choice by the organisers. It is a very plush golf club. Staying at a golf club helps cyclists feel that we are not the worst dressed people in Britain. Room-mate Colin and I have decked our room out with wet lycra and have the heaters on full blast and the window wide open. We are trying to offset out carbon savings from travelling by bike. 

We expected the later arrivals to turn up thoroughly miserable but everyone arrived beaming. This day was a huge milestone on the trip. The mileage was low but the terrain certainly wasn’t. We have done a lot of heading eastwards. Tomorrow we turn left and head north. We will cross the Severn Bridge to Chepstow during a 91-mile day: Cornwall this morning; Wales tomorrow. That makes us feel like we are starting to get somewhere.

Day 1: Land's End to Liskeard

Total: 75.8 miles

Time in saddle: 4 hrs 42 mins
Average: 16.0 mph
Max. Speed: 42.4 mph
Chafing score: 1/5 (nice)

Day 1 is done! I had hardly any sleep thanks to racing thoughts, a steaming sauna of a hotel room and the loud intersection beneath the window, but a strong coffee and a whole load of nervous energy dispelled any feelings of tiredness. The buoyant conversations of the night before had been replaced at breakfast with wan faces not making much sound at all as reality began to set in. But the weather was glorious as we rode the 10 miles in the coach to Land’s End, where the joy reached fever pitch as we were reunited with our bikes. And then we noticed something. We chose the south to north route as it took advantage of the more commonly prevailing winds. And whaddya know …?

These should point the other way

This lovely headwind accompanied us the whole way to Liskeard. Mind you, the sky was a beautiful colour and the sun really warm. I’d rather have that than a tailwind and driving rain.

Land's End (photo by Vajrin)

21 cyclists made quite a commotion riding round in circles, wise-cracking and then running to the loo before coming back out to ride around in more circles, wise-crack a bit more and then head to the loo again.
 

Final preparations

We all had the obligatory photos taken by the Land’s End sign, and then a big group photo before the off.

Butterflies

The team briefing contained a story designed to sober us up. Jen, from DiscoverAdventure, informed us firmly that company policy, quite rightly, is “No helmet, no ride” and that this policy had been vindicated on the LEJOG that took place 1 month ago, when on the first day a cyclist was hit on the head by a telegraph pole that fell down as it was being erected in a field!

Briefing over. And then we were off. Well, almost. I found this a bit confusing …

The first few miles were very leisurely. We must have been so annoying to the traffic as we rode along chatting but it was amazingly patient and polite. Cycling through Peckham every day conditions you to expect the worst. 10 miles in we rounded a bend and saw St Michael’s Mount bathed in sunshine and needed our first picture stop.

L to R: Don, Philip, John, Colin at St Michael's Mount

Miss September

Gradually a group of Craig, Philip, Colin, John and me emerged at the front and stayed together for most of the rest of the day. Nick was enjoying a very gentle time further back riding with Tommy, who has earned himself a pint from the rest of the group tonight for having the honour of getting the first puncture. In fact he had two and Nick was on hand to fix them. But he only gets 1 pint.

It is good cycling manners to take your turn at the front of the group, riding ‘point’. My tactics are to do this when going up a long hill or straight with no junctions. I don’t want to be the starling that leads the others in the wrong direction and is then attacked by the flock. But somehow, with me at the front, we found ourselves on the A30 dual carriageway near Truro. This error was a team effort with John who was at the back of the group desperately trying to read his computer and barking, “Left, no Right, no Left, LEFT, I mean RIGHT”, meaning 5 cyclists were weaving in all directions like the Red Arrows and ended up being spat onto the A30. The flock was in a forgiving mood thankfully. John and I are already tarred as ‘London cyclists’ so I think we can get away with one now and again.

First water stop

In fact John is already acquiring a reputation. At the morning water stop he looked at the gradients for the afternoon and said we’d done the worst hill by 11am and it should be easy from here. That came back to bite him later.

Lunch was in Probus and had to be earned with a loooooong hill. DiscoverAdventure served up cold meats and salads, hot pasta and veg soup AND Swiss Roll. (They must have known I was coming.) While at Probus, I went and stood at the side of the road to help direct cyclists into the village hall car park and a man of roughly 80 approached me and asked how far we were going and why we were doing it. The first question was easier to answer. For the second, I explained the charity fundraising aspect and told him about AdoptionUK. He took £2.50 out of his pocket and handed it to me. A true gentleman.

The long hill into Probus was a portent of the afternoon’s riding which contained some real horrors. Most of the afternoon we spent on the unforgiving A390, past St. Austell and Lostwithiel, with white vans, school buses and tractors for company. One of the hills coming out of St. Austell was just awful. At the water stop at the top, cheery old John ignored all the heckling about his morning prediction and informed everyone that tomorrow, on Dartmoor, we have 9 hills worse.

One final brutal hill took us into Liskeard and the luxury of the Premier Inn. I am sharing a room with Colin who seems a thoroughly decent chap. He’ll be up running in the morning. Once upon a time (ie. about 2 days ago) that would have made me feel guilty and I would have gone out with him, but I deliberately left my running shoes at home so I wouldn’t be tempted. So many people have told me I am mad for doing this ride but I am surrounded by kindred spirits here and I feel that (a) I belong, and (b) I am only a mild case.

We’re up at 6.00 tomorrow for a 7.30 start. The weather forecast is pretty good. Day 1 was excellent. Day 2 feels like a massive barrier between us and the rest of the ride and will require a different approach. Can’t wait to be up on Dartmoor.

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.