LEJOG - Land’s End to John O’Groats#
So I’m off to start Land’s End to John ‘o’ Groats on the road bike tomorrow with Jim, my brother in law. Luckily for me he’s bigger than me so I can shelter behind him when it’s windy and he’s probably not quite as fit as me so I can look smug as I wait at the top of hills. He’s also the only person I can drink under the table but this might be because he doesn’t drink. Still counts though.
Having said that I’ve only ridden six times in the last three weeks. This is either due to very clever tapering off from my training or a crap taper and too much work. “Tapering off” also sounds like I’m professional and know what I’m doing.
I’m not and I don’t.
LEJOG had never been an ambition of mine, I just fancied doing it. I mentioned it to Jim who said it was on his bucket list and I like to think that if I hadn’t bullied him into setting a date he wouldn’t have done it. In reality if he hadn’t agreed to do it I’d probably have not made firm plans and instead booked in some work and not gone. Jim has a few key attributes that will make the trip easier. Firstly, he’s dead easy to get on with and doesn’t get upset. I’m not sure that has been said about me but luckily I’ll never know, I’ll just turn the comments off below. Secondly, he’s good at pacing himself whereas I’m not. LEJOG can sound quite hard, it’s a long way. In reality if you pace yourself and never push too hard it’s doable by any cyclist.
We didn’t want to camp, pay for expensive accommodation or ride on A roads. So it’s mostly a youth hostel trip with a few AirBnB’s thrown in and one Premier Inn in Wigan. Ah, the Wigan leg. Lots of built up areas and A roads, the least attractive section of the trip by far and the one day I’m definitely not looking forward to.
There are a few suggested routes online which I amalgamated and adapted to suit what we wanted. I’m 100% confident that some of it will be wrong or rubbish!
Turns out it’s cheaper to hire a car one way to Penzance than it is to get the train. The plan is to drive to Penzance, ride to Land’s End and back to Penzance on the first day. We opted for booking all our accommodation ahead of time so that we had a target each day and so that we didn’t have to faff around finding somewhere to stay at the end of each day. The itinerary is:
1 Penzance - Land’s End - Penzance 42km 0.59vkm 2 Penzance - Liskeard 119km 2.3vkm 3 Liskeard - over Dartmoor - Taunton 130km 2.3vkm 4 Taunton - Wye 144km 1.2vkm 5 Wye - Bridges 109km 1.3vkm 6 Bridges - Wigan 139km 1vkm 7 Wigan - Windermere 126km 1.1vkm 8 Windermere - Dumfries 132km 1.5vkm 9 Dumfries - Ardossan 136km 1.4vkm 10 Ardossen - over Arran - Oban 2.2km 0.3vkm + 23km 0.4vkm + 98km 1.8vkm 11 Oban - Loch Ness 143km 2vkm 12 Loch Ness - Invershin 101km 1.7vkm 13 Invershin- Tongue 74km 0.8vkm 14 Tongue - John O Groats 101km 1.5vkm