Marian is the Good one.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this adventure and would recommend it to anyone who is even vaguely thinking about doing it. That includes, especially, anyone who feels they cannot attempt it because of illness, age or disability. It’s all in the preparation and deciding that you want to achieve it. No-one can ever take the achievement away from you and you can bore your friends, colleagues and grandchildren about it for years to come.
The best part is not boring anyone about it, but just solitary reflection upon the highlights and lowlights of your own struggle. You will have your own challenges, and I know that mine were physical weakness in my leg, and pain in both knees. Weakness can be partly overcome by training and being prepared to make only slow tedious progress over hills and against the wind etc. You will have to find your own answer to pain but my own solution was to think about a quote from T E Lawrence who said something to the effect that there was no trick in making something not hurt – the trick was in not minding that it hurt. You just have to push on – if it hurts then it hurts but if you stop until the pain goes away then you’ll never get there.
The Good Bits include meeting lots of really nice, interesting, kind and generous people. It was a pleasure to tell them about my sponsorship for Age Concern and about Bermuda generally. They were all interested. It was surprising how many people had some connection with Bermuda, such as a friend who worked here or a relative who visited here with the navy. I was also humbled on several occasions by complete strangers giving money for my collection when I told them why I was cycling this journey. I didn’t ask them for money – they just gave it.
The accommodation was virtually all good. I tended to use mostly hotels (such as Premier, Best Western or Travelodge) in the early days and then more bed and breakfast places later on. All the meals were either good or really good. The b&b landladies and hotel staff were invariably helpful.
There is also the scenery, views, plants & flowers, birds, animals, farming, historical places of interest, different food and drink, different spoken and written languages, local music and the pleasure of successful navigation. Getting to the evening’s destination at the end of a day’s pedalling – more or less on time – with the promise of a hot bath and home cooked dinner is a real joy.
I was also regularly heartened by the support, blog comments, e-mails, phone calls and visits from friends, the people at Age Concern, and Mrs Thompson with her class (including Kiara) at Saltus Cavendish.
The Bad Bits were few. Reaching the point of exhaustion with many miles still to go is not pleasant. This happened a couple of times in Devon and Cornwall, and the worst time was on Shap Fell in the cold north-east wind and driving rain. All you can do is stop, rest enough to get your breath back, have a drink of water, eat another fruit gum and get back on the bike to cover another few yards before you topple to one side and then repeat the process. Hills don’t go on forever – they just seem that way.
I count myself fortunate compared with other LEJOGers who have written about their experiences. Cycling on the main roads with heavy traffic was uncomfortable and scary but no-one ever ran me off the road. I never hit a really bad pothole. I only fell off my bike once and that was at extremely low speed as I tried to make a u-turn in a Cornish country lane to take a second look and photograph something. The low speed and tight turn resulted in an embarrassing display of arms, legs, bike, water bottle, maps, sunglasses and panniers scattered across the tarmac. Thank goodness no vehicle came along, either to run over me or to witness my ineptitude.
Also, I never found myself in a town or village at evening time with nowhere to rest my head for the night. There was a single ‘poor choice’ of taking a room upstairs over a pub. It turned out to be a tiny garret, with the noise of revelry (and juke box) keeping me awake until the early hours of the morning. The pigeons who lived outside my window, which could not be closed, woke me with their cooing at 4 am.
The Ugly Bits are also very few. Coming across the head-on collision on the A82 was upsetting. (I did find out, several days later from an internet cafe manager, that three people had been hospitalised from that accident but they were all either ‘stable’ or ‘comfortable’. I sometimes have my doubts about the hospital’s use of the word ‘comfortable’.)
The other bits….
The stats. The ride covered 1,025 miles. It took 46 days including the half days at the start and finish, plus 8 rest days. With 109 hours in the saddle that works out at an average of 9.43 mph whilst actually pedalling.
My fastest day was 11.49 mph Alness to Balintore (flat ground and a following wind)
My slowest day was 6.11 mph over Shap Fell (up-hill, up-wind, and wet weather gear in rain)
The bike. Never let me down. I only had to use the multi-tool twice. Once to adjust and re-tighten the chain by fixing the elliptical fitting on the bottom bracket, and once to re-tighten the saddle which had worked loose.
Punctures – none. Broken spokes – none.
Broken cables – none. Problems with gears – none.
Some of this may have been helped by my rapidly developed skill and luck at avoiding potholes etc but most of the credit must go to the Felt Cycle Co, the Continental City Contact 700/35 tires, and Bicycle Works Bermuda who supplied them. In addition to bad surfaces and debris on tarmacced roads the tires also withstood many miles of canal towpaths and forestry commission logging trails. Many times I heard the dreaded ‘toyng’ of the tire displacing a stone, but never a puncture. I am blessed.
With hindsight the gears did not reach a low enough ratio for several of the hills, and this added to my struggles. The Shimano Elfine internal 8 gear hub has insufficient range for this task.
Equipment. This all held up well. I would not suggest any omissions from my original list of equipment but the following items had a free ride and were never used, i.e. front and rear lights, long-fingered gloves, spare chain link, tire levers, puncture repair kit, 2 inner tubes, spare tire, pliers. Also the adjustable spanner was used once (on the rear axel nuts) to reassemble the bike from its airline box, and not used again until I dismantled the bike in the John O’Groats car park.
Items ‘lost’ en route were my knee sock (down to my faulty laundry technique) and a pair of sunglasses (probably down to my faulty memory of where I put them). I also think I left two wristbands to dry on the windowsill of my room at the Tullie Inn in Balloch. They must be dry by now.
I was generally pleased with my clothing etc, although I had to replace my non-waterproof leggings after Shap. And I don’t care what they say about Goretex. If it’s raining in the outside, and you are sweating on the inside then you are going to get wet. What’s more, if you stop for a rest or something to eat and it is windy then you are going to be chilled to the bone very quickly.
My prosthesis. No problems at all, except those caused by excessive wear on my skin through chafing. In addition to ordinary biking the prosthesis also dealt with pushing the bike uphill, walking on gravel, lifting the bike through gates and stiles, clambering on and off ferries, stumbling across peat bogs and rambling into the heather. It also got wet several times but remained unaffected under its covering of waterproof duct-tape. The prosthesis was a credit to J.E. Hanger & Co of Montreal.
The route. This was fine. I usually managed to stick with my planned route, or make small detours to get off the major roads. The large detour via Corran and Camusnagaul over Loch Linnhe was a gem. The ‘scenic’ portion of the route through Cornwall and Devon was punishingly hilly. Shap Fell in Cumbria was somewhat unavoidable, except by very long detour, and will remain in my memories forever.
Roads varied greatly in surface quality, width, contours etc. This was part of the pleasure of the ride. Examples were the housing estate to be navigated on the way to the Avonmouth Bridge, and the actual bridges over the Severn / Manchester Ship Canal / Esk / Clyde. The towpath alongside the Caledonian Canal and the logging trail through the Clunes Forest. Then there was the memorable A74 – a glorious stretch of by-passed ‘A’ road with only occasional local traffic on it. And the cinder cycle path along the Lune estuary into Lancaster. Even more memorable was the mystical single track road through the Straths of Kildonnan and Halladale.
Navigation. The Phillips Navigator map was ideal for both planning and actual navigating. It’s a pity it doesn’t have any contour lines. National Cycle Path signage is often poor. I only got seriously adrift from my intended route once, when I missed a NCR sign in the village of Pil and had to struggle up a GOTBAP hill before discovering the error. What a waste of effort.
Communications. Whilst I am satisfied with the weight savings of not bringing a separate phone/blackberry, camera and i-pod I was otherwise disappointed with the i-phone. I got it hooked up with a pay-as-you-go service via Vodaphone in UK. The cost was reasonable but the countrywide reception was very poor. There were significant spells with neither data nor voice coverage. I learned that the teenyboppers – the true connoisseurs – in Scotland all use O2.
The camera on the i-phone is good enough for ‘snaps’ in good sunshine but I was disappointed with many photos which were not good enough to put on the website or to view on a PC. Most photos were under-exposed. I resorted to excluding as much sky as possible from the frame wherever possible but even that did not always work.
Whilst it sounds possible from the marketing literature it is not really feasible to update a website using the i-phone. The screen is too small to do any editing. I could merely upload photographs for subsequent editing. It transpired that the fold-out keyboard would not connect with the i-phone and that Apple do not provide for any keyboard linkage, either via bluetooth or by wire. This is apparently due to some restrictive practise by Apple, which I feel reflects badly on them.
I used internet cafes several times, at a cost, including those being introduced by Premier Inns and by Visit Scotland. Public libraries are OK, and free, but they tend to limit internet access to 20 minutes or so. I found that sweet-talking the librarian or the hotel receptionist often improved the situation enormously.
The weather. This was fantastic. I mentioned in my SWOT analysis the possibility of UK having a glorious summer, and the pigs are still flying past my window. In 6 1/2 weeks of cycling I had to wear my wet weather gear only three times. Most of the time I wore just a short-sleeved singlet, plus a lightweight breaker as I got into Scotland.
The so-called prevailing wind from the south-west seemed to take a couple of months off so I frequently faced a north-easterly headwind. I regarded this as being a small price to pay for maintaining a large dry anticyclone over western UK and Ireland. Indeed, on some days I was grateful for that wind to keep me cool on what would otherwise have been an uncomfortably hot day.
My health. I have had a couple of problems but nothing special. The chafing under the prosthesis caused quite a lot of bleeding and I treated this with rest days i.e. bed rest of ‘doing nothing’. After being met by Felicity (my ex-wife) in Shrewsbury I managed much better because she gave me some Boots ‘Faster Healing Hydrocolloidal Dressings’. I had never heard of them before but can now highly recommend them. They worked wonderfully at preventing further skin breakdown and facilitating the healing of existing wounds.
My (bad) right knee and later my (good) left knee both became painful and inflamed with the unusual demands placed upon them. This pain persisted throughout the journey. Ibuprophen helped a bit but there is a limit to how much of that stuff you should take. The eventual solution was to scale back my daily mileage from 30 – 35 miles to 20 – 25 miles and simply put up with whatever pain arose from that.
In the final day or so, one of the wounds became infected and got progressively worse. I eventually consulted a GP in Tunbridge Wells on my way back to Bermuda and was prescribed antibiotics. It is still very sore, even days later, so I am thankful that this did not occur earlier in the course of the ride.
In the fifth week I developed a cold sore, which responded to the Zovirax I had taken with me, but still took a week to heal.
The memories. These are the real fruits of the adventure, in addition to the money raised for Age Concern. In Inverness I saw a man wearing a kilt while riding a pushbike. I also listened to live music at McCallans coffee shop in Union Street and visited Leakey’s book shop where I could have stayed for hours – and that was just the memories of one town!
It seems a lifetime since Marian and I went pottering along Bermuda’s railway trail on Sunday mornings and I began to think about making the LEJOG trip.
Memories of people and places and sights and sounds and smells and achievement, and the sensation of being in harmony with yourself, the bike and the road. They will stay with me forever.
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