How do you get from Lands End to John O'Groats?

Now that is a very good question indeed...

The way you get from End to End is not as some may expect. Many people have odd views, and I must admit that there were a few "Oh, so that's how you get there" moments from me after studying the maps very carefully.  What may be an obvious route in a car is not necessarily the route you want to take on a bike.

Here is an example, what road do you take to get out of Cornwall? The A30 right? Yep, it sure is. But not on a bike it's not. Although when you look into it you start to wish it was (It's those hills again). The A30 is generally a very busy dual carriageway. And while some people have said I should just use it I can assure you it's no fun riding all day with cars and lorries hurtling past. It's just too dangerous. And not for me.

Our days will vary in length and duration. 50 miles on one day is not going to be the same as the next. Hills, weather, road type and pubs all tend to get in the way.

So here is the info you have all been asking for:

• Day 1 - 7th July
• Lands End to St Austell (I remember this place from holidays)
• Day 2 - 8th July
• St Austell to Exeter 
• Day 3  - 9th July
• Exeter to Glasonbury (In time to miss the music festival)
• Day 4 - 10th July
• Glastonbury to Hereford (We cycle through Wales!)
• Day 5 - 11th July
• Hereford to Shrewsbury
• Day 6 - 12th July
• Shrewsbury to Widnes (Just missing Liverpool)
• Day 7 - 13th July
• Widnes to Lancaster
• Day 8 - 14th July
• Lancaster to Carlisle (Avoiding the Lakes :-( although I would love to do it)
• Day 9 - 15th July
• Carlisle to Abington
• Day 10 - 16th July
• Abington to Loch Lomond (Ah, I love this place)
• Day 11 - 17th July
• Loch Lomond to Fort William (That place out yonder, but never drive the scenic route!)
• Day 12 - 18th July
• Fort William to Inverness (while watching out for Nessie)
• Day 13 - 19th July
• Inverness to Helmsdale (I just hope it's not windy and rainy by this stage)
• Day 14 - 20th July
• Helmsdale to John O'Groats (via Wick airport. Woohoo! The end. )

That last bit is important. I've hired a van from Wick airport to use for our travels back to Sussex. Our plan is to collect the van on the way to John O'Groats, park the van at Wick airport (free parking don't you know, yeah, I know, at an airport!) and then dump all our bags and stuff in the van before continuing our journey to JOG. i.e. travel the last part light. Of course we then need to cycle back to the van before we can get home again. Hey Ho. Last last 17 miles is NOTHING compared to the miles we would have already done. Just hope the weather is nice to us.

Should any of you be living near to our intended route please feel free to come out and wave us down and chat. We could probably do with some words of encouragement. Oh, any chance of a flask of tea? If it's not too much trouble of course... ;-)

Test Ride Results

Finally, I get the chance to ride the bike for the first time since it's big service. And remember that I have a new front chainset to help with some of the hills we will be negotiating while riding Lands End to John O'Groats. Much of the ride is going to be manageable even if it is taxing. But the first couple of days are going to burn those legs more than I'm expecting. But now I'm expecting it, does that mean it's going to be harder? Oooh, best stop thinking about it.

Now previously, I explained that my bike had a double front chainset. That's the big cog attached to your pedals. If I was to go back further than that you would find that the Raleigh Equipe was originally made with 12 gears. That's 2 at the front and 6 at the back just to be clear. The number of teeth of the cogs on the freewheel (that's the smaller set of cogs on the back wheel that your chain goes around) ranged from 14 teeth to 24 teeth in 2 teeth increments. So, using the little chart above you should read along the bottom line to 24 (it's not shown but comes after 23... LOL). Then draw a line up to the red line. This represents the lowest gear I could select at the time. Then if you draw a line to the left hand numbers you end up with a number of 1.75 (trust me, it does). What that means is for every one turn of the pedals the back wheel would turn 1.75 times.

Stay with me folks.

About a year ago I added a new freewheel to contain an extra cog with 28 teeth providing a new low gear of 1.5 turns of the back wheel to every turn of the pedals. This provided that little bit more flexibility to make it up Ditchling Beacon. A hill that strikes fear into many folk living in Sussex or even those riding the London to Brighton who did not do their homework!

So, to my new front chainset. What I get is a 30 toothed cog at the front. And this ratio curve is shown in blue on the graph. You can see that each of the front gears overlaps each other in gear ratio terms. Think it of low, mid, and high range of gears. While I now have a lovely range of 21 different gears to select, there are the odd few exact ratio matched. e.g. 1st gear in mid range has the same ratio of 1.5:1 as 4th gear in low range. And 1st gear in high range is almost the same as 6th gear in low range. 

I hope you are all following this, I'll be asking questions later!

So you ask, what's it like? Well, with a new low ratio of 1.07:1 I found I couldn't ride my bike. Due to the amount of laughing and giggling as I spun the pedals at breakneck speed and hardly moved an inch! LOL. OK, OK, not quite true. But the almost flat road did make me reach for some higher range gears. For those hills. I actually could not find a hill steep enough that was on my test route. I need to go find a steeper hill. 

In summary then, did I make the right choice? Of course I did. Remember that I'll be riding heavy with pannier bags on the back and going up some much larger hills than where I live. I just needed the safety net to be in place to give my knees a break when I need it. The thing about cycling up hills is that the lower the gear the longer it's going to take you and that can be worse than sprinting up it in a higher gear for the shorter hills. How often have you used low ratio in a 4x4? not that often if ever for some of you. But at least you have it should you need it.

Righty, end of lesson. Bring on the hills...

Some things change and other things don't

Just got the bike back from the doctors

Aha! Full service complete and woohoo! Can't wait to take it on the road....

I decided I should play things safe and take the bike for a Gold Service at Evans Cycles at Gatwick. The great thing about this place is the Gatwick location is the national warehouse for all the Evans Cycles national chain of stores (unless someone knows of some other warehouse). And all of their gear are competitive internet style pricing (not that I work for them in any way you understand), just that while I love the internet there are times that touching stuff just helps before you buy it.

It means that taking the bike there meant we could try out a few options there and then. They just put a request in, a little like Agros, and out pops the thing you wanted to look at through a little hatch. Cool.

Now with a catalog full of potential all you want to do is look at everything. Don't you? But then, perhaps it's just me.

So there I was. Just looking at the potential, and made my list of things. Stuff that's going to be important. The thing is that a gold level service means they strip the bike down, pretty much to it's nuts and bolts before cleaning and re-assembling. The cost of putting new bits back on the bike is nothing as it's all covered in the service. My list went something like:

• Full Service
• Fresh Handlebar Tape
• New Brake Callipers and pads
• New Brake cable inner and outers
• New Chainset - This is the large toothed wheel where your pedals attach
• New Front Derailleur

The service would take care of the strip down and re-build which included the head gear, this is where your handlebars attach. They also took care of the bottom bracket. This being where your pedals and cranks attach to the frame. Both of these had never been touched since I got the bike in '84! Not good really.

Handlebar tape, I've gone soft. No, not me, the tape. This stuff has gel inserts to provide some padding for your hands after long days. I've changed from white tape to black for the change. And actually, I like it more than the white!

Brakes. Well, just imaging me on a bike (it's all heavy muscle I tell you) going down a hill (think of Ditching Beacon for those who know it, or Kirkstone Pass in the Lakes) then add some rain. Hmm, not going to stop very quickly. If at all. As I've found out a couple of times already. SO..... Time for some new stopping power with new callipers and pads. The result? It's like going from old drum brakes to big shiny new disc brakes with servo stopping power. Amazing difference.

Chainset. Err, OK, I went for a triple. I know, I know, it's for whimps. BUT, hold on I say. A good few years back I managed to pick up some infection or something which in turn gave me poly arthritis. It turned me into an old man overnight and landed me in hospital not being able to walk. Not an experience I would wish on anyone. It took years to recover from it and so I'm just that little protective of having some functioning joints today. So will a little precaution I hope to keep my working joints for many more years yet. Add a couple of pannier bags to the bike and lots of Cornish Hills and I think having those extra low gears should I need them may make all the difference. Basically, I added 7 more gears to the bike as a low range. And as I put an extra cog up front you also need the front mech (derailleur) to make the chain move correctly.

So there you have it, a rebuilt bike, stripped and rebuilt once more with some new bits added and a few bits left well alone (which is only the rear derailleur, the handlebars, the frame, and the brake and gear levers. Hmm. Not much left of the old bike in the back of the shed now is it? Nah, of course it is......

What a great way to do some training

The 16th June was Fathers Day in the UK.

And not only that, but it was the annual British Heart Foundation London to Brighton Bike Ride. This year Holly and I took part to use as some training for our big adventure. And to show we did actually do it here is the video...

We started the day with a quick trip to Haywards Heath station to catch the transport up to Clapham Common for the start of the ride. Transport is made up of coaches for people and TNT trucks for the bikes. So, already you know something is going to go wrong with the setup! We had a start time of 7am, not the first group to go out mind, no they get out at 6am. More on this later. The transport leaves Haywards Heath between 5:30-6:30am with 3 coaches making the journey.

Our bus? The good news is we left just before 6am! Excellent timing. Off we go, and in an hour we are at Clapham. Without the truck. And no bikes. Standing in me lycra shorts on a cold June morning. Just waiting about for over half an hour before the truck decides to make an appearance. Everyone else arriving turned up with their truck in tow. What happened to our driver then?

By the time we made an appearance at the start line and got the signal to go it was nearly 8am, that's a whole 2 hours after the first group went out. We could hear people getting phone calls that their friends were past half way, and some near Brighton already.

And us?

We were now in the biggest group of people leaving London, many were out for the leisurely day trip. Dressed in super hero outfits, band tributes, Royal Marine Band teams, people on BMXs, others with radios strapped to their backs playing disco music. Yep, we had no choice by this stage but to join the slow river of bikes leaving the capital. It took over 2 hours just to get to the outskirts of the city :-( A journey that should have been done in around 20 minutes. On one of the first downhill sections the inevitable happened, we hit the biggest bike traffic jam I've ever seen. Over a mile of stand-still bikes crammed into a country lane, so the next hour we stood and shuffled along the lane until eventually we popped out the far side to find the lovely marshals had put out some temporary traffic lights to help control the traffic. ?!?!?! It was lost on me by this stage.

Eventually, we get out into clear roads heading away from under the M23 and off to Crawley Down. Our mileage was adding up fantastically well. All hills were tackled without the need to push/walk, this really was the time to be testing ourselves.

Turners Hill was the next step, many people resorting to pushing their bikes up the hill. And Holly? She kept riding. She was spurred on by the marshals taunting those walking, "Get back on yer bikes! LOOK! that girl is riding past you lot! Bunch of whimps"

Riding towards Ardingly we were stopped by the police, there was an accident requiring an ambulance. So we waited. Cycling down through Ardingly was great fun. Very much a general downhill and roads mostly free of traffic we made up great time. It's always good to get to Lindfield, lots of people out cheering you through the village. I got stopped by the police again! while Holly continued just ahead to ride into the village on her own. There was another accident. What were these people doing?

A quick pit stop to re-fuel and see some family and friends who had come out to meet us and we were off again. Onwards to the mighty Ditchling Beacon. This is a killer of a hill and one I've never been able to complete. Especially not after cycling nearly 50 miles before going up it. Through Ditchling without a hitch and another stop to see the Father in Law! Sitting drinking a very nice looking beer while watching the bikes. Anyways, focus. There is that hill.

We dropped to low gears and settled in for a very long steep climb. Half way up Holly suggested she might stop. Until a nice lady overhearing said "You can't stop now! You'll never get on your bike again.". And so, Holly pushed on. It was great to see many of the posh cyclists, you know the ones, all the gear and no idea. All of those folk, and the people who know better than to try, were walking. :-) Last year, I was amongst them pushing my bike. I got off at the bottom knowing I wasn't fit enough to even consider riding up it.

What a difference a year makes, I can't describe the feeling, I actually made it to the top. And I didn't feel too bad either. A quick recovery time and I was ready to continue. Amazing. Holly didn't quite make it, just 400M from the top and someone caught her back wheel brining her to a halt.  She was so close and had done the worst of it. I was so impressed with her stamina. Excellent work.

And so, just the last 7 miles to the sea. And with a downhill all the way we should be there in around 15 minutes.

1 hour later, and we were still on the road leaving the beacon. There has been a rather nasty accident (I hope the rider was ok) which closed the road. By the time we got to the sea front we had been on our bikes for 8 hours. It should have taken us no more than 4 hours to complete the journey including breaks with many of the first group out at 6am doing it in 3.5 hours.

But still, it was a fun day out. Would I do it again? Probably. We shall see.

Holly after the ride

Oh Pants

Or shorts to be exact...

I'm now the proud owner of some new cycle shorts. Now you need to understand that cycle shorts are part of this underworld of myth and wizardry. Where people walk about nodding at each other in recognition and understanding although few speak of the actual action or process of wearing cycling shorts. I suppose it's like wearing a kilt, which I have done. And no, I won't discuss what was worn under said garment. When getting fitted for a kilt you find that your size of kilt is not based upon your waist size but rather your belly. Twas a rather new experience.

It's a sensitive matter. No, really it is. As your shorts have to protect your important bits from wearing away while riding for all hours of the day, so the better the shorts the more comfortable your experience will be. Get the wrong saddle, or shorts, or cream to lube between your shorts and skin then it's going to be a painful experience. Oh yes, did I not say, just like a kilt, nothing is worn under your shorts.

So the next time you are following a pack of cyclists you will be thinking, are they a true cyclist?

This Sunday is the annual London to Brighton Bike Ride organised by the British Heart Foundation. Holly and I will be taking part and using it as a part of our training for the big ride even though it's merely 55 miles which represents the shortest distance we will be doing on LEJOG. With a 7 am start time, which is really 7.30am once our transport gets us there, we expect to get to Brighton by early afternoon. And with that as our example riding day should allow us plenty of slack in some of our more challenging days we are expecting.

And finally, with my bike awaiting it's big service next week a few questions have come to light. Namely, with the extra weight of luggage on my bike I'm wondering whether I should replace the chainset on my bike for something allowing more flexibility in gearing. I find I can do most of my rides either in the lower front gear or the higher gear depending upon the terrain. And to be fair there is a lot of overlap in gearing meaning I may be able to select something more suited to the long run we will be doing. I think I'll go and do some math to work out the possibilities.

Until then bloggers!

The new satnav arrives!

A quick pick of Holly, Leo and myself. Leo attends Kangaroos, the charity we are raising funds for.

Ooh, new goodies....

I jumped in and ordered the Garmin Edge 800, a satnav for a bike. This particular package comes with a cadence (how fast you pedal), wheel rotation sensor, and a heart rate monitor. Which combined can work out where I am, how fast I'm travelling, where I need to go, how steep the hills are, how unfit I really am... well, you get the picture.

Perhaps I missed the smallprint, but I forgot to check which maps the thing comes with. It does come with a map, but it's only good for major roads rather than a nice detail of back roads one might expect. Instead you need to go to their website and order the type of map you want. OR you can go and grab one of the open source free maps. I'm very interested in the Ordnance Survey maps, but at £199 they can go take a running jump!

My phone can do good maps for when I need that level of detail which I doubt will be that often. I decided to go for the basic UK maps which provide clear road info and turn by turn instructions. I'll be pulling in pre-defined route maps to explain to the thing how to tell me which turn comes next. I'll be installing the London to Brighton route ready for the weekend to test it out.

So, satnav is now installed on the bike with all the little sensors it needs to monitor progress.

Also in the post are my new waterproof pannier bags to keep everything as dry as possible. I'll be carrying all of Holly's stuff in one bag and mine in the other to keep the weight off her bike. And as the bags fold down small we can travel light without large flapping bags all over the place. I am getting very aware of all this weight being added so some of the heavy small items will be put in a saddle bag under Holly's saddle. The idea being bulky light things on my bike, small heavy on Hollys. Trust me, it'll all balance out!

It's going to be a pants week this week....

... I'm expecting some shorts to arrive at some stage. I already have the special before and after cream to keep the sensitive bits comfy. And Holly gets her own pot of the stuff. Everyone keeps telling me, no double dipping! Errgh

So, I'm shelling out the most amount of money I think I've ever spent on a small (but important) piece of material. Have you seen the price of these things? Go on, have a guess at how much! Nope, more than that. More, look, it's over 100 notes. These things it would appear need at least £100 spent on them with even better ones at around £150. It's all in the detail, you go commando in these things to prevent any chances of rubbing your skin away from hours in the saddle. The shorts are designed to work with the seat, and you use special cream to lubricate between you and the shorts. Anything else getting added to the mix is asking for trouble. And for me, I want the most comfortable ride possible and therefore need to hand over some cash. I'll be trying them out this weekend during the London to Brighton ride.

The bike fairies are busy!

New goodies!

It's probably true that I'll spend more on this trip than I'll make in donations, but there are bits and bobs we still need. While Holly's bike is new, mine is nearly 30 years old. It's fair to say that much of the bike has had changes but there remains those parts needing attention.

I took it to Evans cycles for their apraisal of whether they think it would get me from Lands End to John O'Groats. It went something like:

EC: Ooh, we havn't seen one of those for a while. It's not looking too bad. What you want doing?
ME: want to do LEJOG, will it get me there with a service?

Now at this point I'm thinking there's no chance.

EC: Depends on what you think needs doing.
ME: Bottom bracket, head, and rear wheel needs adjusting, brakes?
EC: Sure, we can do that. And yes, it will do LEJOG with you.

Wow. Not what I expected.

We agreed that safety should come first and therefore my brakes will be upgraded. More costs, but you need to be able to stop before a wall or car stops you.

So, now my doctor says yes, the mechanic says yes, and the number of donations grows. It's all getting very real.

A few more things have been purchased with clothing for Holly, new panniers for my bike, and a saddle. Now getting a new saddle you would think is just a matter of getting something that suits the bike, is big and soft and looks like an armchair. Well, no, I had to have my arse measured...

Out came the bumometer for measuring my size in order to determine the required saddle. It started me wondering, how do women use this service? Do they say they are a size smaller than they really are? And then do the saddle makers make he seat a size bigger than the size on the box? Who would have thought saddles would be a difficult bussines?

I was pleased to learn that my arse is of average size and with the right saddle selected my bum does not look big on it :-)

I await my new satnav...

It's all in the detail

It would appear you spend as much time planning everything as you do training for it. I've been spending lots of time in front of the computer screen plotting little detours around the biggest of evil hills. Take a look at the map below of the first leg of the journey.
 

Would you just look at those hills! And you should have seen the original route. So, when doing all this, you have to take a step back from it. And then stretch the elevation map out a bit as after a while it's just possible to convince yourself that those are not really hills. Nope, the real hills don't start until day 2!

Now one of the things that's started to worry me is being a bloke. Not that I'm worried about being a bloke you understand, just that we have this view that we know our directions like the back of my hand. I mean have you seen the back of my hand? Anyways, it's just possible that at some point in the 1000 miles that I may, just possibly, let the blokes down and take a wrong turn. To remove the slight small degree of possibility of that occuring I've decided to invest in a bike satnav device. So that way, should I take a wrong turn into a farmers field, down the hill and into a raging river, I can blame it on the technology.

And it doesn't stop there.

It was suggested that I make some sort of video diary of the journey. Hmm, how does one do that exactly? I guess I start with a camera, waterproof perhaps, and bike mountable most likely. A quick trip to Park Cameras and the good people behind the counter removed a few digits from my bank balance in return for a GoPro camera. A Hero3 don't you know. It sounds all tough and rugged for the adventure type of folk. And actually it's really quite cool. I did a quick test with it on the car dashboard on the way home. To the next challenge, getting the video off the camera during the trip so I can upload to youtube. Hmm. My plan was to take along my small Galaxy Tab for updating the blog on our travels and so I now need to get the video from the camera to the Tab. And as both devices have wifi I found it's pretty easy to connect one to the other and download the files. A quick edit and off it goes to youtube. Although I really need to test that bit. (note to self). So now, when that wrong turn happens, you will be able to see the spectacular event in full HD technicolour detail.

 Finally, it turns out that the nice people of Northlands Wood Primary school, where Leo attends, would like to monitor the progress of our trip. With the suggestion of putting up a huge map in the hall for the children to plot our progress. Wow. That's kinda cool. To help, I tend to use Endomondo on my mobile phone which tracks my cycle routes in real time. I use it to record my journeys, monitor fitness levels, times, maps, etc. Anyone following us through this blog will be able to do the same thing during the trip. A word of caution however, should my tracking signal increase in speed significantly then it could be a sign that I'm in the back of an ambulance or some little urchin has just nicked my phone. So keep an eye out.....

Following a couple of years of preparation...

It's been a little while since a post to this blog, but it's been for a reason. And that reason being a long planned little trip on the old bike from Lands End to John O'Groats! This has been one of those trips I've been wanting to do for a very long time. And now I think of it I believe I've had the urge since I got the bike. Way back in '84.

So, here's the plan.

Starting from Lands End on the 7th July 2013 and travelling in bite sized chunks for the following 2 weeks to arrive at John O'Groats on the 20th July.

To help make this more of a team event I'll be undertaking this task with the support of my daughter Holly who will be joining me for the journey. And I've got a few offers from people wanting to join us for some of the journey or to help out with some road support to give some extra encouragement.

The thing is, when you look at our little island on Google maps you see that it's not that bad really. Just a small island to have a quick jaunt. But you start to zoom in and that little island starts to look huge! It's an amazing 1000 miles of huge. There is a more direct route, but on a bike it's a route you really would not want to take. There are a good number of roads you want to avoid at all cost and a good number of roads you just wish went all the way to the end.

I've been reading loads of different blogs and journals of this trip up the country and the thing is they are all so different. It's incredibly difficult to just decide upon a route. The trick is to plan your own personal adventure. There is just no one route that one should take.

Planning has taken into account training. And with a number of cycling events under my belt and lots of shorter trips between I find myself being fitter than I have been in a long time. The first time I got out on the bike I nearly died. I got to this huge hill, it went of forever, no end in sight, even shifted down to the lowest gear on my 12 speed relic. Getting home I was in that stage of agony, stomach in my mouth feeling desperately trying to suck any oxygen possible into my lungs. It was not good. I thought, what am I doing?

2 years later, and here I am. Having survived my early days of killing myself cycling up never ending hills I still ride the same route. The thing is, I can't find those hills anymore. They don't exist! That hill it turns out is just a small gradient. And the real hills are a reason to shift up a gear and get pushing. It's a fantastic feeling.

So, this blog will now track our big adventure. Please help to provide some encouragement by sponsoring us in support of Kangaroos.org.uk at www.justgiving.com/steve-farrage