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Lands End to John O'Groats Bike Ride
The fame (or notoriety) of the places of Lands End and John O'Groats is that they are the two places furthest apart on the British mainland. There's no longer trip you can do in a straight line without going into the sea. The shortest route is something like 874 miles, but any practical cycling route will be quite a bit further. My route ended up as 1638km, 1024 miles. I set off together with my friend David Hembrow, riding together for the first few days. We intended to do the whole ride together, but often we got separated and took different routes. It's not easy on such a long ride to accommodate different people's speeds and preferences, and after the first week we rode apart for most of the rest of the distance. Probably such a trip is best done on your own. However it's unlikely either of us would have made the trip at all alone, so it's just as well we set off together. The trip took me 13 days to complete, setting off on 1 July 2006 and arriving on 14 July. The high points of the trip are noticing the changes in people's accents, the terrain, the climate and even the length of day, while travelling from South to North, it really made it feel like an epic journey. There were many struggles of course with hills, rain, wind and breakdowns. Looking back it has been great to do this trip and fulfil an ambition. Would I do it again? Probably not. I'm glad I did it but I don't feel the need to do it again. Arrival at Penzance by train and ride to Lands End.   
Truro to Okehampton, this ride was very hard due to hilly terrain and very hot weather.    My mothers house in Taunton and the ride to Bristol crossing Brunel's Clifton suspension bridge.   
Ross on Wye to Chester. A wonderful cycle path runs from Chester to Ellesmere Port along the canal.   
Approach to Birkenhead and Liverpool along the Mersey and then on to Blackpool.   
Kirkby Lonsdale in the Lake District, and the first sign of Scotland.   
The amazing cycle path leading most of the way from the Scottish border to Glasgow.   
Truck stop at Lesmahagow, a cheap night stay, and then the ride into Glasgow.   
Past Loch Lomond into Glen Coe.   
Glen Coe - with rain, big hills and a relentless headwind the hardest day so far on the ride to Fort William.   
From Fort William along the banks of Loch Ness to Inverness. The most scenic day.   
  
The city of Inverness, and folk music at the Hootanannay pub. First sign pointing to John O'Groats.   
From Inverness to Helmsdale on the East Coast of the highlands.   
Helmsdale to John O'Groats, initially a very steep ride on serious roads.   
The town of Wick, only 20 miles to go and the terrain flattening out now.   
Final approach to John O'Groats, an easy ride on quiet roads.   
So you want to do this? If you want to ride Lands End to John O'Groats and are looking here for advice, first thing I'd say is think about why you really want to do it. If you want to ride the whole length of the country and be able to say you've done it, then that's the only thing that will scratch your itch. Fine. But try a ride in Cornwall first for a day or two, because nothing prepares you for those hills. But if you want to have an enjoyable couple of weeks on a bike there are probably better ways to do it. The most enjoyable rides are on minor roads chosen for interest. This probably won't result in you covering large distances in a straight line - for which the way is to ride on fast major roads. That's not much fun, and riding the length of the country involves a fair bit of that, especially in Scotland where there are few alternatives to the A roads. Secondly to do a huge linear trip you have to get to the start and get home from the finish. This involves messing about with public transport, where bikes aren't always welcome. Especially getting back from John O'Groats is not easy. I rode to Thurso and took a train, but I had to wait a day for an available bike space, and then the staff at Inverness were incredibly surly and unhelpful about booking bikes onto the train. When the train arrived the guard refused to unlock the bike van until he'd seen everyone's reservation, this was a couple of minutes before the train set off, leaving us no time to secure the bikes properly before being kicked out of the guards van into the passenger area so the train could leave. The whole experience (which cost me over 140 pounds in rail fares) made me feel annoyed and stressed. I wouldn't want to pay that amount of money again to be treated like a nuisance rather than a customer. But that's the British railway system. Gears - I thought I had enough of them, but it wasn't so. On a trip like this you will appreciate low gears. My Dawes Audax has a bottom gear somewhere in the 35 inch range, seems low enough for general touring, but on the first day in Cornwall I was pushing the bike uphill. There's something to be said for pushing up very steep hills, after all when you get below about 6kph spinning a low gear uphill then you're not going to go much slower by getting off and pushing. And after many hills, a push can be refreshing, it uses different muscles and gets you out of the saddle. On the other hand there were times when I was very tired, slogging up hills in bottom gear and my tired legs would have appreciated something a bit lower. Cornwall. Nothing prepares you for it, the uphills are exhaustingly steep, and the downhills can be scary. The average speed that a cyclist can achieve here is very low, and every mile is hard won. In Scotland there are hills, but the energy you put in climbing is repaid with better speed on the gentle downhill sections, as a result the overall average speed can still be quite good. Not so in Cornwall, where most descents are so steep and twisty that it means braking on the descents, only to stop at the bottom of another steep uphill and get off and push uphill again. That cycle repeats relentlessly all day. The lesson is, allow extra time for getting through Cornwall, 50 miles here is more exhausting than 100 miles on flat ground. Above all, test everything before you set off. Do quite a few long rides using the bike, luggage and tools that you will carry on the trip. Make sure nothing falls apart. Tension and true the wheels, tighten all the nuts and bolts, carry several spare tubes and a spare tyre. Everything you take should have already been proven. I was very nearly stranded in the middle of nowhere due to a faulty puncture repair kit that contained useless glue. Who would have expected that? One of my panniers ripped apart at the seams too. It was a couple of months old but this was the first serious use it had seen. It's a good idea to fit a rear view mirror. On those Scottish A roads with a fearsome cross-wind blowing me sideways it was reassuring to be able to glance down and see when a logging truck or line of cars was coming up behind, and to see how much room they were giving me. It certainly helped me feel more secure to know what was going on behind. |