Wormelow Tump

Fortified by a full English we got away from Monmouth in reasonable time. The first part of the day was basically taken up with what might best be described as lumpy climbs; in other words, not long or particularly steep climbs but, after the extra ascents and mileage forced on us yesterday, I found them quite exhausting.  So, although in terms of mileage the day was not long, I found that my legs were tired.

Eleven miles out of Monmouth we passed through a one-horse town which seems to consist of a garage, a village hall and little else but had one of my favourite names on the entire trip – “Wormelow Tump”.  I noted however that for some reason best known to themselves the good Burghers of the village had dropped the “Tump” and the street signs referred to it merely as “Wormelow”.  As I cycled through, chuckling to myself at the expense of said village, it struck me that “Wormelow Trump” would be an excellent name for a Folk Band, though by the look of the few residents I passed on my way through, I felt the first concert to launch the new band, held of course in the village hall, might well prove to be a disaster and the band would be finished before it really got started.

Having been robbed on the stunning views of Tintern Abbey because of yesterday’s frustrating detours it was rather rewarding to get a pleasant view of Herford Cathedral as we crossed the bridge over the river Wye.  Hereford itself we found was a busy city traffic wise but being relatively small we soon passed through it and into country once again.

Always in the back of my mind was the fact that at the virtual end of the ride today was the major challenge of Pentre Hodre which on the previous LEJOGS I had never managed to climb and ended up walking for a good part of it.  This time, with my trusty Ribble, I was confident I had at least a more than fifty percent change of beating this monster of a hill.

Before we took on the challenge of Pentre Hodre, we stopped to fuel up at an attractive little village called Brampton Bryan.  It’s main claim to fame is an incredible and very ancient yew hedge which has to be seen to be believed.  Well worth a visit if you are ever in the area.  In 2011 and 2013 whilst we were having lunch a woman came along walking her dog.  We wondered as we nodded in acknowledgement as she passed us by if she had remembered us from the previous trips.  As we did not actually speak to her on any of the three occasions she passed us by we will never know and can only speculate.  Perhaps rumours will be circulating in the village about the strange fact that every couple of years a group of relatively young cyclists led by a strange grey-haired old man might be the beginnings of some kind of esoteric movement.  Perhaps we might even make it onto the agenda of the local parish council.

Well we could linger no more and could not put of the major challenge of the day and so we set off towards the dreaded Pentre Hodre.  So far, Scott had managed the whole day without bike issues, would this hill be the undoing of man and machine?  You will have to see next time I publish my blog.

No Tintern Abbey, denied.

Crossing the bridge into Wales was fine this time round.  Back in 2015 we were plagued with a gusting side wind which left me feeling very unsafe, so I dismounted and walked across. This time it was a steady head wind which made the going tough but for me manageable.  As I pushed into this headwind it felt a bit like riding with your brakes on and left me wishing for the conditions on the first time I crossed the bridge, during LEJOG 1, in completely calm weather where I zipped across at twenty miles per hour, thus exceeding the speed limit of fifteen miles per hour.

After the stink and potential dangers of the road to Avonmouth I was looking forward to the long descent down the Wye Valley passed Tintern Abbey and the gentle climb up to Monmouth where we were due to stay for the night.  I like this part of the Wye valley with the picturesque ruined Abbey and the winding river with its wooded banks.  I have come this way at least four times, twice by bike and twice by canoe.  This simple pleasure however was not to be this trip.

From the bridge we climbed for a mile or so in order to get on the right road.  On reaching the turn off we discovered a sign which indicated that the road ahead was closed.  We ignored it for the simple reason that most of the time you can get around road works, at the worst you have to shoulder your bike and walk round the obstacle, remount and off you go on your merry way.  A few miles up the road we came across a similar sign telling us the road ahead was closed.  We didn’t pay it much attention and just pressed on in the hope of circumnavigating whatever was in the way.  After a couple more road ahead signs, we came upon one which informed us that the road was closed to cyclists and pedestrians.  We stopped and held a council of war.  This sign seemed a bit too specific to be ignored.  We decided that it would be foolish to push our luck any further and that we needed to find an alternative route around the obstacle, whatever that might be (we shall never know).

At the first opportunity we turned left up a very narrow country lane hoping that it would take us in roughly the right direction.  The Garmin was of no use as we were of the route programmed into it.  The map on the phones, when we could get a signal, wasn’t very helpful and so we ended up following our noses in the hope that we would eventually come across a signpost which would point us the right way.  We cycled on mile after mile, mostly climbing and not being sure if we were getting neared to Monmouth or further away.  Painful legs, anxious minds.

Eventually we came across a turning onto a main road and the hoped-for sign appeared like a beacon of hope before our eyes.  The good news was that this road was the road to Monmouth, the bad news was that it was another eight or so miles.  Fortunately, after all that climbing, much of the final miles entailed fast descents as Monmouth sits beside the river Wye and thus in the deepest part of the Wye Valley.

Eventually arrived at our destination around 7.30pm after eleven hours on the road; tough, to put it mildly. However, the hotel where we were booked in for the night was superb and a steak meal and a couple of pints of Guinness revived me no end.  Getting the Ribble up to the room to charge the battery was easy as none of the staff could observe what we were up to.

Well today’s little excursion put a goodly number of extra miles on the day’s riding.

Col de bâtard

Withy Cottages might have been charming and comfortable but for some reason or other I did not sleep very well.  Awaking in the early hours, I felt quite anxious about the day’s ride.  I couldn’t really put my finger on the cause of my angst.  Perhaps it was the thought of the rainy forecast for today; cycling in the rain is never pleasant and can be slippery and dangerous.  Perhaps it was the thought of having to navigate the road to Avonmouth Docks just prior to crossing the Avon into Wales, a dangerous and unpleasant few miles.

The upshot was that I got up at 6.20am and wandered outside the cottage to discover that it had indeed rained overnight but had now stopped.  I therefore lived in hopes that the rain had passed over and that would be the end of it for the day.  A vain hope as it turned out, for after breakfast the rain came down again quite heavily, so we were forced to put on our wet weather clothing and make the most of it.  These conditions made the first part of the morning quite miserable and the heavy rain continued for the best part of an hour but then gradually the rain stopped and the skies cleared and brightened.  The rest of the day turned out to be a mix of sunny intervals and scattered showers but no more significant heavy rainfall.

I had remembered three significantly difficult ascents on LEJOG, one of which, Broadhembery, was out of the way, leaving two to go, one in Shropshire and the other in Scotland.  I had totally forgotten that there was a fourth.  This climb is quite a bitch and comes just outside Wells on the Old Bristol Road.  As we turned onto it, I suddenly remembered what was coming and I switched on the trusty motor.  This undoubtably assisted me but, as with Broadhembery, I still had to put in a considerable amount of effort myself to reach the top.  So difficult was this climb that I decided to name it “Col de Bastard”.  I suggested the name to the rest of the team when we reassembled at the top and they concurred, feeling that such a title did in fact catch what we were all feeling about the hill which was now, thank goodness, behind us. Well I can charge the battery on my bike in preparation for tomorrow’s major climb, I just hope my legs will also have recovered enough.  Today “Col de Bastard”, tomorrow “Penta Hodre”, or as some call it, “The Wall”

For the first part of the fourth day the team was complete but this was, sadly, not to last.  As we got to the outskirts of Bristol Scott was again taken out, this time with two punctures. We discovered this when he failed to catch us up on the outskirts of the city and Ollie went back to find him.  He was out of innertubes. Ollie attempted in vain to fix the second puncture and so various phone calls ensued.  Scott rang his parents, who live in Bristol, and they came and collected him.  It was decided that Lizzie, Adam and I would push on to the Avonmouth Roundabout and wait for Ollie to catch us up there. We didn’t have very long to wait sitting on a grass verge by the side of the very busy main road before Ollie came haring along at great speed.  We decided that due to the large number of lorries and other heavy goods vehicles thundering along to the docks at Avonmouth it would be sensible to try to stick together as much as possible.  There was a bit of respite every now and then on this road with the occasional bike path but they were few and far between.  However, with lungs full of diesel fumes and somewhat frayed nerves we eventually made it to second lunch at Avonmouth Services.  After the stresses, both physical and psychological, of the day thus far, I was looking forward to a peaceful descent past Tintern Abbey and along the Wye valley to Monmouth once we had navigated the Avon Bridge.  What could possibly go wrong?  Well you will find out in the next blog!

Little Striped Bastards

There are many challenges on the road for the enthusiastic cyclist: steep hills, sharp descents, cross winds, head winds, rain, excessive heat, etc, etc.  To some extent one can prepare for these by adequate training, having the right type of bike, looking after said bike, having the right clothing, eating and drinking enough of the right kind of thing and so on.  Some things are harder, sometimes impossible, to anticipate and so require the ability to improvise and make on the spot decision about the best way to proceed.  Road closures and road works fall into this category.  Also, wasps!

Now I suppose it could be argued that each day we could have looked at the route and searched the internet for signs of road closures but we didn’t and we nearly came unstuck on the way to second lunch on the third day.  We were planning to eat in a large grassy area at the back of the Half Moon pub, Stoke St Mary.  However, every which way we went we hit diversions and road works.  The support vehicles made several runs at the target seeing it in the distance but not being able to get to it.  Eventually, after much stress and just a tad of bad language, we all managed to arrive at the right spot.

The weather was still extremely hot and so I decided to supplement my calorie intake gained from the bread rolls provided by Julia and Mary, with a pint of bitter shandy obtained from the pub.  Having procured my desired drink, I headed out of the bar and back to the others: instantly the little yellow and black bastards put in an appearance.  My daughter Naomi once asked her mother, “why did God invent wasps?”  She received the reply, “I don’t know, ask your father, he’s the Theologian”.  To which Naomi retorted, “He won’t know”.  A good question from my daughter which received a reasonable reply from her mother but left me feeling that perhaps I was something of an inadequate theologian.  I don’t know why God invented wasps but as far as I am concerned, He should have left this particular idea at the planning stage.

Now I should explain.  I was cycling across Wimbledon Common one day and one of the little buggers flew in my mouth and stung me.  I fell off my bike whilst trying to spit the little brat out and shortly after remounting started to feel extremely ill and had broken out in a rash from head to toe.  I managed to make it to the nearest A & E and passed out as I was explaining what had happen.  When I awoke, I discovered that I had been pumped full of anti-histamines and adrenaline intravenously.  I have carried an EpiPen ever since.  So, the attention I received that afternoon, as I quaffed my pint, was not welcome and somewhat anxiety provoking.  However, stating the bleeding obvious, I survived.  If I had not you wouldn’t be reading this blog.

Refreshed from second lunch, we headed off to our final destination for the day, “Withy Cottages”, just outside Langport.  Again, we had some difficulty finding them and went to the wrong cottage at the first attempt.  When we found the right ones, they turned out to be quaint and charming.  Ollie did some bike maintenance on all the bikes and the Julia and Mary cooked a delicious chicken curry for the team and a veggie curry for Adam.

Into Wales tomorrow, it’s bound to rain!  Oh, great the weather forecast confirmed that it would.  Well I guess that will suit Scott at least.

Pat Yourself on the Back When Appropriate

Day three started with a full English Breakfast and then the successful removal, undetected, of my bike from our bedroom to join the other bikes in the road outside the B&B.  If memory serves Scott, who can move a lot quicker and is stronger than I, undertook to move the bike downstairs.  Once it was with the other bikes, I assumed a, “nothing to see here” mode, hoping that the owner of the B&B wouldn’t notice there was one more bike out the front of his emporium than he had, the night previously, locked up in a garage round the back.

There is little doubt that Moretonhampstead is a pretty little Devonshire town nestling as it does in the folded hills that surround it and which make up part of the charm of Dartmoor.  I have visited it on many occasions in the past when on holiday in Devon and at one time stayed with the local Baptist Minister who was a friend from my college days at LBC.  Spending a couple of days with him gave me a chance to have a good look round.  Being a town dweller for most of my life and used to being surrounded by a fairly vibrant night life, Moretonhampstead seemed to more or less die after about 6pm.  A few pubs stayed open but everything else shut down.  Curiosity got the better of me and so I asked my clerical friend what people did for entertainment in the evening if they didn’t want to go to the pub.  His answer was succinct, to put it mildly, and somewhat disturbingly, “incest!”

Chuckling to myself about this conversation with my friend all those years ago, I wondered what effect all this inbreeding might have had on the dwellers of Moretonhampstead.  Presumably it would involve a high risk of intellectual impairment. Whist I mused on such matters I hit the first challenge of the day which put an end abrupt end to my somewhat Freudian fantasy.  I rounded a corner on the outskirts of town, just thinking to myself that as the place I was leaving did not seem to be peopled by bumbling village idiots, perhaps the good folk of Moretonhampstead had found other evening distractions, when the road rose up before me in a manner so alarmingly steep that I ground to a halt.  Quickly, I switched the bike into rocket mode and hit the pedals.  Up I went even managing to catch up with and in some cases overtake the others.  We grouped up at the top of this long and arduous ascent.  “What goes up must come down”, as the old saying goes and this was certainly true that morning.  From the brow of the hill where we all met up there was a long and extremely fast descent towards Exeter.  The daredevils amongst us took off at what seemed to me a near suicidal pace.  I must confess that anything over twenty-five miles an hour feels extremely dangerous to me and causes me to apply the brakes.  I also tend to feel a little resentful about having sweated my way up a long climb to then descend knowing that I will only have to climb again sooner or later.

We negotiated our way through the city of Exeter quite quickly as it is not particularly large as cities go, stopping for lunch in the car park of the same pub we had used on previous rides.  The pre-lunch riding was more or less flat, easy and pleasant going.  The only snag was Adam managed to get lost which initiated frantic phone calls to him to get him back on track.

Quite soon after first lunch we encountered the biggest challenge of the day for man and bike, Broadhembury Hill, a beast of a climb.  With the bike on rocket mode, putting out 250 watts, it was still hard work to make it to the top. I have never been able to ride up the entirety of this climb before and climbing it that day featured as a major achievement as far as I was concerned and I was very pleased with myself.  I think it is very important, when you finally manage to succeed in a mastering a difficult challenge, whatever that may be, to pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself in much the same way that you would congratulate a friend on a fine achievement.

Scott had more problems with his bike earlier in the day which necessitated another trip to a bike repair shop. He joined the ride at the top of Broadhembury Hill and had to put up with some blokey jibes about how he had managed to miss the major climbing challenge of the day.  Once rested we pressed on only to find another challenge later in the afternoon which none of us could have predicted.

Four Legged Danger Round Every Bend

I used the motor on my bike quite a bit during today’s ride due to the endless hills.  I was still trying to work out just how to use the assist so that I would not run the battery completely flat and be left peddling a bike that was, unassisted, heavier than my old racing bike.  This would have been counterproductive to say the least.  I found that if I ran the motor on first assist, I could easily keep up with the others on the flat.  This became particularly important when it came to negotiating the endless traffic light systems going out of Exeter where we really needed to stay together.  I also found that in first mode I could do most of the climbs and I could use the second mode or the third and aptly named, “rocket mode”, on the steepest hills. This experiment with the motor was extremely successful as the battery just about lasted the entire day.  It was however, in terms of mileage, a short day and I wondered about the longer days which lay ahead.

The real drag of a climb came after second lunch and involved climbing up to Princetown in the heart of Dartmoor.  However, with my trusty steed on “Rocket Mode” I got up this climb much quicker and enjoyed the experience much more than on the previous two times I have ridden it.

As on the previous two LEJOGs the weather on day two was excellent for those who could take the heat and, once more, we got to see Dartmoor at its best.  Any of you reading this blog who have seen Dartmoor in sunshine will know that its stark beauty is ravishing.  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a combination of beautiful countryside and sunshine raises the spirit. This no doubt has a physiological as well as a psychological effect on human perception.  Sunlight on the whole is good for you, unless it is too strong and ends up burning your skin, providing as it does much needed vitamin D.  But, expose yourself to its extremes without sun block and you run the risk of skin cancer.  Beautiful countryside is another matter.  It is questionable that you can get too much of it unless it is suddenly obliterated as the mist descends or it start suddenly raining as is often to case on Dartmoor.  Under such circumstances the beauty is masked and the whole experience can take on quite a sinister aspect.  It is as if one has gone from the idyll of Eden and been viciously cast back into pre-creation chaos.  Not a pleasant experience as we were to find out much later in our fourteen-day ride.

On that balmy, sunny day, when Dartmoor was showing off her resplendent beauty, other dangers lurked beside the road.  Danger on four legs to be precise. I had a brush with a couple of suicidal sheep who suddenly decided to run out in front of me at the last moment as I was about to pass them by.  Of course, it is just possible that this was a desperate attempt by the woolly mafia to unseat an intruder on their patch.  I started to see the possibility of myself crashing to the deck and being set upon by a couple of vicious rams who would do both me and my bike some serious damage.  Now reader, you might think at this point that I was seriously deluded, perhaps too much sun, even paranoid and in need of professional help, but as Adam once said, “just because I am paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after me!”

Well you will be pleased to hear that I made it to Moretonhampstead in one piece and the need to have a hearty evening meal drove such demented thoughts as those expressed above from my mind.  However, before we could eat, we had the business of getting the bike up to our bedroom.  Julia, who was clearly racked with guilt concerning the necessity for subterfuge, was muttering things about the lovely decor of the B and B and what a nice man it was who owned it.  Well to cut a long story short we got the bike upstairs and on charge without being spotted.  The B and B at Moretonhampstead certainly was without doubt wonderful and worlds away from the Back Packers Hostel where we stayed on the last two LEJOGs.  No ageing, depressed hippies and feral cats to contend with this time round.  And Julia was right, the owner of the B and B was a sweetie.    We were booked into an Italian restaurant for our evening meal. Real Italian food in the middle of Dartmoor, what a welcomed find. Scott was much better by the evening and joined us for the meal which was a relief for me as I had been really worried about him earlier in the day.

Reasons to Ride

Day two started with a good, tasty and filling full English breakfast, excellent fuel to get us to first lunch.

Now having got my e-bike up to the bedroom the evening before in a covert manner worthy of any secret service, as described in the last edition of my blog, we had to reverse the process and, with it now fully charged, get and it back downstairs unobserved and out of the pub.  This we did successfully.  I couldn’t help thinking about what might be the worst outcome if we had been caught – presumably a bollocking from the Publican with the words, “never darken the door of my pub again!”  To which I would readily reply, “well if you think I’m doing this bloody ride again and need a night in your pub, you are sorely mistaken!”  Actually, in reality, I would probably profusely apologise stopping short of actually grovelling.

Last time we set off from the Bugle Inn back in 2015, despite having a Garmin, we went in completely the wrong direction and had to retrace our steps to get back on course.  This time we hit the trail in the right direction first time.  As we set off my mind drifted back to the absurd fantasies of stage wins and yellow jerseys which accompanied the last few miles of yesterday’s ride.  Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there is any harm in such illusions as long as you know that is what they are.  However, knowing what lay ahead, I decided that it would be best to rest on my imaginary laurels and take a more pragmatic approach to the day’s ride.  I knew from past experience that it would be a tough day.  This led me to thinking about why I love riding my bike, particularly this new one, and why I put myself through the kind of endurance test which LEJOG, aided or unaided, certainly is.  My conclusion was as follows –

I feel that long distance cycling can be compared with peeling an onion in order to get from the outside layers to the sweet centre.  The outer layer, so to speak, involves attempting to address a purely practical matter, i.e. how to raise much needed funds for various enterprises, be they Church or a charity.  What got me back on my bike was doing my bit to help raise £125,000 to put a new roof on the Church of the Good Shepherd, Tadworth.  The initial success of this first sponsored ride left me with the realisation that, if I didn’t tap the same group of people for money too often, then it was a good way of raising funds.  All in all, over the years since that first ride, sometimes on my own, more often with a team, we have raised somewhere in the region of £30,000.

The second layer could be described as being caught up with a psychological need; the need to do something “heroic”.  I think this is a very basic, primeval need in human beings and in a very diverse world different folk try to fulfil it in diverse ways.  Undertaking long and arduous cycle rides requires dedication, focus, a high level of physical and mental fitness and thus comes at a high price to the individual.  Much of my working life, whilst not divested of a rather different form of heroism, has not involved the brute physicality of long distant riding.  I sometimes think I have done life arse about face.  Most people do the physical challenges when they are young, not when they are pushing seventy and beyond.  But what the hell, who wants to be conventional.

The last layer is, I would suggest more spiritual.  It involves the shear joy, particularly on the Ribble, of belting round country lanes, through wonderful scenery.  That has for me a profound effect on my soul.  But at the very heart of the activity, the sweet centre, I feel was wonderfully summed up by Eric Liddell, the Olympic athlete, who said, “when I run, I feel God’s pleasure”.  Well when I ride, particularly when I ride fast, it seems to me I too feel God’s pleasure.

As to the first part of the second day’s ride, it was tough. The weather was hot, which some of us found OK but Scot ended up struggling.  As the day wore on and the temperature rocketed the ride as far as he was concerned became unmanageable as he is not good with heat.  To add insult to injury, before first lunch, he picked up a puncture and Ollie rode back to assist him.  He staggered into first lunch well behind everyone else and looked dreadful. I suggested that he sat out the next leg of the day’s ride. As it turned out he sat out the rest of the day which I must say I think was quite sensible.  So, first lunch done, Scott took to one of the back-up vehicles and the rest of the team pressed on knowing that the major climb of the day lay ahead of us just after second lunch – the dreaded climb up to Princetown.

A Covert Operation

Whilst the team set of from second lunch, Scott had waited for Mary to take him to the nearest bike repair shop.  As it turned out, Scott’s mechanical problems with the pedals were easily fixed and he did not in fact miss much of the first day’s ride, which was good, and our hope was that all problems with the new and untried bike were now over.  This was, as you will hear in later blogs, a false hope indeed.

As well as many short sharp hills during our route through Cornwall there were two particularly long steep ascents at the end of the day.  One was on the way into St Austell and the other on the way out of St Austell up to the Bugle Inn where we were booked in for the night. Now I know that LEJOG is not a race but, and this is a big but, in my mind, it is and the main contender to be seen off was Ollie. I overtook him on several climbs but on a couple of the nasty ascents he caught me up despite the fact that I had 250 watts of power available at the flick of a switch in my back wheel before I even started adding any wattage of my own.  Who was I trying to kid, I was never going to get the better of the Chiselled Whippet?  Well an old man can dream, can’t he? When I flicked the switch, the battery indicator was on red, meaning I had somewhere in the region of 25% battery left.  On the last climb of the day, with a little (considerable) help from my back-wheel friend I gradually over took all the other members of the team.  This gave me a considerable (ridiculous) amount of satisfaction.  However, my nemesis, Garrett Junior, hove into view; “bugger”, I thought.  Then for some, to my mind inexplicable reason, he pulled back.  Had the team car ordered him back?  This isn’t the Tour De France you prat!  The upshot of this strange move on his part was that, much to my surprise, not to mention the surprise of the back-up team, I rolled into the Bugle Inn car park first.  So, at least in my fantasy world, a stage win and the yellow jersey.  Well make the most of it Mick, it won’t be happening again.

Ok, back in the real world, the reason why Ollie pulled back on that final climb was to make sure the rest of the team were ok.  He may not have been ordered back by any imagined team boss but he certainly played the part of a dedicated domestique that first day whilst yours truly indulged in attempting to inflate his 70-year-old ego.  Good on you Ollie, I tip my cycling helmet to you and admit that from a moral perspective you are the better man.

When Adam rolled in, he announced that this first day’s ride was the longest he had ever done thus far in his cycling career.  Well my son (of whom I am really proud) there will be longer rides on this trip before we eventually roll into John O’ Groats

After everyone arrived, we sat in the pub garden and downed a pint of protein drink to revitalise our muscles.  I also needed to recharge that battery on my Ribble in preparation for the hills we would encounter on day two.  My thought was to ask the Publican if I could take the bike up to our room and plug it in there or, if he didn’t like that suggestion, ask where I could plug it in.  Julia had other ideas. Basically, what she had in mind was a covert operation whereby the bike would be smuggled upstairs without involving the Publican.  So, a surveillance operation, worthy of MI5 or the CIA was put in motion and when it was confirmed that the Publican was out of sight of the stairs which led to our bedroom, the bike was duly taken up, Julia on the front wheel and me on the rear.  Now I must confess that such naughtiness did give me a bit of an adrenaline rush.

The bike plugged in, we headed for the bar where we joined the rest of the team for a meal.  We then listened to a tolerably good Tribute Glam Rock band before heading to bed “perchance to dream”.

Steep Hills and Mechanicals

After a fairly good night’s sleep I awoke at around 6.30am I found the sun was shining; “long may it continue”, I thought to myself as I fuelled up with a hearty breakfast.  The previous two times we have ridden LEJOG it rained when we reached Lands End and we had to hang around until it stopped, not wishing to get soaked before we had even mounted our bikes.  This time it didn’t rain and as far as I was concerned it was an ideal day for cycling, a good start for the first day. There would be trials and tribulations ahead but at least it seemed that the weather was on our side.

Curiosity got the better of Ollie and he asked if he could have a go on my Ribble before we set of.  He sped round the carpark until I told him to stop wasting my battery power as I was probably going to need as much of it as possible with the tough Cornish hills which we would encounter during the first day’s ride.
Thus it proved to be the case, for there was a lot of tough climbing, particularly in the afternoon. I didn’t use the e-bike motor much in the first part of the day but as the ride progressed, I relied on it more and more.  Ollie, who I think was worried that I would beat him up the hills due to the gain facility on my bike, the potential of which he had experienced in the car park at Land’s End, seemed determined that this should not come to pass.  So, on one the steep climbs, the ascent up from King Henry’s Ferry, when I shot past everyone and headed up the incline he came after me.  I made the mistake of easing off towards the top of the climb and he saw his moment to attack and passed me reaching the top first.  “Bugger!”, I thought quietly to myself.  That aside, I must say that using the motor, when I felt it necessary, made the day’s ride much more enjoyable than on previous trips, as it enabled me to put in much more effort myself, effort that made me feel I was really getting somewhere.  The Ribble Company claimed that their gain bikes “enhance your ride, not dominate it” and in my experience that is completely true. Previously I had employed the “Sam Goddard method of hill climbing”, which involved getting in a very low gear and going as slowly as possible. This did indeed enable me to climb steep ascents very slowly but, with the gain bike, being able to shoot up them at speed had an enormously good psychological effect, even if the “chiselled Whippet” was still able to beat me on occasions. Best £3,000 Julia ever spent on me. It definitely ranks alongside my newest Martin guitar for pure pleasure per pound.

Scott, it transpired as the trip unfolded, was to be beset with many trials and tribulations.  The first two occurring on the first day.  Just after starting out from the Land’s End car park, somehow or other, his chain managed to wrap itself around itself in a kind of Gorgon’s Knot.  Fortunately, a couple of guys in a van came along and stopped to assist him.  They had a tool which released the chain enabling him to continue, at least for a bit.  At second lunch, we discovered that one of his pedals was seriously malfunctioning which meant that Mary had to take him off to a cycle repair shop whilst the rest of us pushed on without him.  He was somewhat philosophical about this and said that he had done the ride before, if it had been the first time, he would have been angrier.  I was quite angry on his behalf as he was riding a brand-new bike, a good make, and something like that should not have happened.  Of course, mechanical problems can beset even the most experienced rider and it was fortunate that we started the ride on a Saturday when the cycle repair shops were open.  He was able to get the pedal problem fixed and that enabled him to join us again for the last part of the day’s ride.  More about that in the next blog.

Here We Go Again!

Apologies for the fact that all has gone quiet on the blog front for the last few weeks but I am pleased to say I am once more up and running.  The reason for the break is the fact that I was riding LEJOG for the third time during late July and early August.  The successful completion of LEJOG 3 presents me with a problem with regard to the format of my blog and I feel compelled to change tack and incorporate this recent journey and thoughts about it into my writing.  So, with that in mind, here goes.

On December 7^th, 2018, I turned 70.  This I felt called for a celebration and so a party was organised by Julia and Jo and the music was provided by the “Rooftops” with guest spots by your truly, my son Adam and the hit of the night my Grandson Noah along with other family acting as back up singers.  Alongside plans for the party, plans to ride LEJOG again had begun to ferment and I was keen to do this ride one more time and raise money for Cancer Research a charity very close to my heart in the light of my own diagnosis of prostate cancer three years previously.  By the time of the party the team had already been formed: myself, Ollie Garrett, Lizzie Garrett, Scott Negus and Adam Elfred.  The support team would consist of Julia and Mary Garrett.  I introduced them to the party goers during my short speech and asked the folk present to sponsor us and thus help to defeat this “bastard disease”,

As 2019 began and the excesses of Christmas and New Year faded, training began in earnest.  Knowing how difficult and demanding this ride is and having reached my 7^th decade I felt that it would be legitimate to get a bike which would offer me a little extra assistance and so, in March of this year, the team headed off to the Bike Show at the Excel Centre to look at gain bikes. Having tried a couple and finding them much of a muchness I settled on a Ribble full carbon model with top end quality gears, wheels and disc brakes.  There was a bit of a delay in the bike arriving but when it did and I tried it out on the road I was well pleased with it.

Training took on two forms: some on my newly acquired Ribble, either alone or with one of the team members, and the rest on my turbo trainer.  Once the cycle racing season got underway, I dragged the trainer out of the undercroft at Gadbrook and set it up in front of the TV.  I then spent three or four hours a day riding with the pros in the various Grand Tours – well in my head I was in the peloton.  Through this effort I lost around half a stone in weight and considerably strengthened my legs.  Physically I was ready for the off as the start date approached.  Psychologically, I was more or less sure I could do the ride again particularly with the extra help my new bike would give me when required.  In the light of this I set myself a new target – to ride up all the hills without having to get off and walk my bike up some of the worst bits of the steepest climbs.  I intended to ride as much as possible unaided and then use the assist element of the bike on the most vicious inclines or when my legs got tired at the end of the day so that I could keep up with the others and not lag too far behind.

I know that many readers enjoyed and appreciated Julia’s daily blog whilst the ride was on, what follows is my personal account of what turned out to be a very gruelling LEJOG which for various reasons proved much tougher for the whole team than the previous two rides.

Diary for Friday 26th: We were up at 7.30am and on the road by 8.40. Quite a good journey down to Cornwall apart from the normal hold up around Stonehenge on the A303. We had lunch at our favourite American style dinner. We arrived at the Youth Hostel at St Just at around 6pm. Such a beautiful spot to watch the sun go down. We have not stayed at this hostel before but our room and the facilities were excellent. We had lasagne for supper, a couple of beers and a planning meeting to think about the day ahead of us as we started this momentous journey, the third time for two of the team, myself and Ollie. There was a nasty moment when Julia got an email saying that our accommodation for Sunday night had been cancelled. This, it turned out was due to us renewing our credit card recently. Fortunately, the situation was rescued by Julia over the phone and so we have a bed for Sunday night, which was a relief.

And so, the adventure proper starts tomorrow.