The idea came about after 3 friends from a local mountain bike group all had dreams of an ultimate challenge on their bucket (things to-do) list. And that was to cycle 1050 miles from Land’s End in Cornwall to John O'Groats in Scotland (known as LEJOG) – we’ve not planned the most direct or flattest route as we wanted to take in a few special sights and National Parks on the way (874 miles is the shortest cycle route published). So after a lot of talk and not much action, we finally decided around the Christmas of 2017 that 2018 was the year to do it.

Though we are used to hard days out mountain biking, this was going to be a road ride over 12 days averaging 85 miles per day, we have some experience of road riding but not like this, as we started to do the route planning it started to become obvious that this was going to be a huge challenge. Some days we were going to be cycling over 100 miles, with lots of hills to climb along the way (around 48000 ft of them) - Devon and Cornwall are notoriously hilly whereas Scotland is surprisingly flatter.

We decided June 23rd would be the day we set off, hopefully benefitting from the long days and  warmer, drier weather. With the time booked off and the route planned, the accommodation and transportation sorted all we have to do is some training…..

We are riding unsupported, carrying all our kit on the bikes and have fully funded the adventure ourselves. Just to make it a little "tougher” we are adding another couple of hundred miles riding back to Inverness to catch the Sleeper Train to London and then riding home from there to Swindon.....

We then had the idea if we are going to do this let's put our efforts to good use and try and raise some money for a local charity. CALM (Children's Cancer and Leukaemia Movement) aims to improve the quality of life for both the children going through treatment, and the parents and families during and after treatment. CALM provides support to families to cope with physical, emotional and often financial strain. So we want to raise as much as we can for this great charity. Graham, Gary and Michael hope you can kindly donate to help a really good cause.