Lands End to JohnO'Groats, by Alex & Rob

Alexander Gabb is raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support

Participants: Rob and Alex

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Lands End to John O'Groats · 12 September 2008

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Story

Thanks for visiting our Le Jog page,

At 9am Saturday 20th September 2008, we will start our Lands End to John O'Groats (leJog) cycle ride from the car park at Lands End in Cornwall, riding with the prevailing winds (we hope) to the top of Scotland.

For those of you interested in (or even excited by!) figures its a total distance of 880 miles, which we plan to cover in 8 days. Thats 100+ miles a day. More stats to follow after the ride!

Our route will take us from the western tip of Cornwall, over to Exeter, up over Dartmoor and on to Bristol. Crossing the Severn Bridge we will ride up the Wye Valley, through Shropshire, on up through Lancaster and Kendal to Carlisle, where we head up towards Dumfries and Kilmarnock to Oban, then Fort William, for a brief spin along Loch Ness and up to the finish.

Our enjoyable trip through this green and pleasant land will more than likely be accompanied by juggernauts, daunting hills, driving rain, aching legs and aching backs, not to mention the state of our back sides. But you let us worry about that!

If you can however spare a moment, and some pennies we would be very grateful. We look forward to your words of encouragement (or abuse knowing some of you) on the donations page.

Thanks again,

Rob and Alex.

Important Clause; Alex and Rob take no responsibilty for getting lost and taking slightly longer (or shorter) to complete the ride than as stated above.

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TRIP UPDATES

Day 1. Saturday. Beautiful sunrise from lands end, started at 8.30am, clear warm day but Cornwall hilly as expected. Finished just past Tavistock in higher longford campsite on edge of Dartmoor. 95.42 miles covered on day 1.

Day 2. Sunday. Start 8.42am, a clear day again. Devon was very hilly again, but covered 112 miles to get home for a night in Bristol.

Day 3. Monday. 7am rise again for a 8.20am start, headwind ruled the day which made it a lot harder to make progress, but we covered 113.59 miles to get past Shrewsbury.

Day 4. Tuesday. Terrain better than day 3 but cold and wet for a couple of hours in the morning. A headwind again today made it hard to progress but that aside we went from Shrewsbury up through Lancaster and up the A6 to Kendal, where we're camping tonight. 117 miles but more to do tomorrow. Plenty of deep heat for Alex tonight, Rob again is having a whisky and curing himself then and there of any ills!

Day 5. Wednesday. We started the climb from Kendal with a big climb over sharp fell, which we ground and stopped briefly at the top, then down the other side rather dangerously taking video clips as we hit 25-30 mph. A head wind was still annoying us and continued through the morning but finally stopped as we turned west at Longtown, on to Gretna where we hit Scotland and on to Arran for lunch. Then on the A75 and A76 through Dumfries up to Kilmarnock, stopping in Troon to camp. It was a gruelling day with just short of 10 hours in the saddle but we knocked off a massive 138.44 miles which we were both seriously happy with, if a little more sore.

Day 6 was tough, another long distance covered, from kilmarnock over to Largs and onto the ferry to Dunoon. Nice and warm in the cabin room on the ferry so it made it tough to get going again. And so on to Glen Coe via Inveraray. A tough day but covered 136.41 miles so camp was a welcome relief. Day 7 started well from Glen Coe, the scenery was again breathtaking and after an hour or so, and for the first time on the trip a continual tail wind kicked in to help us on our way. Unfortunately 55 miles in, riding along Loch Ness Alex's rear tire blew out. It was ripped right through so Rob had to ride the 8 miles in to Drumnadrochit to the lunch stop to summon the Support Team and a spare tire. No sightings of Nessie but we did look! From Drumnadrochit and lunch we had the biggest hill of the trip to tackle, a 1 in 15 for 3/4s of a mile. A nice little challenge! Up the A833 with amazing views into the valley and the A9 bridge in the distance we dropped into Beauly and Dingwall, onto the B9176 to Bonar Bridge where we stayed for the night. 124,43 miles covered. Day 8 From Bonar Bridge we moved along Loch Naver and up to Bettyhill, a horrible mornings' weather with driving rain that soaked us to the core. We stopped for shelter in a church, but had to get going again as we were so cold. But the end was in sight, after a bit of pasta (again!) and some dry clothes, the afternoon brightened up to warm sunshine, and with a tail wind, we soon zipped along the coast to our final goal, John O'Groats. After 95.98 miles we had made it!! 933 miles in total, averaging 116.7 miles a day for 7 and a half days - not too bad! Proud and happy to have finished we even celebrated with a glass of champagne. A suitable drink for such a challenge we thought! A huge thank you to all of you who sponsored us, we very much appreciated your support, and it was fantastic to know that our die hard supporters were following our progress every step of the way. Naturally Rob and I are thinking about planning our next trip, but I for one will be waiting until the bum feels normal again, I'm thinking something involving a land rover for transport next time! Click on the photos link to see the pics!

Donation summary

Total
£1,060.00
+ £288.37 Gift Aid
Online
£1,060.00
Offline
£0.00

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