Elliott says, "thank you very much for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.  Here's the story behind our 2018 LEJOG adventure and my new challenge for 2019 and 2020.  You can also follow us on twitter @Elliott_LEJOG.

Me and Dad wrote this together... we hope you like reading it..."

The Background to our 2018 Land's End to John o'Groats

Dad: On one of our many cycling days out with Elliott and little sister Erica, I must have mentioned to him that I'd cycled from one end of the country - the very furthest end of Cornwall - to the other - the opposite tip of the very furthest away bit of Scotland.  I remember his eyes lighting up and him looking at me saying, “I wanna do that!!?”  So I said,  “well maybe you can, maybe we can do it together and, who knows, you might even be younger than me when we do!”  (I did it with a friend aged 17, so that's going back a few years!)

Anyway, my next birthday card from Elliott was a piece of A4 paper, stuck onto a card backing, onto which he’d drawn his own version of a map of the British Isles, with Scotland coloured in blue and England in yellow (?).  We've uploaded it below.  After smiling at his hand-drawn pic of our van, I spotted a line inexorably going from the tip of a very Cornish looking peninsula up to to the opposite tip of Scotland … and a caption that just said, ‘Happy Birthday, From Elliott’.  He was clearly using stealth tactics to make his point, but it wasn’t lost on me!

I tried to put him off a few times, like on our trip to Scotland the previous summer, when we covered around 1000 miles in the van, by saying that all those miles we’d clocked up would be slightly LESS than our LEJOG route, if we did it.  Anyway, he kept up a fairly persistent dialogue of, “I REALLY want to do this...” for about a year until I finally relented and decided to give him the opportunity to be one of the youngest ever to cycle it, on his own steed, under his own steam.  After all, kids always seem to remember most the things that parents didn’t let them do!

LEJOG Training - The 'Big Ride Home'

Elliott:  Daddy invented a ride called The Big Ride Home.  At Easter last year, we got a train from home to Holyhead, at the end of Anglesey, and rode back to our house in Shropshire.  We used National Cycle Route 8 for lots of it – it goes from Holyhead to Llanidloes, then Daddy made up the last bit to home.  It was 173 miles in total.  It took 7 days to do and it was brilliant. The last day was longest, and my longest ever – it was 33 miles.  Some other cyclists from home came out to meet us, and I rode a mini peloton home, at the front for the last 9 miles. It was sooo great.  We did it sponsored and raised over £1,500 for my school and for YoungMinds.

Dad: So, I needed to see if he could ride 7 days back-to-back, and be happy on the bike and with his body, still smiling and wanting more at the end of it.  As a cycle-tourist, I knew if he could ride 7 days and be happy, with the right pacing and distance, he'd only get stronger and things get easier after that.  And that was how The Big Ride Home was born.  Elliott leading the group home at the end of his first big adventure was a wonderful experience for us both, and we both wanted more.

LEJOG -The Big One

And so, in September 2018, Elliott and I jumped in a one-way hire car to Penzance, got a taxi from there to the end of the road... and so began our ride from Land's End to John o'Groats.  It was a journey of 1135 miles, over 30 days' cycling, but it was so much more than that.  Just the two of us, it was self-planned and not sponsored, as I didn't want any pressure on him.  We decided our route and accommodation a day or two in advance, sometimes on the day, to give total flexibility depending on Elliott's energy and mood, the weather, hills and topography, and to take in the best bits of the Sustrans Network where we could.  We stayed with other cyclists wherever possible, as well as in Youth Hostels,  B&Bs and hotels.  We set up a Twitter feed so that friends, and people we met and stayed with en route, as well as Elliott's school, could follow our progress.  It was a transformative experience, to repeat the LEJOG journey with Elliott, and to watch him get stronger.  "I did 53 miles on our longest day, over Drumochter", Elliott adds in here, with a smile.  As we were lying in our bunks, awaiting the departure of the Caledonian Sleeper from Inverness back down into England, and nearer home, I asked him whether he was excited or nervous as we set off from Land's End, and if he thought he would make it all the way; he looked at me directly and replied, "I always knew I was going to do it."

Thanks for reading our story, and we'd love it if you could sponsor us, no matter how big or small, every donation counts and will help carry us up those hills.

Elliott