BIG Sponsor from Rowes Honda

This is Andrew Chance, (very handsome chap!) Sales Manager at Rowes Honda, Hayle. We had a meeting with him on Friday morning and he blew us away with the news of just how generous and supportive Rowes Honda are going to be!

They have agreed to donate £200.00 PLUS t-shirts, cycling tops, overshoes, possible accommodation, and a VERY nice car to drive us home from Land's End when we finish! We love you Rowes Honda!

And relax...

Since 9am it has rained. And rained. And rained.

It has been a very productive day - Richard visited the Marie Curie office in Truro this morning and collected t-shirts that are now with Paul at Mackrelbus Design. He's designing a logo & text so we can tell the world what we're doing. We'll post it if we can.

Then this afternoon it was time to wind down. Fiona Lockhart, a fabulous massage therapist, offered a while ago to come and treat us both before and after the event. Today was before, and it was just a little bit WOW! We are now just floating gently round the house with a pleasant glow about us!

As Fiona said - it's a horrible day outside, so stay in and have some TLC! Relax...

A little light relief!

Light relief in more ways than one - this stuff is fab! It deserves a blog all of it's own.

Sport Relief

We sat down on Thursday evening unsure as to whether or not we wanted to spend an hour watching seven celebrities doing in four days what we will be attempting over two weeks.

We are so glad we did! The scenery during the section through Scotland was spectacular! As far as going over Glen Coe, their route matched ours.

There are a couple of points we'd like to make to reassure our supporters: 1. We will not be cycling at night, 2. We will not continue if the temperature falls so low we get icicles on our chins & noses!, 3. We are both cycling the whole distance, not taking turns!

Well done to those taking part in that, even Jimmy Carr who admitted he had been a bit of an arse at the end of his stint! It was a seriously good effort, their average speed was about 13mph, (we're managing between 10.5 and 12mph on our training rides) given the lack of sleep and the conditions that was seriously good.

We won't be raising £1,000,000, but if we can hit our target of £2,000 we'll be very chuffed!

Donations!

The Just Giving box on the right hand side of the screen (please click on the donate button to go to our Just Giving site and donate!) does not tell the whole story of the amount we are raising. We have also received cash donations from friends, colleagues, and some of Joules' patients. All of these are being totted up continually and an official Marie Curie sponsor form filled in so the Gift Aid (another 18%) can be claimed from the government. A HUGE thanks to all those who have donated so far.

We have also contacted a number of businesses with which we have connections, or who have strong connections with Cornwall. The letters have only started going out this week and already we have had a responce - Swann-Morton of Sheffield, suppliers of surgical blades used by Joules since she set up practice eleven years ago, have kindly donated £50! Thank you very much to them! As promised a link to their web site is now on ours - see the list of links in the right hand column of this page.

As for the ride, we're getting more excited as the days pass and can't wait to be on our way!

The Route!

Sorry, this is only descriptive for now, but I'm sure you'll be able to follow it on a map if you have a road atlas. I am researching ways of publishing a map of the route, I may need to do it somewhere else and provide a link. We'll see...

Any way, the route:

We will be starting at John O'Groats, although we want to take in Duncansby Head, as this is actually the farthest North East, as Lands End is the farthest South West. We will then travel along the North Coast visiting Dunnet Head, the farthest North point on the British Mainland, through Thurso and on to Bettyhill. We then turn South to Lairg, Bonar Bridge, Alness, Dingwall, Beauly and then down to Drumnadrochit. From here we will follow the Great Glen South West along the banks of Loch Ness and Loch Lochy to Fort William.

We will ride out of the Great Glen and up over Glen Coe following the A82 to Crainlarich and then the A85 to Lochearnhead and Crieff. We will be heading down to the Forth Road Bridge and over into Edinburgh next, where we are staying the night with our friends Mhairi and Jim.

From Edinburgh we will follow the A7 South to Selkirk, Hawick, Langholm, and then over the border and into England heading to Carlisle. The plan is to follow the A6 from Carlisle, I am informed that as most of the traffic takes the M6, this is a good cycling road. This takes us to Penrith, over Shap and down to Kendal. Staying on the A6 we will head South to Lancaster and then on to the section we are least looking forward to - Preston, Wigan, Warrington. The route through is yet to be finalised. Reaching Northwich will be a relief as we leave the industrial North West behind us and head through Cheshire.

From Northwich we will be aiming for Nantwich, Audlem, Market Drayton and then into Shropshire cycling past Harper Adams College - hopefully one or two students could keep a lookout? and on through Shifnal. We are aiming for an overnight stop at either Richard's Uncle Allan's or his cousin James' home near there.

The next target is Worcester to Julie's cousins for lunch, so A442 to Bridgenorth, and then the B4555 to Bewdley then following the River Severn to Worcester. We will continue along the Severn on the B4211 through Upton upon Severn (provided it isn't flooded this year!) and on to Gloucester.

Like the A6, the A38 is said to be a good cycling road as most of the traffic is on the M5 and there is lots of space, so we will follow this out of Gloucester to Bristol. How we get through Bristol is still open to debate... We want to be heading to the Cheddar Gorge next, but I get a headache every time I try to map a route through. Any suggestions or help gratefully received! From Cheddar we will be riding through Wedmore and on to Taunton, picking up the A38 again to Wellington and then to Tiverton.

From Tiverton we will head to Crediton and then Oakhampton before skirting the Northwest corner of Dartmoor to Tavistock, one of our favorite places. From Tavistock we are taking minor roads virtually due West to cross the Taymar into Cornwall at Horsebridge, then carrying on through Stoke Climsland, Bray Shop, and Rilla Mill before skirting the Southern edge of Bodmin Moor to reach Doublebois and pick up the A390 through Lostwithiel to St Austell. We are then aiming to cycle down onto the Roseland Peninsular, through Tregony, to take the King Harry Ferry so that we avoid the busy roads round Truro.

From here we have a choice on roads we know quite well. Our aim is to go via the Lizard, so that we pick up the most Southerly point on the British Mainland. we will obviously be spending our last night at home, but whether we go to the Lizard the day before we go to Lands End, or do it on the same day will determine the route from here.

There is no "easy ride" from our house to Lands End, or back for that matter! Our current thinking is Penzance then Newbridge, St Just and then down to Lands End!

I'm Jake the Tandem, tiddle-iddle-iddle-um

We had our first training ride with the Extra Wheel Trailer attached today! (see the web link to the right) And it was a very hard ride. 45.62 miles in 4 hours 23 minutes, so just short of 10.5mph average. We are VERY happy with this time as the route was VERY hilly - nearly 2,500 feet of climbing!

We decided to head out West today for a change. Due to the issues with sore legs we decided to head down towards Marazion though Townshend and Goldsithney so that we could turn back and do a short route easily, however at Marazion we both felt fit and well and so carried on.

Heading out through Penzance and Newlyn we rode through Mousehole and then up our first (if you ignore the one out of home) big hill of the day up to Paul and then Sheffield. Honest, there is a tiny village to the west of Penzance called Sheffield, there are folk round here who haven't heard of it!

Dropping back down to Newlyn we discussed where we would go next, the decision was made to head out to the North Coast. Dropping down to Pendeen the sun came out and the ride round to Zennor was lovely. Along this stretch we were passed by a man on his racing bike - "Wow, you look like a train! I like it!" Joules said "It's an Extra Wheel - like Jake the Peg, tiddle-iddle-iddle-um". We stopped at the the Tinner's Arms in Zennor for a bite to eat. We should have thought about this as it was Mothering Sunday, and like everywhere else they were full. So two packs of crisps and a J2O made up our sugar and salt intake. The ride out of Zennor to St Ives was a PIG. Short hill after short hill.

The drop down from Halestown to Lelant was a relief and a joy - quick and easy! The problem is the hill up out of Hayle. It is a long hill, and at the end of the ride it seems very hard.

During today's ride we consumed five bananas, two packs of crisps each, two and a half bottles of water, a J2O, Orange & soda. Something amazing happened though: every time Richard threw one it went over the hedge or out of sight! He thinks it was the wind direction that helped, the East wind has finally left us after two or three weeks!

After the ride we were treated to the most wonderful Chinese meal prepared by Joules' Dad. You can't ask better than that!

Leedstown, we have a problem...

It has become increasingly obvious over the past couple of weeks that there must be something wrong with the saddle position on the training bike for Joules. She has started to suffer a little with hip and thigh aches.

Richard has researched his extensive library of cycling books (2) and altered the saddle as best he can. The forward, backward and tilt aspects are all now as correct as possible, however we have hit a hitch. We cannot get the saddle quite low enough by about 1/2 inch meaning that Joules is having to slightly overextend her legs on each rotation of the pedals.

The problem is that the seat post Joules uses on the tandem has a suspension gizmo in it that stops the post moving further down in the frame on the training bike. The downtube on the tandem has a lower top, so no problem there. We tried Richard's seat, but the post is too long and hits the bottom stop before it is quite low enough for Joules.

Unfortunately none of our other bike seat posts are the correct diameter - Richard tried four this morning.

It looks like the only option is a trip to Cyclelogic in Helston to ask them if they can trip an inch off the bottom of Richard's seat post, there's plenty of spare!

All Change!

We've just spent an hour or so researching and booking railway tickets from Penzance to Wick. Yes, we know we were going by motorhome, but "best laid plans" and all that, it's just unforeseen circumstances.

But hey, we're made of strong stuff & we can do this whichever way it comes!

Thanks once more to Sarah at South West Motorhomes who did her best to make a motorhome available to us. Maybe one day, for a normal holiday!

The weight is dropping off Richard at an alarming rate during training while Joules maintains her Limousin like figure (Richard entirely disagrees with this last statement).

Back to railway tickets, the first quote for the journey was nearly £500. By booking separate tickets for each leg of the journey we have managed to reduce this to £134.80 plus booking fee (about £10). That's for both of us!

A Busy 48 hours

Joules would like to add that it was a very stressful 48 hours.

By this we mean train vs. motorhome vs. train vs. motorhome... you get the picture!

Several things have been sort of sorted for the ride over the past day or so. We have sourced a motorhome as a support vehicle and Joules' Dad has agreed to be our support driver on the ride.

One of the consequences of this is that the date for the ride is being brought forward. It will now be the 14th to the 29th May to fit in more easily with the motorhome hire people, South West Motorhomes - Thank you very much for their help, I have added a link to them, and and particularly Sarah Foord for her help.

We have also plotted the route on a map. This started life as a road atlas, now it is a series of laminated sheets we can use on the ride. The route has been highlighted and each page will be discarded with great ceremony and pleasure!

Joules says, after several glasses of wine! (For those that know her one is more than enough), the wedding was far easier to organise in eight days than this is in eight weeks!

Richard also added today that he thinks he needs to up his training. Joules is already doing enough for both of them and he is feeling a bit guilty about this...

Joules adds - get off your backside then! (that's the wine speaking!)

So, we now have a route, transport, accommodation, cooking facilities, emergency backup. It really feels like its happening now.