Well, we made the first part in one piece.

I think my main concern before the Scotland bit will have to be to buy, beg, borrow, bike-hire or burgle a faster bike. Trouble is, I don't think I'm likely to want to do this again, so I don't want to spend the £600 plus required for a road bike or tourer. Any suggestions, offers, would be welcome.

A large number of very generous people have contributed- thank you all very much. Though I do have to say I'm a bit disappointed about the number of people in my office who didn't contribute, despite having worked with me for over 10 years in many cases.


May is an excellent time to do this. The weather is as likely to be good as you can get, the roads are not too full of holidaymakers, and the countryside is spectacular.

In some ways, my main memory is of the pungent smell of wild garlic. The picture of the top is of a particularly smelly bit, so much so that you can just about smell it from the photo.

Other comments.
1. The CTC routes are useful, as a start, anyway. Distances (average 70 miles per day) however would tend to be excessive for any except hard core cyclists. Don't forget that they tend to be obsessed with speed, and it may be possible and advisable to find quieter roads. Try the NCN network, too. Give yourself time to enjoy the scenery.
2. Having a support vehicle is extremely useful. It would have been very much harder if we had had to carry all our gear. Also, when I had the breakdown with the chain coming off, it would have been very difficult to work out what to do if we hadn't. Very many thanks indeed to John and Maggie for their literally invaluable efforts on this.
3. Thanks to Norman for being so conscientious in continuing with the support when he wasn't able to cycle, and generally for being easy-going and organised.
4. Thanks very much to all the people who put us up en route.
5. We did quite a lot of training beforehand, but we should have done a week-end or longer to test the whole system.
6. This blog was quite difficult to get on to the internet (to say nothing of trying to write it when exhausted at the end of a long day). I've mentioned that the countryside is short of shops, banks, mobile phone signals, bike shops, things open at the weekend, etc. It's also short of fast broadband connections.
7. We met with a lot of kindness from many people. Thank you all very much.