Category: Cape Wrath to Dover

I wasn’t looking forward to my final day. The forecast was for showers, followed by heavy rain, followed by showers. Well, the forecast was wrong. It was heavy rain all day. So today was just a long, long day at the office, into unremitting grey drizzle, with lorries booming past on the A20 in a…

Delightful, fast, rural tailwind cycling on a grey day. It was drizzly as we left Cambridge. In a nod to the city’s role in bioscience research, the cycle path is adorned with a representation of the sequence of the gene BRCA2, which is linked to breast cancer, and Great Shelford. From the top of the…

Round a bit of Rutland Water this morning. The reservoir was still farmland when Abba were in the charts. Now it’s England’s largest lake in its smallest county, and it has a bike track all around it, as well as a half-submerged Italianate church that looks as though it’s taking to sea. It was windy…

It rained today. All day. Luckily we were cycling in the frankly dull country round East Midlands Airport, so there was no scenery to miss. We found brief shelter from the rain in this curious bus stop in the village of Kingston on Soar, which has its own two-seater library. As you enter Melton Mowbray,…

I was staying at Mark’s last night, which means an early start was always going to be unlikely. We went swimming in Hathersage’s delightful open air heated pool, joined by Nigel, who’ll be cycling with me to London, looked at some local gardens, chatted over tea and toast on Mark’s balcony, and waited for the…

Another very early start, hacking out into the Lancashire road system at a drizzly half seven. But with a big tailwind, firmly track-pumped tyres, and all my camping gear left at Si and Sue’s for shipment home and hence half-weight luggage, it felt like the bike was pedalling itself. Maybe I just hadn’t woken up…

Three big, big climbs over the roof of England today, from Dales Yorkshire into Lancashire: up and out from Dent; up from High Bentham to Slaidburn; and up Jeffrey Hill. The effort was worthwhile (a) because of the long, life-affirming downhills and (b) because of the splendid evening at Si and Sue’s of curry, vodka,…

A very early start indeed today, up and off by 5am. Perhaps it was my subconscious ensuring I got out of Scotland and into England as soon as possible. Well, that Scottish beer was a bit rubbish. Met up with my friends Simon and Sue at Carlisle, who are joining me for a couple of…

The campsite I found last night, by chance, is a real gem. It’s in an old Georgian walled garden in the middle of a wooded valley. Perhaps this explains the strange smell in my tent when I took my shoes off last night. I must have been camped over an old compost heap. With tailwinds,…

An early start, zigzagging down a remarkable and little-known road in Rothesay from the campsite to the ferry. Serpentine Road has nine hairpin bends and must be Britain’s most corkscrewy street. The landlord of the pub the previous night where we watched the football lives on it. We hope he got home OK. We did…