Category: LEJOG 1997

With my End to End completed I enjoyed a smug breakfast, and a morning of leisure writing smug postcards, followed by a smug lunch, in the John o’Groats House Hotel. I amused myself watching the trickle of arrivals at the fingerpost from the comfort of my warm dry table – it was cold, drizzly and…

Today was the day I finished the End to End. Yesterday’s sunshine was too good to last, and today was another long slog into a chilly headwind with grey, blank, Tupperware skies. Riding up and down the Ord of Caithness (pic) felt like tracing a sine wave. I stopped at a farm, run by a…

A frustrating morning of cooling my heels, twiddling my thumbs, tapping my toes and drumming my fingers. I’d given my bike to a monosyllabic mechanic who took all morning to fix my noisy bearings. He certainly made a difference. I set off impatient at noon and found to my fury that the cracking noise they’d…

A dreary morning haul through yet more freezing cold rain and gusty winds. I was getting fed up of this. At Carrbridge I didn’t cycle over Carr Bridge (pic). I did however cycle up and over Slochd Summit, not that I could tell in the thick cloud and mist. At Tomatin (you say Tomartin, I…

Another dull, wet day of hard going into headwinds and rain. Just out of Pitlochry I dropped in on Blair Castle (pic), whose grounds were free to cyclists. They must be quite proud of young Tony. For the rest of the day, the A9 was my companion. The sort of companion you don’t really want….

Another day of horrible weather: driving rain, headwinds, and no scenery to speak of, or see. So bad, in fact, that I took no photos all day, as my camera wasn’t rated for underwater use. I felt angry, cold, and very wet. Breakfast was a Selkirk Bannock, a ‘rich and buttery leavened tea bread’, ie…

There are few better things in life than to wake refreshed after a fine night’s sleep in comfy bed. As I now knew to my cost, having dozed fitfully on a lumpy sofa for three hours after a skinful of cheap red wine. I was elevated a little by yesterday’s Craster kippers for breakfast, tangy,…

An action-packed day in Northumbria, more eventful than the mileage suggests. I passed Warkworth’s imposing castle (pic), one of many on this rugged coast. Most date from the 14th to the 16th centuries, a time of border wars, when Berwick was perhaps a bit more desirable a possession than nowadays. This is an underrated, monumentally…

Groggy from another cooked breakfast of questionable local provenance, I headed for Stanley. I eventually found the Durham to Stanley railway path, and made good progress, listening to Mozart’s late symphonies on my barbag disco. Then I realised the path was actually going to another, different, wrong, Stanley. Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten…

A bumper hostel breakfast, all ingredients local. Except for the grapefruit, cereal, butter, toast, jam and milk. The water was regionally sourced though. And the tea was Taylor’s Yorkshire – grown, presumably, on the the lofty tea plantations of Dalby Forest. The road north from Helmsley took me up and up into the clouds, past…