Category: End to Ends

After a rest day at home, I could push on. Literally, up the steep and narrow lane that led out from my shared house through the village and up into lush green Somerset hills. Gradually my fretting about this (an unevenly seated rear tyre) and that (a ticking chain) gave way to the joy of…

A rest day at home today (pic), doing routine chores in town – pictures to the chemist’s, replace my back tyre, buy a house etc. The back tyre had been deteriorating steadily since Taunton: a little thup-thup-thup, one per revolution, detectable as tiny jolts to the saddle. The rubber’s gentle way of telling you it’s…

I may only have been a quarter of the way to John o’Groats, but I was going to be at home tonight. A full sunny day of riding got me back to Bath, where I live. So instead of a strange, uncomfortable bed in a damp and dingy hostel, I could look forward to my…

I’ve clearly upset the weather gods in some past life. This is turning into a very wet trip. I fixed my puncture from yesterday evening in the B&B porch and set back out into the heavy rain. There followed a lot of long, wet slogging up and down tedious hills (pic). I was continuing to…

At last, a day without rain, and with a euphoric tailwind. The local element to the B&B breakfast was home-made redcurrant jelly, and jam – a delicious rhubarb, ginger and pineapple, though I wasn’t sure all those ingredients had necessarily come from the garden. Camelford had been in the news for a chemical spill in…

There was little point towelling myself off after my morning shower. Thanks to the hostel’s lack of a drying room and indeed heating, I immediately got wet through again putting on my sodden clothes from yesterday. My locally-sourced breakfast was very satisfying though. Grilled mushrooms, dark and woodsily pungent. Lovely sweet strawberries, small and juicy,…

The sun blocker I bought for the trip is working wonders. I put it on this morning at Penzance hostel as I set off. Immediately it clouded over, and rained heavily all day. I swished through ten miles of puddles to get to Land’s End for the ceremonial start of my trip. The visitor centre…

We are now entering Cornwall, the guard announced as we crossed the Tamar at Plymouth, in the same tone that a mural might state You are now entering Free Derry. It looked very hilly through the window of the 1557 from Bath, not always in the way I expected. We passed St Austell’s bizarre clay-trail…