Land's End to Fowey: Land's End to John O'Groats 3

Land's End is a strange place! Car parks, tat-shops and nothing much else other than the iconic signpost around which we gathered to make a little film about our challenge!

Cornwall though is stunningly beautiful. It was an absolute joy to ride through the sun-drenched country and see so many places I had visited as a child on famiy holidays. Stewart and I soon got into a rythym and started to plough through the miles, and I figured out how to use the navigation system on my phone! Cornwall is relentlessly hilly though and although Day 1 was one of the shorter rides planned in terms of miles; the 6000+ft of ascent (some of it steep) made it a hefty challenge.

My wife met us at the cafe at Trellisick Gardens, where we fuelled up and refilled water bottles before running down to the King Harry Ferry over the River Fal. There we met a lovely couple of cyclists who asked about our trip and donated to the Vine Trust Fund in Julia's memory.

Along by the sea, by old tin mines, though stunning villages, over hills and eventually to the delightful village of Fowey and our pub for the night. Fowey is another place full of happy childhood memories for me, and it didn't dissapoint. One lady seeing our LEJOG shirts said, "One more day to go - nearly there!!" and I replied - actually we're going North, we're one day in! She looked as crestfallen as I felt!

Mousehole: Land's End to To John O'Groats 2

The night before we actually started cycling, we went for a stroll around the delightful harbour village of Mousehole. I have vagie memories of seeing this village on Blue Peter when I was a small child. The sun shone, and the water sparkled as we sat in Stewart's van eating our tea, and contemplating the following day's cycle! It was an idyllic scene; boats bobbing in the water, people jumping from the cliffs, toddlers building sand castles with their parents, and older folk deep into 'airport novels' with their flasks of tea. 

But Stewart looked perturbed.

There in the harbour were three or four paddleboarders, all happily doing their thing in the tidal waters of the water. All of them were kids, all of them were navigating around moorings of the boats, and all of them wore ankle leashes.

Since the tragedy of Julia's death, Stewart has been campaigning for the end of the use of ankle leashes on paddle boards on moving water. This is obviously on rivers, but also includes tidal waters too. The sad truth is that if the paddleboarder gets trapped under water and the current makes it impossible to release the ankle leash, tragedy awaits. A waist leash is far safer, as even in a strong current, the wearer can reach down and unclip themselves from it.

Part of the reason for cycling from Land's End to John O' Groats was to raise awareness of this danger, and to get people to consider replacing their ankle leashes with a safer waist leash.

Lands End to John O' Groats 1.

When I was a kid I knew a few people who had cycled the length of the British mainland. Back then it was known as doing 'the end-to-end', but time moves on as does language and it is now referred to as the LEJOG (or the JOGLE if you go the other way!). Either way, I never thought I'd be able to do it. But life, like time and language moves on in unexpected ways, and so a few weeks ago I found myself in a camper van with my pal Stewart and my wife, speeding down the M6 with our bikes on the back and Land's End in sight.

Just over a year before we set off, Stewart's wife Julia was killed in a dreadful paddleboarding accident on the River Spey near Aviemore. Julia was a close friend of my wife's, a fellow GP, a fellow Ulster woman in Perth, a confidant and prayer-partner at Perth Baptist Church, and they had been on medical missions together in Africa as well. While her loss was obviously most accutely felt by Stewart and her imemdiate family, the shock and grief spread out in waves from the epicentre and enveloped us all. And it was because of this that the three of us ended up heading to Cornwall with the bikes.

Knowing that Stewart was due to retire this year, and that he is a keen and very strong cyclist; and that my wife would be keen to do something in Julia's memory - I suggested to her that we do the LEJOG  (sponsored for her charity The Vine Trust). Then I bottled out, and - lost in the inevitable fog of self-doubt) dropped the idea and hoped it would it would go away. Then later that week, just after Julia's funeral we were sitting with Stewart, his kids and his son-in-law and daughter-in-law, at his dinning room table when in a lull in conversation my wife announced to everyone that I had "had a good idea!". Not getting the hint that I was now terrified at the prospect, and had absolutely decided not to mention it - I was now forced to share the idea - to which he said an immediate 'yes'. By the time we left that evening we had provisional dates in mind and a LEJOG route guide ordered from Amazon! The adventure was on.