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.