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.