Notes

Accommodation

With our journey being in July/August, I decided to book all our accommodation in advance, knowing where we would be stopping every evening was one thing less to worry about. The problems would have started if either of us had fallen ill or had any mechanical problems.

Apart from the B&B in Monmouth, all our accomodation could be contacted on e-mail, I found this particularly useful, as I could easily contact them with any queries that I had prior to us starting the ride.

Training

For the three months leading up to the E2E, I was cycling to work and back and a longer ride on Sundays (all with the bike fully loaded) - Matthew raced a midweek "evening 10" every week, a longer ride on Sundays plus one other ride one evening each week, (training rides with bike fully loaded).

We both found the first two days of the ride quite hard, but whereas I felt fitter during the second week Matthew commented that he felt more tired.

Route

Apart from about 6 miles, we managed to avoid the A30 after Penzance without going to far out of our way, the only problem was that some of the Cornish country lanes are narrow, very hilly and the signposts are few and far between.

We also deviated from our original route due to the wet weather at the start of the second week, sometimes it's easier and quicker just to stay on a main road. In Scotland there is less choice of routes, but by sailing from Ardrossan to the Isle of Arran (highly recomended) we avoided the alternative routes on busy roads passing through either Glasgow or Edinburgh.

Trains

A word of advice, book the Virgin trains through Virgin and the Scotsrail trains through Scotsrail. I didn't and when I finally received our tickets for the return journey from Wick (one week before leaving for Penzance), I found that Virgin hadn't booked our bikes on the Scotsrail trains, they said that they were unable to reserve bike spaces with a different company (they didn't tell me this when I booked the tickets seven weeks before). With one week to go I had to cancel my booking with Virgin for the Scotsrail part of the journey and re-book it with Scotsrail, so as to ensure that the bikes were booked on.

Virgin trains carry four bikes in a locker, but don't bother asking any of the Virgin staff on the platform which carriage on the train contains the locker, they will tell you that it can be anywhere on the train and that the only person who knows, is the driver. But when the train pulls in and you ask the driver, the carriage is always at the opposite end of the train to where you are standing.

Hygiene

During the ride neither of us had any problems with saddle soreness, each evening after a bath/shower we always used "Savlon" on the areas in contact with the saddle and each morning we always started off with a clean pair of cycling shorts.

Every evening we rinsed out our drinks bottles with the tablets normally used for sterilising babies bottles and in the morning we made up our energy drinks with "PSP 22" which we had previously measured out into small sandwich bags before leaving home.

During the two weeks we also tried to avoid takeaways i.e. Curries and Kebabs.

Safety

As stated earlier, we tried to avoid busy "A" roads whenever possible, on the few days when visability wasn't very good, we always wore bright yellow jackets and switched on rear flashing red lights. Also at several busy roundabouts on the journey we ended up having to dismount and walk on the path. It's sometimes better to be safe than sorry.

Conclusion

Would we do it again? Definitely, it was a brilliant experience, probably helped by the weather. The four days we took to travel from Sanquar to Inverness were the highlight of the journey, with each day better than the day before. With blue skies and beautiful scenery it was very enjoyable, but if the weather had been like the last day from Helmsdale to John O'Groats then it might have been a different story.

If you have ever thought about cycling the E2E, take my advice and do it, it doesn't matter how long you take, whether you cycle unsupported or with back up, just get yourself into gear and do it.