JOGLE 2016

In March 2016 Josh and I embarked on a challenge to cycle from John O’Groats to Lands End in 7 Days to raise money for Sarcoma UK in memory of my friend Tom.

We successfully managed to complete the trip and raised £2,500 in the process.

I don’t remember how we came about to undertake this given that neither of us had sufficient bikes or had undertaken anything close to this magnitude.

As you can imagine there were a couple of things which didn’t quite go to plan…

What follows are the blog posts that we made ‘back in the day’.

Day 0

20 hours later… It has taken 20 hours to get from London to John O’Groats and we’re starting to realise the enormity of the task ahead. Seeing snow on our journey wasn’t a welcome surprise, and worryingly Josh also found that our heated bus trip was ‘rather chilly’, which doesn’t bode well…

Preparing for the ride at Jacob’s on the Thursday night ended up being a little stressful as we underestimated quite how long it would take for us to get ready so we were a bit panicked wrapping up our bikes before our drive into London and the beginning of our adventure.

We set off at 11pm and the thirteen hour bus journey overnight was an interesting experience, wasn’t the best night’s sleep that at least one of us has ever had, Josh sleeping almost straight though until 10am, but Jacob not faring quite so well unfortunately. We reached Inverness at midday and a 2 hour wait before a 4 hour train was ahead of us.

Putting our bikes together in the middle of the bus station, we successfully managed to get in almost everyone’s way, and their relief was almost audible once we finally left and headed to the train station.

We munched on some food and hopped on the train for another long journey, passing by some stunning scenery, but the longer we were on the train the more the realisation that this was it.

Having arrived at Thurso we thought it was just a short cycle to John O’Groats (and by ‘we’ that refers to Jacob) but it turned out to be over 20 miles in the pitch darkness and pouring rain, which wasn’t quite the pleasant start to our challenge we had hoped for.

Somehow, the guy who owned B and B that we were staying at found us as we entered John o groats and guided us to the hotel, gave us a lift to the pub to grab a pizza

It was certainly a much longer trip than we had anticipated but eventually, 23 hours after we set off from London we are settled in the B and B.

Now off for a good nights sleep to get ready for day 1 of our challenge

Day 1, John O’Groats to Inverness.

We started the day nice and early, took a few mandatory selfies, and then left John O’Groats around 6:30. The day started well, the running was good and we were full of excitement about what was to come, but then the wind came.

A brutal headwind that also brought rains slowed our progress. We definitely didn’t sign up for this, and wondered quite why we hadn’t done it in the summer weather.

On a positive note however, the scenery was amazing, we cycled along the sea for many miles before heading inland where a few huge hills awaited us.

These were tough, much harder than anything we had experienced in our very limited training, and our initial stance that training is overrated was starting to waiver.

Having reached lunch a bit behind schedule, the enormity of the challenge ahead of us hit, we had only done 50 miles and still had 70 more hilly miles to do, it was going to be a long day.

As it grew dark our mental toughness was tested, still more hills ahead of us and time was not on our side, and then the unthinkable happened. Jacob got pulled over by a policeman. We of course presumed this was the fashion police commenting on our dubious Lycra but instead he was just telling him that his light wasn’t quite as bright as it should have been.

We also realised that another obvious reason why people do this in the summer is to avoid cycling in the pitch blackness, whoops.

We eventually reached Inverness and checked into a really nice hotel with a bit of haggling/charm from Josh and got to bed at about half 10, exhausted but proud of what we had achieved.

Day 2, Inverness to Perth.

Again setting of a bit behind schedule at half 6 (Josh had to have his hair ‘just so’), we were straight into a massive climb, which wasn’t quite what the doctor ordered. Reaching the top of the 400 odd metre climb was one of the best feeling of the trip so far however.

We then had some nice descents to cruise down which went someway towards making up for the hard uphill slog in the morning.
Again the scenery was incredible and lots of GoPro footage was taken which we will try to organise into a nice video clip at some point.

Unfortunately no one told us that Scotland was quite so sparse, we cycled for miles and miles without seeing any sort of civilisation and with food and drink low and another 400m+ summit it was going to be tough.
So tough in fact that due to the lack of any buildings, Josh had to answer nature’s call on the side of the road. Not his proudest moment.

Eventually we reached the summit and were speeding down the other side at over 30mph for a good few miles. Finding somewhere for a late lunch around half 3, we had the most amazing roast beef with all the potatoes and vegetables we could fit on to the plate, so bracing ourselves for the inevitable dodgy looks we piled up.

With a fair distance still to ride, we powered on, reaching the hotel a bit earlier around half 8, so had time to spend calling our girlfriend (Jacob) and doing stretching and yoga (Josh).

Day 3, Perth to Carlisle.

Today was a long day. As per, Josh took 15 minutes longer than Jacob to get ready so we ended up leaving 15 minutes later than our planned 6am departure.

Jacob immediately decided to fall off his bike whilst trying to clip in his pedals but unfortunately Josh didn’t have the GoPro on at the time to catch the moment. Would have been an easy £250 donation from you’ve been framed.

Once on the road, the going was tough. We had lots of steep climbs in the morning that really took their toll, but the real killer was getting a little lost owing to road closures and having to go off road instead. An unsurprising top tip for anyone looking to undertake LEJOG is definitely to stick to the roads.

Having finally traversed endless gravel tracks around Livingston we rejoined the main road. However the combination of the physical effects of the hills and the psychological effects of getting lost were really taking their toll and Josh especially found it a struggle. But as has been the case throughout our challenge, we helped each other through the tough times.

Today was also the day that we finally made it to England at around 9:30pm and eventually to our hotel around an hour later.

Josh’s bike has also developed a rather fun habit of the chain falling off on occasion and so this combined with clip in pedals led to a pretty ungraceful fall just outside Carlisle.

Day 4, Carlisle to Altrincham.

Shock horror. For the first time thus far on the trip Josh was ready before Jacob #diva #highmaintenance (guess who’s writing this bit!)

We cycled the first 20 miles or so into Penrith and then something wonderful happened, we saw our first Costa of the trip and so Josh insisted we had to stop for a very quick coffee whilst Jacob popped to Greggs.

Feeling happier and caffeinated, we continued on through the Lake District, which has definitely been by far the most stunning scenery we’ve seen thus far, which is quite a statement.

Our next quick break was then in Kendal where instead of going for the renowned mint cake, we instead had a far less traditional Subway.

Shortly after Kendal, the chain on Josh’s bike again fell off and again he was unable to click out in time, leaving a slightly annoyed cyclist in an unceremonious heap on the pavement.

Passing through Lancaster, Preston and Bolton, the going got tough and Jacob was particularly struggling with his knees.

A highlight for Jacob though was finally seeing the Trafford centre which he had studied in great detail for Geography A Level and so he delighted in reciting ‘fun’ facts about it, for example the exact number of car parking spaces.

We finally reached Altrincham at around half 9 where we stayed with friends and were treated to some wonderful hospitality from Liv and Adam, thanks guys!

Day 4.5, The Heist.

Elation, Josh was on time this morning (well only 3 minutes late).

However our joy was very short lived as our locks had been cut and our bikes had been stolen overnight, which was heartbreaking.

We are absolutely distraught, but are trying our best to source bikes and will start again tomorrow and are determined to still do this in 7 days, discounting today.

Day 5, Altrincham to Gloucester.

Firstly a huge thanks to our friends who lent us bikes for the remainder of our challenge, we are both indebted to you.

Having learnt from the previous night, Jacob slept in the same room as the bikes and thankfully they were still there when we woke and we were on the road again  by half 6 with our replacement bikes.

We did stop briefly and optimistically to see if by some miracle our mystery thief had heard us on BBC Radio Manchester the previous day and guiltily decided to return our bikes, but alas there was nothing.

We again had a little navigation trouble in the morning, ending up going back on ourselves once or twice, but eventually found our way and made good progress as we headed onwards to our lunch stop in Wolverhampton.

Treating ourselves to 2 meal deals and a Nando’s it perhaps wasn’t the most time efficient lunch we’d had all week, but its fulfillingness more than made up for what it lacked in efficiency.

As the afternoon wore on we began to tire, which was then compounded by road congestion, forcing us to weave around all the dual carriageway traffic.

Once clear, we rode onwards along the A38 towards Gloucester and our stop for the night.

Day 6, Gloucester to Sandford.

We made good progress, passing through Bristol in the early morning and then weaving our way through the little lanes in Somerset, following the M5.

The going got tough in the afternoon as even our constant ibuprofen supply was not enough to mask the pains and aches we had been accumulating.

The tarmac also disappeared and we had to use gravel cycle paths instead which very much limited our speed, further hampering our progress.

We struggled through however and 5 miles away from our stop for the night, Jacob found what looked to be a slight shortcut, which ended up being thick bogs, which was somewhat of a nightmare to try and navigate in the pitch darkness. Lesson learned – never trust google maps.

The inn we stayed in was a delight, with a roaring fire and amazing food and having heard our tale of the robbery, they were more than happy to let us keep our bikes in the room.

Day 7, Sandford to Lands End.

The last day. Keeping in tradition with the rest of the week we had the customary morning routine of a quick breakfast, a few painkillers and a 15 minute wait for Josh to be ready.

Despite our cumulative injuries we had amassed over the week, the knowledge that it was the last day helped us to power through and we made great time, even hitting 74km/h on one of the downhills and Josh took the opportunity to send a snapchat of this with a cringe #quadgoals hashtag.

We were just approaching the halfway point and our lunchtime stop, but Jacob unfortunately then had a puncture, but we thought this wouldn’t be too much of an issue as he had proclaimed himself to be quite the puncture repair professional and so we imagined this wouldn’t be too time consuming. We were wrong however. Unsatisfied with just cycling from John O’Groats to Lands End in 7 days, Jacob decided to also stake an impressive claim for the Guinness World Record for the longest puncture repair. 

What seemed like a few hours later and we were back on the road, stopping off in Bodmin for a KFC lunch (athlete diet clearly).

Having eaten, we then made impressive time over the next couple of hours as we approached Penzance. Here we paused quickly for a third Maltloaf in as many hours and for Jacob to quickly update his Facebook status as he insisted “we gotta let the peeps know”.

The last 10 or so miles flew by and Land’s End was in sight, and the enormity of what we were about to achieve hit us. 

We had made it, despite many people’s doubts, our gross underpreparation and the hiccups we had endured on the way. It was an experience quite unlike anything else we had done and we would strongly recommend it to anyone. Oh and if you do give it a go, remember to invest in a very secure lock!