7 Things I Learnt Cycling the Length of Britain

Posted by Ed on August 22, 2019

In September 2018, I rode my Genesis Vagabond touring bicycle from Land’s End in Cornwall to John o’ Groats at the tip of Scotland. For those not clued up on such matters, this is, by most standards, a very long way indeed.

It’s about the equivalent of cycling from London to Belgrade, assuming you did so in an impractically straight line that would likely involved ploughing through a couple of garden fences. It was the hardest and best thing I’ve ever done.

On my sixteen day solo adventure, I climbed onto Dartmoor through thick mist as sheep faded in and out of view by the roadside. I zipped down the lush Wye Valley and cycled through a thunderstorm at the Cross of Greet that soaked me to the bone. I pedalled, wide-eyed and awestruck, through the unrivalled splendour of Glen Coe.

I camped by a babbling highland brook and in a Mancunian caravan park. I clattered my bike over more unpaved roads than I had bargained for, and ate a medically inadvisable number of Snickers bars and Super Noodles.

When I set off, I had no idea what I was doing. When I finished, I still wasn’t quite sure.

It was a life-changing experience, one that I will never be able to put into words. The only way to really understand what it’s like is to get out there and do it for yourself. That’s my point, really — get on your bike and ride.

But you needn’t go out there alone. There are a number of things I wish I had known beforehand, from the practical to the semi-spiritual. Take it or leave it, consider this post a piece of friendly advice from one wannabe adventurist to another. Whether you listen to me or not isn’t important — what’s important is that you get out there and do something amazing.

You Will Never Be Ready

When I set off to Land’s End from London, the longest ride I had ever done was 100km — a distance I had completed exactly once in my life.

Other than that, my cycling experience was a mix of commuting pretty much every day (20 minutes in total), and the occasional weekend jaunt out to Epping Forest. To prepare for LEJOG, I completed a 70km gravel ride along the Thames Path and through the Chiltern Hills to Oxford, in which I learnt approximately nothing. But I saw a lot of cool things.

Look: I probably could have done more.

Scratch that. 100%, definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, I could have done more. If I was smarter, I would have gone on a number of weekend long rides with all my touring gear exactly as it would be, to at least get a sense of what it might feel like. I would have planned my nutrition more thoroughly. I would have gotten more rest in advance, maybe bulked up a little.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda. The fact is, LEJOG is not a sprint, but it’s also not a marathon. It’s a multi-day, staged event that is unlike anything you can really simulate in training. The best conditioning you can get is to get out there and do it.

My first few days in Cornwall were some of the hardest days out I’ve ever had. Physically, Cornwall is a hellish place to cycle because of its incessantly crinkly landscape — no long smooth climbs and descents, just up and down for mile upon mile. But mentally, too, it was so hard, because I couldn’t see how I was going to keep this up. I just knew that, somehow, I would.

And I did.

So don’t wait until you are ‘ready’, because you will never be ready. There will never come a time when everything is perfect, when the stars align and you can just go out and tackle LEJOG without a sweat. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to suck. That’s why you have to just get out there and do it.

It Helps To Be Prepared

That being said, just because you’ll likely never be ‘ready’, doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared. Looking back, there were a number of things I should have (and could have) taken care of that I learnt to deal with the hard way:

Bike Check

Apart from, well, you, your bike is your most important piece of gear. Britain is a small island, but the end-to-end is nonetheless a hell of a long walk, so unless you want to take six months, make sure your bike is in good condition.

If, like me, you’re not much of an expert on bikes, take it to a mechanic and pay a bit of money to get it serviced. It might seem like a pain, but would you rather discover your brake pads are worn out in advance, or as you’re careening down a Scottish mountain?

One of the best investments you can make is in a pair of good tires. I had a number of mechanical issues on my LEJOG but the one thing that never failed me was my Schwalbe Marathon Plus 35mm tires. I went almost 1000 miles carrying tons of gear and suffered not a single puncture. Magic.

Gear Check

If you’re planning on camping most nights, as I did, you should definitely spend a couple of nights testing out all your gear. That means tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping mat, obviously, but also things like a warm coat and trousers, a warm hat, and your cooking gear (I highly recommend a JetBoil for compact cooking on the go.) Again, you don’t want to find out something doesn’t work once you arrive in camp after a 120km ride.

Booking in Advance

Chances are, whether you’re going north-south or south-north, you’ll be catching a train both to the start and from the finish. It’s absolutely vital that you book these trains in advance, as bike space is limited and is first-come, first-served. It takes three separate trains and thirteen hours to get from John o’ Groats to London, and you need a separate bike reservation for each of them.

Unfortunately, whilst it’s extremely easy to book UK trains online, there’s no simple mechanism for reserving a bike spot — you often can’t even tell before you book a train if there are any bike spaces left! Instead, I recommend calling National Rail and booking your tickets over the phone. The person at the other end can check all the bike spaces for you and ensure that you have a spot on each of your trains. This saves you the hassle of booking a train, finding out there are no bike spots available, and having to change your ticket, and also gives you peace of mind knowing that, once your arduous task is over, you don’t have to think too hard about getting home.

If you’re staying in hotels or hostels, I would also recommend booking your accommodation at least a couple of days in advance. In peak summer, places like Penzance, Dartmoor, the Lake District, and the Highlands get quite crowded, and there’s nothing worse than pulling into town and having nowhere to stay.

Luckily, if you’re camping, this usually isn’t an issue. A few times on LEJOG I didn’t even necessarily know where I would be staying at the end of a given day — I just got to my destination and searched for the nearest campsite. Still, it’s a good idea to plot out where you will be staying roughly in advance, and book yourself a hostel once every three or four nights to freshen up. It gives you something to look forward to when times are tough — and they will be tough.

It Will Be Tough

Consider this excerpt from Catch-22:

‘Well, maybe it is true,’ Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. ‘Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?’
‘I do,’ Dunbar told him.
‘Why?’ Clevinger asked.
‘What else is there?’

Oh yes, it’s gonna suck. Not a day went by when I didn’t think, “What the hell am I doing out here?” For me at least, LEJOG was very much a Type-2 Fun situation. Meaning, it was only really describable in largely positive terms after the fact.

That’s not to say this necessarily has to be the case. The circumstances under which I tackled my LEJOG, i.e. under-trained, underprepared, and inexperienced, are not necessarily the circumstances of every LEJOG. If you’re more used to spending 8–10 hours a day in the saddle, you’ll probably have an easier time of it. But it’s the nature of the beast that for all but a select few super-athletes there are going to be unavoidably difficult patches.

Sometimes, the magnetic pull of the mythical finish line at John o’ Groats can get you through. Other times, it’s just the idea of a warm bed and a takeaway pizza. Perhaps, in some ways, these are the same thing.

If In Doubt, Eat

It sounds obvious, but your body runs on food. And during LEJOG, you’re asking more of your body than perhaps you ever have. So give it what it needs — eat plenty, eat often, and don’t be too concerned about what. For once, it’s quantity, not quality, that takes precedence.

It’s not just your muscles that need food — your brain does. Your soul. Eat chocolate, eat sandwiches, eat pizza. Eat whatever the hell you want, just make sure you keep eating.

If you’re camping or just on a tight budget as I was, I highly recommend a couple of packets of Super Noodles for dinner. They’re calorific but lightweight, so it’s easy to fill up a pannier with a few days’ worth. They’re also high in sodium, which is a key ingredient when it comes to multi-day exercise. Basically, all the factors that make Super Noodles an unhealthy choice any other time make them an absolutely stellar choice during LEJOG!

Speak to People

When I’m with friends, I’m a pretty extroverted person, but alone I turn into a socially awkward recluse. But if you’re tackling LEJOG solo, it’s important that you make the effort once in a while to talk to people you meet. People at campsites, in restaurants or pubs, in hostels. Just people on the side of the road. Invariably, folks will spot your panniers, and maybe your pained expression, and wonder what you’re up to — and when you tell them, they’ll commend you for doing something so challenging.

I had many excellent conversations with people on my LEJOG, from 5-minute exchanges over a cup of tea in a hostel, to in-depth conversations about history and the state of the world. I met a man in Penzance who claimed to be the last living Cornishman to have seen a Cornish workhorse. I spoke to a young German fellow who was on a routeless tour of the Highlands on a beaten up, incredibly German-looking bicycle. I had a lovely dinner one evening with an entire family, just on the back of leapfrogging a couple of fellow LEJOG-ers for a few days.

My point is, often it’s easy to overlook just how much you’re asking of yourself. Other people are a mirror with which we see ourselves. It’s good to sometimes be reminded that you’re doing something great, and something difficult. And it’s good to have your mind taken off it from time to time.

Stay at the Crask Inn

The Crask Inn is a remote pub around halfway between Inverness and John o’ Groats. It’s literally in the middle of nowhere, and its purpose, at least in part, is to host bicycle tourists and hikers out exploring the remote wilderness of Sutherland, in the North of Scotland (so name because, to the Norsemen who conquered it, it was the South.)

Rooms are available, but you can also pitch up a tent outside for a small donation. The Crask is run by Douglas Campbell, a Eucharistic Minister, and his wife Denise, who took over the pub after it was donated to the church by the former owners.

Simply put, my night at the Crask was delightful. After a particularly tough day in which I was delayed for an hour after getting a busted wheel sorted at a bike shop in Inverness, I made it to the pub as daylight was fading — semi-delirious and convinced I still had hours to go. Imagine my relief when I rounded a bend in the gravel road, not a soul in sight, and saw the Crask surrounded by moorland.

Douglas made me a cup of tea and I conversed with my fellow guests for the evening. A couple of young guys from Kent, one of whom had never cycled further than a couple of miles before setting off on LEJOG as part of a bet; a couple I first met in Somerset who I’d seen most days; another couple who had had a rough old time attempting to mountain bike through what turned out to be overflowing streams of freezing water; and a couple of quiet, friendly builders who were helping to build a conversion at the Crask.

We spoke for hours of our mishaps and misfortunes, and of all the great things we’d seen. It felt like a beautiful celebration, a revery for our efforts, with the next day’s ride to John o’ Groats merely an afterthought.

Whichever way you’re going, make sure you stay at the Crask Inn. You’ll need to book if you want to reserve a spot at dinner, which I highly recommend.

It Will Be Magnificent

The UK is stunning. End of discussion.

I grew up, like many middle class Brits, going on holiday to the European mainland. France and Spain, mostly. Now, don’t get me wrong, our European cousins have some gorgeous scenery on their backdoor. But if you’d tried to tell me before LEJOG quite how magnificently beautiful Britain can be, I’d have taken it with not so much a pinch as a tablespoon of salt.

My image of the UK’s natural beauty was very much informed by growing up in the South. Rolling fields of green, riverside footpaths, the odd dramatic bit of coastline. Splendid, certainly, but not take-your-breath-away material. Being half-Scottish, regular family trips up to Ayrshire gave me a hint that there might be more, but aside from a trip to Snowdonia and another to the Peak District I’d never really seen too much of “England’s mountains green.”

How wrong I was.

The stunning landscapes I passed through could take up a whole blog post in and of themselves. Dartmoor, the wide open ‘roof of Devon’; the unexpected majesty of the Shropshire hills; the lush verdant forest of the Wye Valley. They just kept coming, thick and fast. And then, you hit the North.

Except for a rather boring day heading into Moffat, my LEJOG from Lancashire onwards was more or less a series of increasingly mind-blowing vistas. The Lake District was one of those, “Why have I never been here?” moments, and the two days riding North of Inverness were like entering a strange, alien world. Quiet, flat, and empty, with untamed black peaks in the distance.

But the ride from Loch Lomond to Glencoe was just about the most tremendous of them all. It reaffirmed for me why this whole thing was worth suffering through, and immediately sparked a series of daydreams about the adventures to be had in my own country that still play through my mind to this day.