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    Lands End to John O'Groats: A Self Help Cycle Guide
    Lands End to John O'Groats: A Self Help Cycle Guide
    Lands End to John O'Groats: A Self Help Cycle Guide
    Ebook195 pages2 hours

    Lands End to John O'Groats: A Self Help Cycle Guide

    By Royston Wood

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    About this ebook

    One of the great thing about cycling from Lands End to John O’Groats is that it is a big, bold and ambitious challenge that everybody can understand (which helps if for your trying to raise sponsorship for charity) and that most people can achieve if they spend the right amount of time on the ride for their level of riding ability. The concept of cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats is quite simple, get on your bike at one end of the country and ride to the other end. That is why it is often referred to as cycling end to end (it’s also less of a mouthful!).

    The problems start when you come to actually start thinking in detail about planning an end to end cycle. It suddenly looks a whole lot more complicated. Which is probably why you are here, looking for some advice.

    This book covers everything you need to know to cycle from Lands End to John O'Groats (LEJOG) or John O'Groats to Lands End (JOGLE).

    Like you, I scoured the internet looking for sites or guides that would tell me what I needed to know to plan my route from John O' Groats to Lands End train for the ride. I found an enormous quantity of sites and guides but most of them, whilst interesting, were of little help. I bought Land’s End to John O' Groats route books that looked good but when I got into the detail I realised the proposed end to end route was not what I wanted.

    Eventually I found everything I needed, or learnt the hard way, but it took a long time.
    I just wished that someone had written:

    The Book I am Looking For That Has All The Answers I Need to Plan and Complete That Lands End to John O’Groats [or Vice Versa] Ride I’ve Always Talked About Doing But Never Got Around To

    But they hadn’t, so I decided to write it myself.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRoyston Wood
    Release dateJan 3, 2013
    ISBN9781301147243
    Lands End to John O'Groats: A Self Help Cycle Guide
    Author

    Royston Wood

    As a child I was a reluctant reader. I didn't see it as reluctance, I just didn't see the point: there were comics and a picture is worth a thousand words right?I am now an avid reader and regret missing out on so many good stories as a child. Fortunately, with children of my own, I'm now managing to catch up, reading stories to them every night before bed.There isn't anything quite like a good book to let you escape from the world for a while. True, films are great, but they don't engage you as much as a book. A well written book will get your imagination working, filling the story with colour and energy: a film is a depiction of somebody else's imagination.In fact, I enjoy reading stories to my children so much, I started to write my own. And bearing in mind my own reluctance to read as a child I have written them to be as engaging as possible, to draw the reluctant reader into a land of imagination and discovery.

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      Book preview

      Lands End to John O'Groats - Royston Wood

      Land’s End to John O’Groats Self Help Cycle Guide

      Royston Wood

      Published by Royston Wood at Smashwords

      Copyright 2013 Royston Wood

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Dedication

      This book is dedicated to my long suffering wife who has to act as a single parent every time I start planning a cycle challenge. The time I’m away from home on the ride itself is bad enough but then there’s the endless weekends of training before hand. But she need the training otherwise she won’t be hard and lean enough to survive an onslaught of boys for the week I’m away.

      Her commitment and contribution is far greater than mine, it’s quiet on the bike.

      Contents

      Introduction

      Beginning

      Planning

      How am I going to get to the start/from the finish?

      Where am I going to sleep on my route?

      What will I need to take with me on my ride?

      Nutrition

      So what should I eat?

      How much should I eat?

      Hydration

      Final word on nutrition

      Budget

      Middle

      Training

      How much training do I need to do and when should I do it?

      What sort of training should I do?

      Training plan example

      Route creation

      How to create a route using Google Maps

      How to get a route from Google My Maps to a GPS device

      Why use Google Maps?

      End

      My end to end

      Day zero – Ivybridge to John O’Groats

      Day one – John O’Groats to Fort Augustus

      Day two - Fort Augustus to Kilmarnock

      Day three – Kilmarnock to Kendal

      Day four – Kendal to Shrewsbury

      Day five – Shrewsbury to Taunton

      Day six – Taunton to Land’s End

      Aftermath

      The bitter end

      Honestly, this is the end

      Appendix 1

      Appendix 2

      Note: In this text trips from Land’s End to John O’Groats are referred to as LEJOG and from John O’Groats to Land’s End as JOGLE. The generic term end-to-end will be used where the context does not require a specific direction. I am hoping to save a lot of typing in this way (but if I keep warbling on about it I might use up any typing time I might have saved).

      Introduction

      There are a number of books and various websites that give advice, guidance and different routes for getting from one end of the country to the other on what must be Britain’s most famous long distance challenge ride.

      Which begs the question, Why should you buy this one?

      In writing this book I have followed one main ethos: I am not an expert on all things cycling.

      No – don’t give up just yet! This is a layman’s guide written by a layman based on his experiences of planning a ride from scratch. It sets out the issues that you will need to consider (preparation, training, equipment, travel to and from the start/finish, route, accommodation, etc..) and is designed to provoke thought in each aspect of your ride rather than try to give you definitive answers.

      There are good reasons for this. For a start, things change. Between the time of me typing this and you reading it many ‘facts’ which could be contained in the book may no longer be correct.

      Let me give an example to illustrate the point. When I first tried to plan my ride I checked train times and costs to John O’Groats (more specifically Wick, 16 miles short of John O’Groats). The train left Plymouth about 20:00 and, after three changes, arrived in Wick 18 hours later at roughly 14:00 next day. I can’t remember the precise times but it meant I arrived with time to cycle to a B&B near the start, ready to begin in the morning. The cost with bike, booking in advance, was about £75. That ride fell through but the next year I planned again. When I came to book the train I found it had changed. It now took 28 hours with an overnight stop and cost £240 (plus the cost of accommodation for the overnight unless I wanted to spend 8 hours on the platform).

      Another example of why I have tried to provoke thought rather than dictate your actions is routing. When I first considered riding an end to end [as all tours between Land’s End and John O’Groats will be referred to in this book] finding a route was daunting. I thought the best thing to do would be to find a route somebody else had used. I got hold of several but none of them were really suitable to the journey I wished to make. I soon concluded that routing was a very personal thing and that nobody else’s route would ever suit me entirely. The problem was that none of the guides I had purchased actually gave me any advice about how to devise a route myself.

      So, whilst I have included detailed written directions to my own route (including a weblink for gps downloads) and a narrative of the journey to give you a flavour of the experience, I am aware that some aspects of it may not appeal to you. Therefore my route section deals with the types of things that you will want to consider when deciding upon your route (such as terrain, how far a day you want to travel, type of accommodation etc..) and how to produce a route with written directions rather than leave you with no option but to use my route.

      For your convenience I have divided the book into three main sections, cunningly entitled Beginning, Middle and End. The beginning section deals with the things you will need to consider, well, at the beginning. Ideally you need to have a good idea about these things early on as they will help shape what goes on in the middle – sorting your route and getting the training in. And most of us will have to do these things before the end section, which deals with the ride itself.

      So, without more ado…

      Beginning

      The first thing we need to do is work out what level of assistance you need. To do this read the following statements and see which is most applicable to you?:

      I am really keen to do an end to end but have no idea where to start.

      This statement cannot really apply to you because you have already done your most important bit of research and acquired this book. You have a natural instinct to cut to the heart of a problem and find the best solutions (at a very reasonable price). Read on.

      I have done some initial research and found a renowned and highly acclaimed book on the subject but don’t know what to do next.

      Put this book down and read that one!

      I am really quite lazy and just googled, The book I am looking for that has all the answers I need to plan and complete that Land’s End to John O’Groats [or vice versa] ride I’ve always talked about doing but never got around to. This book came up so I bought it.

      Oh well. Never mind. Let’s try and make the best of it. Fix yourself a large mug of tea/coffee/beer/gin, settle yourself in a comfy chair and get someone to read this book to you.

      Better still, get someone to précis it and tell you the bits you need to know. This will save you a lot of time. Don’t let them annotate or deface the book itself though (notes on paper or dictation device would be best) because this will have a disastrous effect on the resale value of this ([possibly] soon to be) highly sought after text. If you are lucky enough to have secured a 1st edition copy you may want to consider keeping it in dust free environment, away from damp and direct sunlight, and increasing your home contents insurance. Early copies have been known to fetch nearly 10% of their original price on a well known online auction site.

      Why do you want to do that?

      Be prepared to face this question. It is either something people get – or not. And the trouble is it isn’t always very easy to answer if they don’t get it.

      For most people that do it, long distance cycling is about facing a challenge of endurance and endeavour. Of course, each individual has a mix of other stuff that they get out of it, but at the core is that feeling of satisfaction, of a job well done, on reaching the end.

      And at the end, in that warm glow of achievement, we forget the pain and suffering we have endured during the course of the ride. Those swear words that bounced around our heads halfway up that 20% climb have faded away. We have forgotten our pledge, ‘never to do this #@ ride again’, whilst battling against horizontal hail in the teeth of a 40mph headwind. We are left only with good memories, even if that good memory is, ‘It was a pig of a ride but I finished!’ [and if only 10% of the starters did, even better].

      The point is, we can’t remember pain. Yes, we can remember that we suffered pain but we cannot actually relive it. So the memory of the pain is weak and soon subsumed.

      By way of illustration I can point to my own experiences on my end to end. In the aftermath of my ride I was left with the overall feeling that it went much better than I anticipated and was, on the whole, much easier than I thought it would be. I had ridden steadily each day with a fairly constant energy level and had not suffered much at any point on the ride. I knew a couple of stretches had been tricky but nothing to have gotten me down.

      What I wasn’t aware of is the fact that my wife had been typing up all the text messages I had been sending her (I sent one every two hours or so to show I was still alive) and converting them to blog like emails to send to my work colleagues and sponsors to show how things were going. And they were copied verbatim.

      I was most surprised to find words like, ‘strain’ and ‘sick’ and ‘tired’ and ‘hard’ and ‘crap’ in my texts. And they also reminded me that I had felt so bad on day two that I had decided to cut out my slight side detour over the Kirkstone Pass (which was to be a highlight challenge) because I was worried it would rekindle the sciatica in my right leg.

      The thing is, even with the reality spelt out in black and white before me, I still can’t quite conjure up the memories to go with the texts. It is all very positive in my memory and that is why I would have no hesitations in doing it all again.

      But that can be hard to explain to somebody who can’t grasp the concept, perhaps because they have never challenged their body and mind in that way. So, if you get fed up with trying to explain why you are doing it, then do the ride for charity. Everyone understands that.

      Continue reading or click here to return to contents

      Planning

      The critical thing about planning is to start doing it. Until you get the ball rolling your end to end will not progress beyond the, ‘ride I’ve always talked about’ stage. I’ve

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