Cycle from Land's End to John O'Groats

I would love to do this one day – a friend did it recently and it seems to have had a big impact on her view of life. I think we spend so much time doing routine stuff from day to day, it’s good to completely break the routine and do something challenging like this.

Living in Gretna I’ve watched people cross the border on this journey all my life so I HAVE to do this.

I think a lot of people do this cycle each year for charity, i had a look at a few charities i’d like to raise money for and i just need to contact them and organise it. If i get off my butt i should be able to do it this year. perhaps i should get together with others with the same goal and we could cycle it at the same time.

My girlfriend and I were planning to do Land’s End to John O’Groats this September after having our imaginations fired by a friend who did it last year.

We intend to do it over 3 weeks as we would like it to be semi-enjoyable and we may camp or use hostels – we’re not sure yet. Camping seems like the more attractive option at the moment, simply due to cost. We’ve pushed it back to March next year, as my girlfriend has just got a new job and so is unable to get 3 weeks holiday until next year – but this is probably a blessing in disguise, as although we had started training, we probably weren’t doing nearly enough!

I did this a couple of summers ago… well worth doing…

my advice…

Just do it, I did it on a bit of whim after my friend suggested it if i had thought about it to much not sure whether I would have done it or just kept putting off.

Get a decent map… I had rubish map at first which meant I was stuck on the big roads which took a lot of the fun of it things improved when I got a better map off my friend.

Do it with someone, I did the first half by myself and the second half with a mate the second half was much better and you can relive the memories more easily.

Go easy the first couple of days, cornwall and devon are very hilly and wore my self out pushing too hard in the first couple of days. I also to travel to cornwall from london and did 100k in the first day.. would recomend it! if iw was doing again I would travel down to penzannce (where the train goes to) one day cycle over to lands end then stay over in penzance on the first night and go from there.

One final peice of advise dont stay in the Inversnaid Hotel near loch lomnad, trust me.

Apparently the CTC have devised a route from LE to JoG that uses youth hostels. I just need to get a copy to see what it’s like.

Not having to cart around camping gear would be a huge plus point, and it should be pretty cheap to stay in hostels.