Biking for Beer

Overview

2007-08-08T12:46:00.000Z

A Real Ale bike ride

It's all over! 2766 miles, 36 days, 50 or so counties, 21 breweries, and a lot of rubbish weather.

(The photo above is actually us at the end. Not much jubilation but then Land's End is a bit rubbish.)

We started on June 2nd at Land's End and finished on July 10th after a 5 week odyssey through the dismal and depressing June weather. It was meant to be a LEJOGLE taking in the 4 compass points of the mainland, but we missed out Lowestoft due to severe weather warnings so only 3 compass points were seen. We did visit Lizard Point (south), Dunnett Head (north) and the Point of Ardnamurchan (west) as well as Land's End twice and John O'Groats.

The Diary is currently being written and can be found by using the links on the left of the page.

You can find out who we are by clicking these links, firstly myself, Tom, and my cousin, Sam, (beware it is mostly nonsense). And you can find out why we did it here Why????????

Charity

* click on this photo to be magically transported to the charity page*

One of the aims of this trip was to raise money and awareness for our two chosen charities - the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance and the British Heart Foundation. You can read more about them, as well as our reasons for supporting them, by following this link - charity and you can donate to these excellent causes by clicking on the links above. Much more donated offline than online at the moment, but if you are reading this and find the diary (when I get that far) interesting or amusing please give a fiver to one of the causes.

Other Bits

We visited 21 breweries during our trip, from Dog House Brewery in Cornwall to Inveralmond Brewery in Perth. Visit the breweries page to find out more about this element of the trip

2766 miles, 50+ counties, 20 miles of climbing...........................
The whole route can be found by clicking this link and it has maps and profiles of each day

Other Nutters

LeJog Fundraiser - 6 women from Oxfordshire raising cash for Cancer Research, Epilepsy Action and Helen and Douglas House. Much better reason for doing the trip than ours. Take a look.

Georgie's Trip - A solo, self-sufficient, effort for Macmillan Cancer research. Inspiring.

Jonny Muir - Yep, this bloke must be proper nuts. He finished last year, but I thought I would include it as it is very interesting. 92 counties, 92 peaks, 92 days. Possibly unique and certainly unusual.

Other Links

Ultimate Land's End to John O'Groats list

Final note
Email me at tsheasby81@googlemail.com if you have any questions about the trip or have anything you would like to add. All feedback welcome.

And feel free to leave a comment in the comments box just below this sentance.
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Breweries we couldn't get to

2007-07-25T17:34:00.000Z

Unfortunately we had to miss out a few breweries. This was very annoying and certainly would have been avoided if possible, but the weather was really against us on some days and simple route-planning failed to allow for a couple of visits. Many thanks to the breweries on this list for replying, mostly they are smaller brewing concerns but a few larger companies took the effort to respond such as Caledonian. One day I will get round to visiting them all..............

These are the breweries that offered to accomodate us but we didn't get to see:

Cairngorm Brewery - Aviemore
Tryst Brewery - Stirling
Bridge of Allan Brewery - Bridge of Allan (near Alloa)
Caledonian Brewery - Edinburgh
Grain Brewery - Suffolk
Bartram's Brewery - Suffolk
Wagtail Brewery - Suffolk
St Peter's Brewery - Suffolk

click on the names to be transported to their websites.

*note: Cairngorm's 'Trade Winds' was one of the very best bottled beers we had throughout the trip.

Dog House Brewery

2007-07-25T17:31:00.001Z

Dog House Brewery

*more to follow

Dog House Brewery

Skinner's Brewery

2007-07-25T17:29:00.001Z

Skinner's Brewery

*more to follow

www.skinnersbrewery.com

Red Rock Brewery

2007-07-25T17:25:00.000Z

Red Rock Brewery

*more info to come

www.redrockbrewery.co.uk

Ringwood Brewery

2007-07-25T17:23:00.001Z

Ringwood Brewery

*more info to come

www.ringwoodbrewery.co.uk

Chiltern Valley

2007-07-25T17:19:00.000Z

Old Luxter's Brewery

No photos yet, will try to get one soon

*more info to follow

www.chilternvalley.co.uk

Hoggley's Brewery

2007-07-25T17:17:00.001Z

Hoggley's Brewery

*more to come

www.hoggleysbrewery.co.uk

Frog Island Brewery

2007-07-25T17:15:00.001Z

Frog Island Brewery

*more to come

www.frogislandbrewery.co.uk

Wylam Brewery

2007-07-25T17:10:00.000Z

Wylam Brewery

*more to come

www.wylambrew.co.uk

High House Farm Brewery

2007-07-25T17:04:00.000Z

High House Farm Brewery

Very foolishly I forgot to take any photos at the brewery itself so here is a picture I stole off their website.

*more to come

www.highhousefarmbrewery.co.uk

Fyne Ales

2007-07-25T17:00:00.000Z

Fyne Ales

*more to come

Fyne Ales

Inveralmond Brewery

2007-07-25T16:57:00.000Z

Inveralmond Brewery

*more to come

www.inveralmond-brewery.co.uk

Harviestoun Brewery

2007-07-25T16:53:00.000Z

Harviestoun Brewery

*more to come

www.harviestoun-brewery.co.uk

Hesket Brewery

2007-07-25T16:49:00.000Z

Hesket Brewery

*more to come

www.hesketbrewery.co.uk

Dent Brewery

2007-07-25T16:44:00.000Z

Dent Brewery

*more to come

www.dentbrewery.co.uk

Spire Brewery

2007-07-25T16:39:00.001Z

Spire Brewery

*more to come

www.spirebrewery.co.uk

Quartz Brewery

2007-07-25T16:32:00.000Z

Quartz Brewery

*more to come

www.quartzbrewering.co.uk

Moorhouse Brewery

2007-07-23T18:18:00.000Z

Moorhouse's Brewery

A lack of photos at the moment but more info will appear shortly

www.moorhouses.co.uk

Little Valley Brewery

2007-07-23T18:00:00.000Z

Little Valley Brewery

Above is head brewer and co-owner Wim van der Spek standing next to a very attractive midget.

*more to come

www.littlevalleybrewery.co.uk

Wood Brewery

2007-07-19T20:21:00.000Z

www.woodbrewery.co.uk

Don't seem to have any photos from Wood Brewery so you will have to make do with this photo of the locality. It's either Wenlock Edge or somewhere close.

Ludlow Brewery

2007-07-19T20:16:00.001Z

www.theludlowbrewingcompany.co.uk

*more to come

www.theludlowbrewingcompany.co.uk

Wye Valley

2007-07-19T19:33:00.000Z

www.wyevalley.co.uk

Butcombe Brewery

2007-07-19T14:30:00.000Z

www.butcombe.com

No photos yet, should have one soon

Butcombe Brewery was started when Simon Whitmore, formerly Managing Director of Courage Western and before that with Guinness worldwide, set up in old farm buildings at his family home in Butcombe, 10 miles south of Bristol, in September 1978. As with a number of breweries it was a redundancy payment that paid for the brewing equipment. In 1978 the brew length was just 10 barrels, and the company had just 30 accounts, one lorry, and one employee.

The brewery was extended to 20 barrels in the summer of 1982 and subsequently to 45 barrels, and again in the autumn of 1992 increasing the brew length to a whopping 85 barrels! The Brewery now produces in excess of 22,000 barrels of beer per year, or almost 7 million pints of 4 brands only… Butcombe Bitter at 4.0%, Butcombe Blond at 4.3%, Butcombe Gold at 4.7% and Butcombe Brunel at 5.0%.

When we visited Butcombe we found a very efficient and industrious plant, now standing at a huge 150 barrel brewlength. It certainly seems like they are moving in the right direction and the focus appears to be local although the sheer quantity of beer they produce means they sell a lot further afield than Somerset.

Cheddar Ales

2007-07-19T02:56:00.000Z

www.cheddarales.co.uk

Cheddar Ales started up in 2006 when former Butcombe brewer Jem Ham decided to take the plunge and be his own boss. A sizeable unit with plenty of room for expansion is situated just outside Cheddar and a 20 barrel brewplant was rescued from Dublin for the purpose of filling that space.

2 beers are currently being brewed:

Potholer - a zesty 4.3% Golden Ale
Best Bitter - a very moreish 4% session bitter

No doubt the range will be expanded at some point in the near future, but why run before you can walk. It will be good to return to Cheddar Ales in future to see how the new brewery is getting on. The beers are certainly good enough, we wouldn't say they are the best we had on the trip but they are both very drinkable and well worth trying again. Hopefully soon. Mmmmmmmm................................beer.................................

One of the very sensible things Jem has done is to comission a simple, but very effective, website that looks good and tells you all you need to know. Actually there is probably room for a bit more info, but I still think it is one of the best I have seen.

Moor Brewery

2007-07-19T01:33:00.000Z

www.moorbeer.co.uk

Moor Brewery was the first brewery we visited on the trip and has to go down as one of our favourites despite the fact that we couldn't stay long.

Photos will be added soon as I don't have any right now. You will have to do with the logo above which will remain until I am summoned to court for copyright infringements.

The brewery itself is run by Justin Hawke, American by birth, but Anglicised by 10 years in Blighty, while the company itself (and the corresponding wholesale business) is the work of Arthur and Annette Frampton who started up in 1996 on their dairy farm. A 10 barrel plant was installed last winter and demand appears to be increasing.

Moor Beer have a surprising 8 regular beers, not exactly the norm for a small brewery, and have plenty of awards for a number of these. The 7.3% Old Freddy Walker is in Roger Protz's '300 beers to try before you die' (an extraordinarily apocalyptic title for a list of tasty beers). Milly's and Somerland Gold are both award winners as well, but the beer attracting attention right now appears to be Revival which is a helluva tasty beer for 3.8% and fuses 3 American hops for it's intense flavour.

We tried the Revival on our visit and were more than a little impressed. Instantly shortlisted for 'beer of the trip', I can't imagine a tastier beer at that alcohol content.

BikingforBeer Awards

2007-07-12T01:58:00.000Z

Everyone has an awards ceremony these days. Well we can't actually afford a ceremony, or prizes, 'cause we are well skint innit, but we can still list what we thought to be the very best of our experiences during the trip.

Beer and Brewery Awards
It is of course impossible to really accurately gauge the standards of beers we have tasted throughout the trip due to the huge number of variables but we may as well have a go.

Best Beer - Revival - Moor Beer
Too easy to go with a stronger beer, this 3.8% effort from a small brewery in Somerset is as tasty as anything we have tasted elsewhere and gets our vote

Best Bottled Beer - Old Engine Oil - Harviestoun
We got to try plenty of bottled beers throughout the trip, often at breweries that weren't able to give us a fresh taster. This category has plenty of high quality contenders and mentions have to be made for Cairngorm's 'Tradewinds' and Hoggley's 'Mild'

Favourite Brewery - Moor Beer / Hoggley's Brewery - joint winners
How do you judge this? Well it is always going to go to a smaller brewery, we enjoyed the bigger units we visited but you can't get the same sort of homliness and we liked the real enthusiasm for beer at these places.

Favourite Brewer - Stuart Cail - Harviestoun
Who were we most impressed with? Well most, in fact all, of the brewers we met really, but Stuart stood out and his beers are top notch. Honourable mention to Justin Hawke of Moor Beer and to Wim Van der Spek of Little Valley as well.

Best Tour - Wood Brewery
What a difficult one to judge. Everyone had their own agenda and own style, very hard to compare. The head brewer from Wood, whose name I have forgotten, wins it through sheer enthusiasm. Head brewer from Moorhouse also deserves a mention here.

Best Reception - Fyne Ales
I'm not exactly sure why some people seemed as glad to see us as they were, but we were well looked after at a number of places. The open bar, buffet and general reception at Fyne Ales was brilliant. Honourable mentions to High House and Dent as well who were both fantastic.

Best Brewery Location - Little Valley Brewery
Although there are obvious practicle reasons for placing a brewery in a industrial estate you can't beat a really dramatic location for any product that is essentially drawn from the earth. Hesket, Fyne, Dent, High House and Chiltern Valley were all in fantastic areas, but we go for Little Valley Brewery here for being a very clean and tidy operation right out in the middle of nowhere, on a big hill and with some dramatic landscape in West Yorkshire. We had to cycle upwards so far to get there that we ended up in a cloud that we didn't even see at the bottom! Now that's dramatic.

Best Website - Cheddar Ales
I have seen a lot of brewery websites, over 200 I think although I have discounted all of those who didn't reply (which leaves about 35). Some are easier to navigate than others, some have more info, some have a better colour scheme etc,. Cheddar Ales have a great first page and a simple but effective layout. Very good.

Most generous individual - A bloke called Dave in Aviemore
A pretty stupid category really, we could give this to any one of about 20 people, mostly brewery related, but the handing over of £100 by a slightly drunk Scots/Irishman (he said he was Irish despite a broad Scottish accent. We assume his granddad was Irish) we chatted to in Aviemore wins it to save bickering. Really we should be giving this to someone like Mike Parker from Heskett, Johnny Delap from Fyne Ales, Sally Urwin from High House for example but a ton's a ton..........

Other Awards

Best Day - Day 17, John O'Groats to Durness
In a trip riddled with crap weather Day 17 was a refreshing break. The wind was strong and right behind us all the way, the sun came out and the scenery was superb. Easy choice.

Best Campsite - Bude
Another easy one. It was wet and horrible but we were treated brilliantly and the cup of tea in the morning was outstanding. All camping and caravaning club sites appear to be excellent, the rest were a real mix.

Diary - the aftermath

2007-07-10T14:20:00.000Z

So was it all worth it?

We had to put up with rain and wind on a near daily basis, occasional bike failures, stupid members of the public (often in vehicles), rubbish signposting, roadworks, terrible roads, crap campsites and a few other annoyances. Most of all we had to put up with each other for 5 weeks. It also took ages to organise, from emailing countless breweries to spending weeks preparing a route and timescale to fit everything in. And it cost us plenty of cash as well - about £2500 in total (this total can easily be cut down if you don't head into the pub every night for a meal and a few pints).

On the other hand we saw plenty of places we have never seen before, met a lot of interesting and generous people, visited places we would otherwise never have been to, got 5 weeks of fresh air into our lungs, grew much fitter and raised money for charity. Most of all though we learnt a hell of a lot, about ourselves, about the country we live in, about brewing and small businesses, and about completing what you set out to do.

Overall it was a great experience and we have plenty of people to thank for making that so. A lot of effort went in, but I feel like we gained more than enough from it to justify the effort. All that's left now is when to do it again............................

Diary - Day 37 (the last day)

2007-07-09T01:12:00.000Z

A little predictably the final day of our trip started with us getting wet. As we woke up at around 7am we could hear the sound of rain bashing against the tent and neither of us wanted to move. As I in fact didn't move Sam took it as a sign to go back to sleep and I followed him quite quickly.

So we started at about 8:15 instead. This was not ideal as we had to get to Truro to visit Skinner's brewery in the morning, the weather was nasty and a question mark hung over my back wheel. So we packed up, it hardly mattered that the tent was getting wet this time, and headed to St Austell. Picked up breakfast in a BP garage, not for the first time, and headed down the main road towards Truro. And then we had problems............

Another puncture for me, my back-wheel was starting to give way after hauling around so much weight for so long. I blew it up and hoped for the best but it was flat again after a few hundred yards so the innertube was changed and I cycled into Truro with a now noticeably buckled back-wheel. We found Skinner's brewery and met someone called Amy who gave us a smile, a cheque for the charities and passed us onto to another Skinner's employee (who's name I have clearly forgotten as usual) and we were off on a tour of the brewery with a few other people.

It was an efficient place and Skinners appears to be growing pretty quickly. Their beers are pretty tasty as well so I wont begrudge them some success. Cornwall has more than it's fair share of good breweries so a return visit isn't out of the reckoning. This is Sam pouring a pint at the bar:

It would have been great to sit around trying all of their wares, but we had things to do starting with fixing my bike. Next up would be filling stomachs. We achieved the bike fixing part fairly well having taken directions from another fella from Skinners, a helpful bunch, and were lucky enough to find a competent bike mechanic ready to fix the wheel in minutes. Brilliant, if only they were all like that. We had a quick burger at Burger King, the only time on the trip we used a multinational burger-crap outlet, and dissapeared into the Cornwall countryside trying to find our next stop - Dog House Brewery.

We were well behind time already, I had said around 1 to 1:30 to Steve at Dog House, but we arrived at just before 4pm. Of course we also had Land's End to get to today and my parents were already in Cornwall waiting for us to finish. We met them at the brewery as we chatted to Steve, a bloody nice bloke by the way who we had also met at St Ives on day 1 of the trip, so Steve was our first and last brewer of the trip. Dog House itself is a small brewery run through the passion of the owner and producing some pretty fair beers, as seemed to be the norm on this trip.

We left with bladders a little fuller and found ourselves in something called sunlight. The weather had been gradually improving during the day and now it had reached a stage where we could call it 'nice'. I didn't seem to have the right maps, or any at all, for the next few miles so I was navigating by the sun and what I could see. Cornwall is one of the easier places to do this as the sea can be seen on both sides when you are high up and at Four Lanes we were about 700ft above sea level. The next 15 miles was very enjoyable and took much less than an hour to achieve as we hammered down into Penzance, the wind now still and failing to slow us down for once.

At Penzance we stopped at one last supermarket for once more meal of sandwiches and assorted crap, we were overdue a meal by now and were not in a hurry to do the last stretch on empty stomachs. One thing that had certainly improved was our ability to go distances without much food intake - not a good idea at any point, but sometimes it happens. Early on we had to eat regularly or would get fatigued quite quickly, but now it was possible to go 40 or 50 miles without consuming anything more than a flapjack.

The last 10 miles was simple enough. As soon as a few little hills were encountered I went clear of Sam, enjoying the solitude and the cool evening breeze as the sun still shone down on us. I stopped and allowed him to catch up about a mile from the end and rang my mum to tell her we were nearly there. As we flew down the last stretch and entered Land's End we expected someone to be out taking photos of us, but they were all still sitting in the van chatting!

We took a few lacklustre photos of us at the Land's End sign, but really we wanted to get home as it was about to get dark. Change of clothes, bikes in vehicles and we were ready to go. Sam went with his dad back to Somerset and my parents took me back to Oxfordshire, all done for this year after 37 days, 2766 miles, numerous breweries, pubs, campsites, hostels, interesting people, interesting places, great scenery and loads and loads of bloody wind and rain. I was looking forward to sitting indoors for a few days.

Day 37 review

Mileage - 75ish
Weather rating - 7/10 - nonsense to start with, beautiful summer evening to finish
Breweries - 2
Punctures - 1

Diary - Day 36

2007-07-08T18:09:00.000Z

Having got up nice and early I spent over an hour waiting for Sam to turn up so when he finally did arrive I wasn't best pleased. The weather had reverted to wet and windy already and we had a bit of a trek today so wasting time in the morning was a long way from ideal. I had tried to book beds at a youth hostel but they were fully booked and it looked like our last night would be spent in a tent. Not a problem as such, but with a lot of rain coming in I wouldn't have minded somewhere dry to sleep.

So, yes, it was raining as we set off. The bright sunshine of yesterday, when it was hardly necessary, had gone and we headed towards Dartmoor getting mildly wet as we went. First stop was Buckfastleigh, home of the abbey as shown in the photo below:

We stopped for a peak around, had a bit to eat then began the long march up over Dartmoor. Much more of a concern than the drizzling rain was the wind, and as the rain cleared the wind became more prominent. On the B3357 now heading West we were being hit full in the face by it and mental fatigue was beginning to show. It was in this state we met up with Mick, a man I had spoken to via the CTC forum and who had agreed to meat us on our last leg and do a little bit of the journey with us. Unfortunately Mick's arrival coincided with my first puncture of the entire journey, about 8 miles before Tavistock. My tyres had been inpenetrable for 2600 miles but finally the roads got the better of them.

I could find no sign of anything sharp and I wonder if the puncture may have been caused by wheel buckling. This was starting to become a little bit more apparent now, spokes needed tightening before we reached Land's End so we headed into Tavistock with a visit to a bike shop in mind. The woman at the bike shop however believed she was a comedian and I was in no mood for anything other than straight-forward bike fixing so after a spot of lunch we headed on regardless. The back wheel wasn't that bad, but the next chance we found to get it fixed would have to be taken. It was too late by the time we reached Liskeard so St Austell or Truro the next day were the options.

This is the view from the top of Dartmoor:

We didn't have a great deal of options bar main roads today, the A390 into Liskeard and then on the same road to Lostwithiel. It had ceased to rain for some time now, the sun poking it's head out at times but it never became particularly warm and we spent most of the day in a very average mood. Mick said later that we looked tired and I think he was right, although it was much more mental than physical - mostly we were bored of plodding through dismal landscapes, often in places we had seen in better weather and enjoyed.

Mick left us a little before Liskeard as he had to get home, and it would later turn out he had been feeling a little ill on the day. It was a welcome break from the norm to have someone different along, although I think he could have caught us on a better day. We just wanted to get through today, it was basically an irrelevance with nothing to achieve other than to get further along.

As we rolled into Lostwithiel, trying to formulate a plan as it was now about 6pm, the heavens opened. Great. We took shelter in a pub and had a meal while we waited for the rain to stop, but it didn't stop and we were forced back out to get wet with darkness coming and nowhere to rest our heads for the night.

We trawled up into the hills and found a campsite near Luxylan that seemed to be doubling up as a swimming pool. We found a pitch, put up a damp tent, which became damper, and headed to the shower block. This required a key-code to get into and as we arrived late we had no such thing so I hung around the door waiting for someone to come out and popped in. Once inside the showers were pretty good so at least we didn't end up angry like we had in some sites - one of the most annoying thing on this trip was to walk into a shower block and find crap showers. A small piece of grass on which to put a tent and a half-decent shower was all we would want so paying money and not getting one of these things never went down that well.

And that was it for the day - spectacularly uneventful as it was. We lay in the tent listening to rain hammering down and hoped that it would cease by morning...............

Day 36 review

Mileage - 80ish
Pints drunk - couple each
Nice chaps called Mick met - 1
Weather rating - 4/10 - it wasn't all bad, just frustrating for the most part but getting soaked at the end was a real pain.

Diary - Day 35

2007-07-06T17:38:00.000Z

A stunningly simple day today. All we had to do was get from Kingsteignton to Paignton - a total of just over 10 miles and as it was Sunday morning we took the A380 and were hardly passed by anyone. In Paignton we located my uncle's house and unloaded our bikes. Sam spent the day in town with his girlfriend, Cass, and I minced about at my uncles, wandering around Paignton and watching TV. Splendid.

Diary - Day 34

2007-07-05T17:02:00.000Z

A nice short day today, relatively, and most of the next day off so we were not in the greatest of hurries to get going. Added to that it was scorching in the morning and this was so confusing it took some time to adapt. Dorset and south Devon can often look like this:

Due to the absurd number of contours in this part of the world and the lack of other options we spent the entire morning on main roads, taking the A35 and then the slightly less mental A3052. It was warm and the views were good, but there was plenty of climbing to do and a lot of concentrating as cars belted past every few seconds. I have no idea why people do the entire length of the country on main roads, I can only assume retardation is to blame. We had a great time on minor roads leading all over the place, most of which we could spend taking up as much space as we wanted, but on main roads there is no such luxury. Each to their own and all that, but it is clear to me that I am right and other people are spectacularly wrong!

We negotiated Exeter, or the edge of it, and took the A379 down the coast until Dawlish and then took to the hills in the vague direction of Kingsteignton. Our target was Red Rock Brewery situated on a farm somewhere in this general area. It took a little while but we located it and sat outside drinking the beers that had been kindly left for us:

Due to the fact it was Saturday afternoon and some people have better things to do than wait around for us we never got to meet ........ of Red Rock. He left the bottles for us as he had said he would and we drunk to his health, and possibly the detriment of our own, in his absence. There will be another chance to see Red Rock I am sure, it's a part of the country well worth a visit.

This is the best photo of Sam peeing that I was able to take (and there were plenty of opportunities!):

Just look at that sunshine! Amazing stuff, we had barely seen that since the Peak district but for about a day and a half in the north of Scotland.

To round off the day we rolled into the campsite on the river Teign and met a few interesting characters. As we wheeled our bikes through the site someone in a static abode asked us if we had been in the Tour de France, or some such jocular nonsense. We explained the trip to him and before we knew it we had been invited to the birthday party of some fella called Harry who we had never met until that moment. This is the view from our tent:

So an hour later after showering and changing we were back to Harry's caravan being fussed over by a bunch of very nice people, mostly with 40 years headstart on us, and eating and drinking copious amounts of their snacks and booze. We spent a few hours talking, mostly listening really, to another bloke who lived on the site as well. He was a boxing trainer and certainly had a fair bit of passion for the sport. That was an interesting episode and it was fascinating to listen to a 56 year old man who still tried his utmost to keep up with his much more youthful charges, to the extent of not drinking at all! Dedication that is, 'and I don't have it' I thought as I tucked into another 12 mini sausages and can of beer. A little before midnight we bumped into a young Welsh couple who had also been press-ganged into eating snacks and drinking cans of beer. After a chat with them we were kicked out, nicely, and headed back to the tent knowing it was a good thing we had little to do tomorrow...............

Day 34 review

Mileage - about 55
Weather - 9/10 - the best day since Durness
Pints drunk - possibly the most yet. Good day :)

Diary - Day 33

2007-07-04T14:06:00.000Z

Our 33rd day on the bikes, nearly 2500 miles on the clock and we were back heading to the west-country where it had all begun nearly 5 weeks ago. It had all the makings of a very good day and nearly was, but yet again the weather prevented it from being brilliant. We began in Land's End hoping that the winds would come from their usual direction of South-West. Well they did for 2 days but since then we had been battling headwinds 80% of our time on the bikes
so it was no great surprise when the South-Westerlies came just as we were heading in that direction. It is a common theme of long distance bike rides for the participants to complain about their weather misfortunes, but I doubt if we did this for every year for the next decade we would not have so many difficulties on any one.

Having negotiated the New Forest, which looked like the photo below (damp and windy), we found our way to Ringwood and popped into the brewery to see Diana Kitcher.

Diana gave us a tour, chatted about the brewing business and gave us a few tasters. Ringwood was quite an impressive Brewery, a fair bit bigger than I first believed, employing around 55 people and covering a sizeable local area. Ringwood appear to have focused on the locality
and have not put the same effort into bottling and selling far afield. It doesn't seem to be harming them at all. Their 'Boondoggle' is worth a try for sure.

After lunch in a cafe just down the road we headed out to Blandford Forum through a selection of windy roads, then moved on towards Cerne Abbas. We turned away from there, and the giant which I have still yet to see, and went towards Dorchester as we needed food and toilets. Coming out of Dorchester we went past Maiden castle and ended up at Hardy's monument. Not Thomas Hardy the writer as it would be common to assume, but Vice-Admiral Thomas Masterman Hardy of 'Kiss me Hardy' fame, i.e. the fella that heard Nelson's last words. This is what the view is like from the base of the monument:

After quite a few days of moderate hills and flat ground we were back into the world of inclines and declines and these became quite serious along the coast towards Bridport. We made our way to the Three Horseshoes, a very attractive and popular pub, which was run by a couple that Sam worked with a couple of years previous. Very convenient indeed it turned out, we were given meals and beer as well as beds for the night. Absolutely spot on, we ended the day on a high then. The weather in the evening had turned out very well after a shaky start and we were hopeful of a decent day tomorrow..........

Day 33 review

Mileage - 90+
Ales drunk - lots, mostly in the evening
Weather rating - 7/10 - rubbish start but it was nice in the end and despite the wind we were quite happy.

Diary - Day 32

2007-07-03T21:39:00.000Z

It was always going to be tough to get going today. Leaving your own house is infinitely more difficult than leaving a dirty tent in a campsite in the middle of nowhere. Our first stop was to be Chiltern Valley Winery and Brewery located in the Chiltern hills just north of Henley. A little bit worryingly we were making good time on that first leg heading East, the wind at our backs, and we knew that most of the next few days would involve constantly heading West. Past Watlington the roads began to reach upwards and soon enough we were in amongst the trees trying to find the brewery. It is certainly set in a great location and we rolled in to meet David Ealand, the enthusiastic owner, by about 11am.

It was interesting to see a business at a different end of the scale to all of those that we had visited before. Chiltern Valley (the brewery itself is called Old Luxter's) caters for those who care much more for quality than price and it is therefore well situated near Henley. The shop contained a number of items that would be a little too expensive for me, but it all looked so good.............

The ales that we tried were top notch - while there we tasted some of the Gold and the Bitter but I returned there a little after the trip had finished and took home some of the Dark Roast which I really liked. David sent us away with some fruit cake and chocolate to keep us going and we sat down to eat these items on a village green a few miles later as you can see here:

Exactly what route we took that day I can't remember, but it did involve going through Ecchinswell as that is where we were when the photo below was taken. It is also where it began to tip down and we spent 30 minutes sheltering in the bus stop where I took the photo from. From there we headed towards Whitchurch and then Stockbridge where we stopped for a meal in a decent pub. It was another day where an unspectacular yet pleasant landscape turned to a bit of a drag as the rain came down and the temperature dropped. Not terrible conditions, but tough to really enjoy. Our meal was decent but we had to push on and finish the day before it became dark.

We found our campsite near Sherfield English on the edge of the New Forest and it was a pretty good one. It was more than the average cost for a tent pitch, but the showers were excellent and the bathrooms were even heated! Well worth a couple of extra pounds, I would make sure I woke early enough to get a shower in the next morning as well.......

Day 32 Review

Mileage - not sure, but about 95 would be a sensible guess. It was pretty far though not the most challenging
Crap weather rating - 6/10 We have had much worse, but it was a little annoying all the same.
Decent Pints drunk - a few - the tasters at Chiltern Valley were top notch and a couple of Summerskills beers at the pub were good an' all.

Diary - Day 31

2007-07-02T20:58:00.000Z

So we were back on track by Wednesday lunchtime after a couple of days of rest and recuperation. All the time we were itching to get back on the bikes and finish, it was a little strange not to be cycling all day, but we were also very glad of the time off and besides which we needed two bikes and only one was functioning properly.

Being dropped off in Northampton we headed straight into Frog Island brewery for a long, rambling and informative chat with Bruce Littler before heading on towards the village of Litchbrough, about 10 miles further on, to see Roy Crutchley and Julie Hogg of Hoggleys Brewery.

This is me standing with Bruce and sporting 4 weeks worth of beard as well as a fairly burnt face despite the lack of sunlight:

Hoggleys turned out to be one of our favourite breweries. It was still in it's infancy as a business having been upgraded from a garden shed operation not too long before, but the beers were good (their mild being one of the best beers of the entire trip), Julie and Roy were very likeable people and the brewery itself in a small industrial area was well set-up. Good luck to them, I really hope things work out.

Here are Sam, Roy and Julie, all doing no work whatsoever on a weekday. Isn't life great?

We spent maybe 3 hours at Hoggleys, although I am not sure quite where the time went. We learnt a lot about their starting up and tried a few of the beers, then headed off towards Oxford well behind schedule already after only having cycled 10 miles. Our route took us through Silverstone, Buckingham, Marsh Gibbon and Islip and although there are more spectacular parts of the country than South Northamptonshire and North Oxfordshire it was a massive improvement on the last few days of cycling.

This is the entrance to Buckingham taken at a jaunty angle for extra effect:

We were trying to get a bit of a move on as we had a barbecue to attend at a friends house in Oxford. Cheers Chris. Despite the wind yet again being against us, having taken the hilarious move of finally swinging round to the South-West just as we began heading in that direction. 35 miles went by in under 3 hours and we arrived in Oxford at a little after 7pm. A number of people were there to ask about the trip and eat barbecued grub and we had an excellent evening eventually heading up towards my house in Headington for the night.

Day 31 review

Mileage - about 50ish.....
Breweries - 2
Pints - quite a few....
Glad to be back on the bikes? - Yep, although the headwind we could have done without.

Diary - Day 30

2007-07-01T20:28:00.000Z

It just wasn't getting any better. The plan was to get to Oxford today but we didn't even achieve that. After heading through Bedford we were coming into Woburn, just outside Milton Keynes, when Sam's bike really began to give up on us. Another puncture, an absolutely knackered tyre, a few other problems and it was a Sunday. Couldn't have been much worse really and after numerous phone calls we were no closer to finding anywhere that would fix the bike. As I was trying to sort out something on the phone to my mum she suddenly said 'Dad will pick you up if you need it'. Not a tough decision really, we were going nowhere fast and had few options on the worst day of the week to be trying to get anything done. We were picked up from Woburn a little after midday and driven back to Stanford-in-the-vale to spend the next couple of days at my parents.

We could have left on the Tuesday, maybe even the Monday, but there was little point. We had visits organised to a few breweries in Northampton, another in the Chilterns and more further south so I had no intention of ringing them all up and asking to change dates. We would begin again in Northampton on Wednesday, about 20 miles further from Oxford than we had stopped previously, but in position to arrive at our next two breweries on time and to continue to the end of the ride, hopefully without too much more drama.

In the meantime we took Sam's bike into Giles Sports in Carterton in order to get it fixed and ready to do the last 500 odd miles. As usual they were perfectly reliable and the rest of the journey went without incident for Sam's bike, the only time on the trip that that was the case.

Diary - Day 29

2007-06-30T20:04:00.000Z

This turned out to be a major turning point of the entire trip. After weeks of wind and rain we felt like we may have just got lucky and skirted the floods, but today the severe weather warnings were back and by midday it was bucketing down. The weather had become progressively worse as we headed south from Horncastle to Boston along a dull selection of incredibly flat roads and by the time we began heading East towards King's Lynn we had just about had enough. Sitting in a pub near Holbeach we listened to weather reports suggesting flooding was imminent, watched it pour down outside and weighed up what to do.

I doubted that we would have trouble with floods, but there was a chance of it happening and besides which I didn't want to spend 3 days ploughing along flat and chronically dull roads getting soaked. We took the sensible option and cut out East Anglia. Heading South past Peterbrough, through Whittlesly and onto some of the most boring roads this country has to offer we were stopped by another puncture on Sam's bike. This was a brief respite from boredom, but eventually we ended up in Little Staughton, our minds for once number than our arses.

After we had decided to cut off a massive corner of the trip the weather had become better, just to be even more annoying I assume, but we were getting soaked again by the time we pulled into the campsite. Tent up and we were looking for a place to eat when the people in the tent 20 yards further along asked us if we were hungry. 2 minutes later we were munching through barbecued food and getting mildly wetter despite being under cover. A little while later we were in the pub and that was it for the day. Possibly the most interesting part of the entire day was seeing a squirrel. That's it.

Day 29 review

Mileage - 95
Flatness factor - 101%
Dullness factor - 1001%

Diary - Day 28

2007-06-29T19:37:00.000Z

We started off with a 'continental breakfast', which sounds exotic although I seem to remember it being Cornflakes and toast. Had 4 rounds of it though so can't complain. We left the backpackers and were soon on the B1228 before turning off through Melbourne and encountering some flooding:

This was easily the most interesting part of what was a fantastically dull part of the country. Not unpleasant, just a bit dull, but at least we were able to see some of it. There was a bit of rain, but we hardly noticed light rainfalls any more. We made our way to the Humber bridge (the longest bridge in Britain) via North Cave and Riplingham and headed across towards Lincolnshire - a big and almost entirely unexciting county.

This is Sam repairing yet another puncture on the road a few miles from the Humber:

And this is the Humber bridge:

Somehow we stumbled upon a bike shop just after the bridge in Barton-upon-Humber and picked some some innertubes. We would later regret not picking up a new back tyre for Sam's bike. From there we went through Elsham and Caistor onto the B1225 which we followed all the way to our campsite near Horncastle. I say the county is unexciting, although I should also mention that on a fairly sunny day it is very pleasant nonetheless. It was good to be riding through some decent countryside without getting soaked, although we did have a fairly strong wind to deal with - just not straight into our faces for a nice change.

96 miles done, tent put up and we were back on the bikes, unladen and almost weightless it seemed, and off to the pub in Hemingby. The Coach and Horses was graced by our presence at about 8pm and it was bloody good. Decent food, good beer, a pool table................. What more could we want? Pretty sure the Landlord gave us a few quid off for no particular reason as well.

We got slightly lost on the way back, completely forgetting which way we came into the village but found our way eventually and rode along feeling very happy with the days work, the moon out, sun asleep and a crispness to the air. Not a cloud in sight................

Day 28 review

Mileage: 96
Pints drunk: 6
Weather: 8/10 (not brilliant, but again the later part of the day was much better than early on)

Diary - Day 27

2007-06-28T19:14:00.000Z

Not much worth saying about this day as we spent very little of it cycling. About 7 miles into York, then we found a scabby backpackers (which was an error), found a useless bike shop (which was frustrating), then spent the rest of the day relaxing in one way or another.

After fitting a new brake disc to Sam's bike we headed for Pizza hut and I broke my existing record for slices of pizza eaten in one sitting. Actually I smashed it. 13 slices was the mark, I ate 20! Sam managed 16 as well so I reckon we got our money's worth out of that. We didn't eat for another 9 hours afterwards, a cup of tea and a couple of pints provided enough to keep us going. After we had watched Shrek 3 at the cinema Sam went to wander round the Minster while I sorted out some banking. Then we went back to the cinema to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 3, a fairly lengthy but entertaining film (for some reason all 3 films we saw on the trip were the third in a series). A Chinese meal at 9pm then one more pint and we were ready for bed.

Not for the first time on the trip when we stayed in a building I wished that we had slept in the tent. I can't remember any time when my sleep was interrupted in the tent, yet rarely did I get a full night's sleep in hostels etc,. Sam's constant fidgeting made a lot of noise in a creaky bed and the one other inhabitant of our room, an Australian girl it transpired, had a phone call at 4am which she seemed less amused by than I was. Sam slept through it.

Diary - Day 26

2007-06-27T15:32:00.000Z

A long, long day today covering over 100 miles by the end. Overall it was a fairly good one, but that had much more to do with the afternoon than the morning. Early on we were hit by another case of 'weather' along with a lot of struggling up and down hills. My own fault really, I set the route to go along the pennines as I thought it would be more interesting - it was to a degree but you just can't enjoy good views if rain and clouds cover them up.

This is an early view, the clouds coming in as we ground our way up onto some very high points.

And this one shows Sam churning up one of the first hills of the day. Not an easy one for sure.

We weren't up in the pennines all that long, about 20 miles, but with the rain coming down and a few nasty climbs such as the very steep road out of Stanhope we were glad to be going down towards Barnard Castle and to have the sun come out 10 minutes later was brilliant. We flew into the town, through Eggleston on the B6278 and stopped in a pub for lunch. Then it was onto Darlington and away from anything that looked like a hill. At some point in the afternoon I would have to make a decision, straight down to York through the flatlands or via the North York Moors.

The wind had been coming from the West all day and the big bank of dark cloud in front of us seemed to be a little north of the moors so we took the long way round to see what the moors were like. We stopped in Hutton Rudby for food just as the wind changed and the north wind brought the rain along with a 10 degree drop in temperature. So we were soaked as we headed towards the considerable incline that led us up onto the top, but the rain went as quickly as it had arrived and by the time we reached the top it was bright sunshine again. This part of the day turned out to be easily the best part.

This is the view looking north-east at the top of the climb onto the moors, just after Carlton-in-Cleveland:

Foolishly I neglected to take any photos after that. With the sun out there were some great views but I just didn't want to stop.

We reached Helmsley after a very easy ride through the sun-drenched moors and sat in the town eating flapjacks and enjoying what is a very pretty town-centre. The hostel in the town was tempting, but we had plenty of energy and wanted a full day off the next day so headed on towards York. We found a campsite at Strensall and stopped there, wandering down to the pub and eating crappy snackfood in place of an actual meal. It was pretty late when we arrived there, the campsite was partially flooded and ours was the only tent - mostly caravans - but everything worked out well enough.

Day 26 review

Mileage - 106
Weather - 7/10 (crap morning, great evening)
Nice beers - none
Great views - quite a few, mostly the North York Moors because we couldn't see much along the Pennines.

Diary - Day 24

2007-06-26T22:10:00.000Z

Got up at about 8am, sorted ourselves out and went to the pub for 9am. Good start to the day, although not a great one time-wise. After we had stuffed ourselves with as much breakfast as possible it was about 10:30 by the time we were out of Lanark. To make things worse it started raining about 10 miles later and this would be the very predictable theme of the day. As we would later learn Sheffield and nearby areas were flooding badly and the whole of the north of England was under extreme flood warnings so we were a little fortunate not to get hit that badly. Not that it made us feel all that good at the time. After 3 weeks of tough weather conditions we really didn't want to be heading into floods.

So 12 days and about a thousand miles after we we last left Lanark we were on our way out of the town again. Straight down the main road to Biggar as the weather grew gradually worse, then into the town to try to find some sarnies. This, unfortunately, we did not achieve and ended up out of Biggar without any food. Also a fairly strange thing happened on that main road - an old man stopped his car a few hundred yards ahead of us and as we overtook him it looked as though he was trying to get out. A little odd that someone wanted to stop on a main road maybe, but we were too busy trying to shield our eyes from cold rain to worry about such things. The car went by us and stopped in a lay-by further up. As we passed we heard the old man say something, which I now believe was possibly "am I invisible". I am assuming that he didn't actually believe that he was invisible but rather expected us to stop to talk to him. Maybe, in better conditions, my mind may have been functioning better and I may have worked out that he had something to say to us, but I had bigger concerns at that time and the chance passed us by. I wonder what he wanted to say?

He may have wished to tell us that some roads were blocked further along our route. As we left Broughton, having got hold of some sarnies at a cafe, we saw signs telling us that the A701 was shut off further down the road for whatever reason. Fortunately we were turning off before that, at Tweedsmuir we cut across the hills towards the A708 on our way to Hawick. As we turned off the main road we were only 15 miles from Moffat, fondly remembered as the only good part of the day over a week earlier. The countryside around the town was certainly spectacular, albeit somewhat barren at times.

Then it got difficult:

This is a photo I took standing on a small bridge overlooking Talla reservoir. It does show that the weather is a little nasty, plenty of low cloud and the fence on the left drops out of sight where the road becomes a 1 in 3 or so. It doesn't show the fact that the wind was belting through this corridor at a mighty rate, giving us a hell of a time getting up to this point. Here is Sam struggling up the final part:

After this I didn't get the camera out again for about 7 hours. My hands were too cold and there was nothing worth photographing anyway. Both of us stopped dead at some point on that little climb, not a good thing on such a steep section as getting going again was really difficult, but coming around one bend we were hit by an immense gust of wind that was impossible to cycle through. The view would have been good but for all the cloud, and rain, and the cold wind................

Fortunately the wind wasn't so strong on all of that little road, but it was certainly a pain and the cold rain driving into our faces was far from enjoyable. Passing Meggert reservoir we stopped for food. There was no shelter and the sarnies we ate were the only food we had that day between breakfast and our next meal at 5pm. 70 miles - 2 sandwiches. Not a good idea.

The next 10 miles or so were mostly taken up by feeling cold and really annoyed. Stopping to eat was essential, but led to us getting wetter and colder without much hope of warming up. Sam had his gloves and boots that he had bought in Inverness and was, maybe for the only time, less concerned about the cold than me. Neither of us was enjoying it much though, which was a shame because I think the B711 that took us into Hawick would have been a good route on a better day.

In Hawick we stopped at an Italian takeaway and ate some very welcome pasta dishes in there. Then it was on to Morrisons to stock up on Flapjacks and a little wait while Sam answered another oddly timed call of nature. Not very regular that fella. And then off towards Britain's largest forest - Kielder - where we would stay the night.

On the way we crossed the border back into England - it was quite amazing how quickly Scottish accents gave way to English, almost as soon as we crossed the border there was a dramatic difference - border's accents giving way to a more Geordie style. A few miles after the border we rolled into Kielder, 95 miles on from Lanark and starting to get dark, but the weather for this last patch had been so much more enjoyable. The wind was much calmer, the rain almost completely gone and as a result the temperature was nearly sensible. So at the end of the day we were finally able to enjoy cycling along the B6357 watching Buzzards and seeing trees for miles on each side.

The YHA was closed so we went into the Angler's arms and had a decent meal and a decent pint for a decent price. I can't remember the name of the pint, but it was local (something to do with a castle) and tasty. As we settled in with chocolate drinks laced with whiskey it became apparent that it was getting dark outside and we had nowhere to sleep. Moving was a real pain, it had been a long day and the pub was bloody comfortable, but we had to go and put up a tent. The campsite was soaked and empty, but the shower was free so we didn't mind. About 2 minutes after getting into our sleeping bags we were asleep.

Day 24 review

Mileage - 95
Pints - only the one each unfortunately
Crapness rating - Very high until about 5pm. Stinking weather most of the day, but had we been 300 miles south it would have been worse.

Diary - Day 25

2007-06-26T14:59:00.000Z

We were all set for another stinker of a day, but the crap weather had dispersed when we woke up and just a general dampness remained. The day certainly promised more - it was notably shorter and involved two breweries as well as some decent scenery. It only needed sensible weather and for once we got it.

It was a slow start, we wanted to be up early and managed a 7:30 start, getting on the bikes before 9 for a change. Into the shop for a breakfast of pasties and flapjacks etc, then up the road to eat it overlooking the reservoir. A slow pace as we woke our bodies up, but after breakfast we averaged 14.5mph for 35 miles heading through Bellingham, along the B6320 and onto the B6318 that tracks along the route of Hadrian's wall.

This is Hadrian's wall:

Or lack of it.

This is Sam standing around quite near Hadrian's wall:

The wind nicely from the north as we headed more or less south was a nice touch and we arrived at High House Farm Brewery at 12:30, on time for a change. (Well, nearly). We were really well looked after, given a Drayman's lunch which was very, very tasty, a pint of one of their ales - I forget which ones, but they were both good - then Steve came out to give us a quick tour, gave us some tasters and we were on our way again with High House t-shirts in our bags. So there is an ulterior motive for saying that their beers were great, but I would honestly say that a visit to the brewery and shop for lunch and a look round is very well worth while and the ales pretty damn tasty. Couldn't help but be impressed by the set-up and we were interested to hear that they had a very good process for recycling waste produce from the brewery - an advantage of combining a brewery and farm. Prince Charles would be impressed I am sure.................

This made it all the more annoying that I forgot to take a photo of High House Brewery. This is something that will have to be rectified at some point, I can certainly see the place going from strength to strength over the next few years.

Next up was Wylam Brewery. I had already heard good things about Wylam from the unlikely source of my old man who had tasted a few of their beers on his way through the area on driving jobs. We turned up, again nearly on time, and were treated to a tour of a brewery that somehow felt 'right' if not aesthetically the most pleasing. Plenty of tasters, a good thing we were near the end of the day for sure, and we both settled on 'Turbinia' as the best pint amongst quite a variety - some we loved, some we found very average. I liked the outlook at Wylam and it seemed to have a pretty solid reputation, part of which was founded on the award winning brewery tap just down the road. So that was our next stop of course.

The day was warming up nicely now as the sunglasses and my squinting in the above photo of us with ........ testify. We rolled into the tap for another pint and some sarnies, then pedalled very steadily towards the pennines. We were looking at a youth hostel at Edmundbyers on the edge of Derwent reservoir as a place for the night and we would reach it before long, but not before being overtaken by numerous cyclists on the stretch alongside the lake. A time-trial seemed to have begun as we entered that road and we watched the cyclist become progressively better and faster as each in turn sped past us leisurely plodding along in the sunshine, wearing off the effects of the afternoon's entertainment.

The hostel was small but perfect for us and we ate there then played chess for a while before turning in. Floods in Sheffield? Not here, at least we were lucky to miss out on all that even if we had little luck with the weather otherwise on the trip.

Day 25 review

Mileage - 73
Breweries - 2
Pints drunk - a lot, not even sure how many, and they were all pretty good.

Diary - Day 23

2007-06-24T15:01:00.000Z

Today was never likely to be much fun. It started of ok with the sun out and a nice easy trip down to the ferry at Dunoon to start the day. After getting soaked the previous evening before being attacked by midges again and then finding another bloody coin operated shower that we didn't have the correct coinage for, we were happy to get going without anything ridiculous happening. The ferry was straight-forward and with little traffic about on Sunday morning we could have enjoyed ourselves.

The downside came when we tried to follow the cycle routes through Greenock on our way towards Barrhead and found that when we did locate them they were covered in broken bottles or similar. A puncture soon occurred, predictably on Sam's bike (the strength of my tyres was a source of amazement throughout), and we had to stop to fanny around sorting that out. Back on the main roads then, or more accurately onto the random little backroads where guesswork rather than map-reading was the order of the day. I would have used the map more but for the fact it began to rain again, quite hard, and we seemed to be getting on ok without it.

We rolled into Barrhead on time at about 12:30, went to Kelburn brewery, found nobody there, then went for lunch in a cafe around the corner. Having royally stuffed our faces it was back round the corner to Kelburn to make sure nobody was there before leaving. It turned out that a mix-up over dates has led to us being a week too early although for a nice change this was not actually my fault. No harm done though, another Scottish brewery missed but not much we can do about it. We we will assume that Kelburn are a decent brewery as they were nice enough to reply and the standard of beers we tried throughout Scotland was very high.

What I can remember of the next 30 miles could be written on the back of a stamp. It was pretty miserable and as much as I had enjoyed Scotland as a whole but it was difficult to enjoy built-up areas in the wet and underneath a cloud of fog. We reached the same spot on the west side of Lanark as we had over a week before on our way up the country. This spot marked our entry into the town and the start of a pretty nasty climb towards the end of our day - this was annoying because of the fact that New Lanark was at the bottom of a hill a little further into Lanark and probably a little below where we were, but the hill had to be climbed. This time I enjoyed it a lot more than the first time - the result of a little less weight on the bike, legs a little stronger maybe - a few people passing in cars actually shouted out encouragement and one asked how easy it was! "Very" I lied, but to be honest I felt good at the top.

After wheeling around the centre of Lanark for a bit, wondering why signs to New Lanark didn't seem to point in the right direction (we knew full well where it was, but misleading signs are always intriguing), we arrived in New Lanark Youth Hostel again, booked in and sorted our stuff out. Then we headed to the Weatherspoons at the top of the hill again and stuffed ourselves again. Job done, and the weather had been better since about 6pm a little before we hit Lanark.

Day 23 review.

Miles done - lots
Punctures - 1
Pints - a few
Wetness factor - 6/10

Diary - Day 22

2007-06-23T22:58:00.000Z

Our first stop today was Dunstaffanage castle. This is the photo to prove it:

We didn't go into the castle but sat outside having a breakfast of sarnies and similar co-op produce. That excitement over we headed of towards Loch Fyne. Unfortunately the weather was not fyne although we didn't get particularly wet in the morning. For the most part it was uneventful as we headed down the A85 at a decent rate. We stopped to chat with a team of 5 older gents who were on their way up to John O'Groats and were currently waiting for their support van to arrive so they could get a brew on. As we left them we passed two people on a tandem doing a LEJOG as well. Didn't really expect this section to be the place where we met all the cyclists doing similar trips, in fact I didn't really expect it at any time as our route was far from standard.

We had been hit by intermittent patterings of the wet stuff but as we entered Inveraray our clothes were fairly dry and hope of arriving at Fyne Ales dry was high. Alas the final 7 miles were to be torrential rain and we were almost blinded by the wall of water that poured down upon us as we struggled along the A83. Sam was in front and landed his front wheel in a couple of nasty potholes, while I sat behind getting a constant spray in my face. Mmmm, great fun.

After 30 minutes of this we rolled into Fyne Ales, right at the top of Loch Fyne, and announced our presence to Jonny Delap who found us some towels and welcomed us to his brewery. The location was pretty spectacular although we would have liked a better day in order to see more of the scenery. The entire afternoon was spent here though as the bar was opened up to us and we joined in with Ayrshire CAMRA in 'sampling' the range of excellent beers. After a great deal of thought on the subject I decided 'Highlander' was my favourite while Sam preferred 'Somerled'. Both enjoyed the 'Avalanche' as well. A fair bit of food was consumed as a free lunch was provided as well. Sam had found heaven without having to die first so he spent the entire afternoon with the world's biggest grin across his face.

We spent a lot of our time at the bar chatting to a fount of information in the form of Fyne Ales' marketing manager (or similar title) who's name I have as usual completely forgotten. A very productive conversation ensued and I am sure we learnt plenty although I can not remember exactly what. We talked to the CAMRA members as well and enjoyed the opportunity to bang on about the beers we had drunk and the breweries we had seen after a bit of a 'dry' period over the past week.

Fyne Ales come highly recommended, as with most of the breweries we visited, and I will certainly be looking out for their beers whenever possible.

Unfortunately we had to leave as we were still 25 or so miles short of our target. The next couple of hours were damp and tiring, but we made it to the campsite at Ardbeg without too much drama. Put up the tent under the usual pressure from small biting insects, showered and hit the pub for a meal. We did stop at the Coylett inn on the way as it came highly recommended by the camra people, but they couldn't accommodate us as a big party was soon to arrive...................... that being the Ayrshire camra of course!

Diary - Day 21

2007-06-22T17:32:00.000Z

Today we woke up in a hurry. This was going to be a rare half-day and we intended to get up at 7:15 giving plenty of time to reach the ferry. My phone showed 8:06 when my eyes opened and a flurry of activity began at that moment. Soon we were on the bikes and heading for the point of Ardnamurchan at high(ish) speed. The sun was out and the views were good, but it was a case of getting to the point, taking a photo, then heading back to the campsite as soon as possible. At the lighthouse we posed for a photo taken by a convenient couple and headed away.

Without panniers or tents on my bike it was much easier to get a decent pace going and I had left Sam well behind before long. The couple from before overtook me a couple of miles down the road but after 3 miles I had negotiated the majority of climbs and now had 4 miles of flat or downhill to do and caught up with their car 5 minutes later. They let me past and I averaged over 20 mph over the next couple of miles. At the campsite I took the tent down, packed the bags onto the bike and was on the point of leaving when Sam arrived. We put the last couple of bags on his bike and headed off to the ferry. We made it with about 5 minutes to spare in the end! Cream-crackered before we had even made any progress.

Soon we were in Tobermory where we stopped for lunch.

It was pretty hot now and would remain so for a few hours at least. We had a ferry to catch in Craignure so pushed on through Mull in the heat of the day. Another ferry landed us in Oban and our cycling was finished for the day, more or less. The afternoon was mostly spent getting the bikes patched up at Evo Bikes where the excellent owner, Mark Evans, didn't charge us for the labour involved in sorting out all the problems. Sam's bike was still in a state of minor disrepair as it had been early on and would continue to be throughout. My bike had developed a small amount of buckle in the back wheel, a result of the weight carried early on in the trip no doubt, but right now it was not a problem at all.

Sam left in order to do a tour of Oban distillery and I picked up an ankle supprot as my ankle had developed a bit of an uncomfortable strain in the last day or so. Made me wince every time I pushed my foot down on the pedal and was a cause for concern for the next few days. Fortunately it gradually dissapeared and before a week was up my ankle was back to normal. I also bought yet another shower gel after continually losing them - this is a common theme for me on holiday.

We went out for some food at 6:30 and then wandered into Oban cinema to watch Ocean's Thirteen although we didn't hear all of it due to some poor sound quality. Basically a load of nonsense anyway, but we were glad to be relaxing and not getting wet or cold on the bikes for a change. Finished off the day with a beer in a nearby pub then walked back to the youth hostel
for a decent kip. Great to have part of the day off.

Diary - Day 20

2007-06-21T12:44:00.000Z

A nice easy 100 miles today..................

The first part of the day was a 5 mile trip the wrong way in order to see the Eilean Donan castle of Monty Python and the Holy Grail fame. We didn't go in but had a good look at the place from outside and it is certainly a picturesque place. So after that we headed straight back up the road and passed the campsite an hour after we left it the first time.

A little before the bridge into Skye we met another cyclist in a layby who had been in the same campsite and pointed out how funny it was watching us trying to put up a tent and slapping at midges at the same time. He was out on a 5 day tour and was currently stopping for a breather while simultaneously puffing on a cigarette. We admired the view across Loch Alsh and had a chat before moving on towards Skye, over the bridge and West until we turned off along the A851 heading south. The landscape here was quite open and barren and with the sun out it had a parched, desert-like look.

Soon enough we were cycling along the coast and while the road tended to deteriorate it became prettier and more enjoyable to cycle this part. It was a bit windy and undulating but before long we reached the ferry at Armadale. Unfortunately the ferry had just gone so we had to wait an hour for the next one and we ate lunch at the nearby cafe in the meantime. The ferry trip was soon negotiated and we were back on the mainland at Mallaig in glorious sunshine. It was frankly a little too hot, but soon we were under the cover of trees as the road wound through the hills. I was feeling pretty energetic and had left Sam well behind before long, not stopping at all on the A380 but waiting in a bus shelter at the junction as it began to rain. How quickly the weather can change in this part of the world!

Sam caught up, waterproofs were put on and we headed out into a much different climate than it had been a few hours before. The next section was pretty dull with a dark, dark sky and plenty of spray coming from the road into our faces. It was picking up again by the time we reached Acharacle and we stopped at a hotel for a pint before popping over the road for a pizza and scampi at the takeaway. 80 miles in and about 20 to do, or so I thought. A sign appeared saying 27 miles to Kilchoan and as that was where we were staying things didn't look too good. As it happened it was another case of lax Scottish signposting as the actual distance was about 21 miles. A bit of a relief.

The road from Salen out onto the Ardnamurchan peninsula was a windy and undulating one and by this point of the day we would probably have preferred a gentler route. After climbing up past Ben Hiant we were rewarded by some excellent views and a few encounters with wildlife. This was a really excellent stretch and the sun was still out despite it being about 9pm.

This photo is of Loch Mudle about 5 miles from the end of our journey.

As we headed down towards Kilchoan we were treated with the sight of a massive heard of deer. As Sam hammered downhill a deer wandered out in front of him and didn't look too interested in moving. It wandered off as Sam grew very close, but as we went through a gate our views opened out to see another 60 or so deer on the hill to our left. Quite spectacular. To cap it off we think we saw a Peregrine Falcon. It was pretty close but with light beginning to fade we didn't get a perfect look and have to assume we saw one rather than knowing for sure. It wasn't a buzzard anyway so that's a start.

When we arrived in Kilchoan it was clear that we would be leaving our trip to the point (most Westerly part of the mainland) for the next day. It was already late when we arrived and we put the tent up, largely without midge-based dramatics, before going to sleep on a rare occassion without beer. I woke up at 2am scratching my legs - the midges seemed to be less of a problem here but some certainly got me.

Diary - Day 19

2007-06-20T12:43:00.000Z

After a night at the hostel ruined by a combination of a hot, stuffy room and a Dutchman called Dennis with behavioural problems we were up before 8am and hit the local cafe for a big fried breakfast. Tasty. Unfortunately Sam couldn't get an appointment at the doctors until 11:30 so we had a bit of time to kill afterwards. I used this period to catch up on correspondance while looking at the nasty weather outside and hoping it would disperse.

Well it didn't and when we finally got going we were in for one of the nastiest sections of the entire trip. While we climbed away from Ullapool the weather didn't have too bad an effect. It was windy, but not too windy, and it was wet, but not too wet as we passed Loch Broom and headed inland. By the time we had reached the top of the hill and were coming up to Loch Glascarnoch it had taken a turn for the worst. For the next ten miles or more it was heads down and keep turning the wheels against hammering wind and rain. It took over an hour of hard work to cover the ten miles to Aultgulish inn where we pulled in for a breather. It was empty except for a barman who served us two bottles of Cairngorm's 'Tradewinds' which is a very good bottled beer. A Twix and some crisps later we headed out to get assaulted by the elements once more, but at least now we were heading downhill.

This photo is early in our Westward stretch, a photo from earlier would be pointless as nothing would be visible. It still looks daunting here, but nowhere near as bad.

Not that going downhill made this stretch easy. It was still an effort and we were more than a little glad to turn off the A385 onto the A382 heading West. The theory was that the wind was now behind us and it would be easy from now on. The first 5 miles proved to be miserable and still tough, but finally the sun began to creep out and cycling became easier. In fact for the rest of the day it felt like we were constantly going downhill such was the ease of cycling with the wind behind us and the sun out illuminating the beautiful landscape.

Plenty of Deer a little after Achnasheen and plenty more later on near Loch Dughaill

After many miles flying along and winding through the glens of West Scotland we came to Loch Carron and stopped at a pub next to Strathcarron railway station. It was a bit of a shame to stop as the sun was out and we were making good time and enjoying ourselves. The need to eat was strong though and we had a good meal before heading out again. Unfortunately the delayed start had meant that we were always a bit behind time so we pushed on through the last 15 miles to the campsite.

Almost as soon as we left the pub, quite tired now and lookingforward to relaxing at the end of the day, we hit a very steep hill. Not particularly long but steep enough to be annoying for two cyclists with full stomach. This trend of climbing, then dropping back down continued around the edge of Loch Carron and we headed inland at Stromeferry no higher than we were at the pub but having climbed a fair way. Heading inland meant going over a nice big hill and seemingly cycling in to another weather area, the sun dissapearing and the rain arriving again. It rained hard as we descended towards Balmacara and we were nice and wet by the time we pulled in to the campsite. The rain then calmed a little, but the midges were out in their billions so putting up the tent this evening became one of the most painful things we had to endure. There is just no escaping the midges when they attach themselves to you and our usual 5 minute task of errecting the tent took 15 minutes and about 558 bites.

This photo fails to do justice to the weather and scenery we had in the late afternoon but will have to suffice

As soon as that was done and we had showered it was off to the pub for an hour before hitting the sack. We indulged in a few bottles of Isle of Skye beers: Red Cullin and Black Cullin I believe and both were good beers, my preference as usual being for the darker of the two. A couple of games of pool and then we headed back to the campsite to battle the midges once more in our attempts to get into the tent. Glad to go to sleep tonight - it would transpire that midges don't leave you alone when you sleep but the damage was already done and they were mostly gone by morning. Phew!

Diary - Day 18

2007-06-19T12:42:00.000Z

For a change it was my stomach that was upset this morning. Yesterday we had consumed a lot of biscuits, flapjacks and other snacks and my stomach was paying the price. Not a comfortable start but the problem was dealt with and we were away by 9:30am. Stopped almost immediately for a breakfast of sarnies and pasties and we may well have seen an eagle, but it was a bloody long way up which both suggested that it was an eagle but also that we couldn't see it very well and would never really know.

This photo was almost certainly from the day before, but the sun was out then so it looks nicer. It's all the north of Scotland whichever day it was...........

Heading south-west to Scourie was not particularly difficult and the views were pretty decent, although the sun was struggling to regain it's majesty of the day before. The problem we had was that the wind was still coming in from the East, but we had nowhere left to go in that direction. As we changed direction and headed either south-east or south the wind began to buffet us around and in some cases hit us full in the face as it raced aroun the mountains. After one day off it reverted to type and became a real pain in the arse.

We stopped in Kylesku at a tea-shop, but for some reason failed to have anything substantial. This would turn out to be an error as there was no other chance to eat until we reached Ullapool. Thankfully it was a relatively short day at only 71 miles or we would have been struggling by the end. After Kylesku was a long climb and some very inconsistent signposts, a theme of the day, before we dropped down to Loch Assynt. The frustrating thing today was that a couple of times I had to change down a gear after reaching the peak of a hill as going up I was quite sheltered from the wind, whereas at the top it would hit me full in the face and would become tougher to cycle through. The last ten miles became easier as we headed away from the wind again until the final few miles produced a pretty big climb.

This photo again could be from the previous day. It has almost certainly been taken because the hills behind look like massive tits, and we thought it would be funny etc, etc.....

What is funny is that Sam claims to be 'all man' but tends to stand like this all the time........

So yet again the day was blighted by high winds, but we were able to roll in relatively early at 6pm and book into the youth hostel. This may have been a mistake as a bunch of Dutch youths (basically all about 18-20 maybe, but a few didn't act that way) didn't aid our sleep and neither did the heat of the room. At least you get some great showers in youth hostels. We wandered out for some food at the Caley Inn where we were given 3 courses for a tenner. I've had better food, but then I have certainly had worse and at £10 for plenty of food I was quite happy. A couple of pints of Hebridean Gold from Isle of Skye as well and I was set for relaxing evening, or what was left of it.

One of the highlights of the day was Sam's fantastic tanline on his forehead. Having worn a bandana all of yesterday as we headed into the sun his face was mostly red, while his forehead was not. Classy.

Day 18 review

mileage = 71

Diary - Day 17

2007-06-18T12:42:00.000Z

With the pressure built up over the first 16 days coming to a head yesterday afternoon we really needed a day in our favour. Fortunately it came just in time. After what seemed like an eternity battling the endlessly frustrating conditions we woke up to find the sun was out, the views were superb and the wind was at our backs. Hallelujah would have been a suitable word, but we settled for "about bloody time". We took the obligatory photos, had an ice-cream for breakfast (since watching Shaun of the Dead it has always seemed sensible to demand a Cornetto for breakfast) and moved on towards Thurso.

Before we reached Thurso we had to do a 10 mile detour to Dunnett Head, the most northerly point on the mainland. The weather was such that it looked quite nice, the sea blue, visibility very good and it was finally warm. Everything was perfect, except that we were getting hungry so we moved on after chatting to a coach driver and a few of his charges. There really is nothing particularly interesting about this stretch of the coast, but we were making good time with the wind helping us along and arrived in Thurso before long.

A stop at Sandra's cafe for a nice big fry-up for lunch, then a fruitless search for an open bike shop followed. We found the bike shop easy enough but it was Monday and apparently they close on Monday, which summed up our luck really. Sam's back brake-disc was bent due to a certain incident from yesterday and there were one or two other problems as well including knackered tyres. The brake-disc would just have to remain bent as there wasn't going to be another bike shop until Ullapool (in fact there wasn't one there either even though we were told there was), but on the plus side sudden braking was unlikely to be needed for some time. Traffic was not going to be a commonly used word over the next few hundred miles.

About 5 miles out of Thurso Sam stopped with a dodgy stomach. For the next week he would be plagued with difficulties as his stomach pained him throughout the days. It seemed to be something like an ulcer reacting to pressure placed on it, but as far as I am aware no explanation was found despite consulting a gp in Ullapool. Despite this development we managed to enjoy the rest of the day more than any so far, particularly as we left Caithness and headed into Sutherland. The land began to rise and we were treated to numerous long sweeping descents and similar ascents through a fairly dramatic landscape. Caithness and most of the East coast had been disappointingly samey so this was where Scotland really began for us. Had the wind been coming from the other direction along this stretch we would probably not have been so ecstatic.

By the time we reached Bettyhill we were about 70 miles in and still full of energy. It was certainly a testament to Sam's character that despite the amount of things going against him he always kept going. Unfortunately most of the things he had to battle were his own doing, the stomach problem was quite probably a result of continuous physical exertion after little or no preparation according to the doctor. Or it could be from bad diet, or both............

From Bettyhill we headed on to Tongue with the sun still out and the countryside glowing as we whizzed through. Plenty of beautiful looking beaches in this part of the world as well, although I wonder how attractive they would be at other times of the year? We arrived in Tongue at about 7pm with another 28 or so miles to go if we were to reach Durness. It wasn't imperative that we did, but it seemed sensible and there wasn't going to be much to do in Tongue anyway. So we ate pasties, sarnies and whatever else from the shop, filled up with liquids and headed off across the bridge over the Kyle and onwards to Loch Eriboll.

Loch Eriboll turned out to be the highlight of the entire trip. 90 miles into the day and we were suitably tired, but with the weather still superb and the scenery across the loch and into the mountains being as inspiring as it is possible to be we found it very easy to glide around the edge and keep pushing up all of the little hills. We stopped at a small bridge on the west side of the lock where this photo was taken.

After polishing of the very tasty chocolate and ginger biscuits we were back on the bikes and heading along the final stretch to Durness. A few more climbs but it all went by quite quickly and we rolled into the campsite at about 9:30, showered and headed for the pub. We were not hungry after eating continuously throughout the day so just had a few pints at the pub then rolled out at about 11:30. Weirdly it was still perfectly light. It would stay this way pretty much all night apparently although I was sleeping very soundly as usual so had no idea about such phenomena.

Day 17 review

Mileage = 108
Awesome day factor = 100%
Hills climbed = 100s, but with the wind up your backside it seems that much easier.

Diary - Day 16

2007-06-17T12:41:00.000Z

The weather was aagain unexceptional this morning, but at least it wasn't terrible. We still had a wind to contend with coming in from the east as we wound along the east coast, but it wasn't too strong. Sam's fitness seemed to be increasing so a redistribution of weight seemed in order. My legs were feeling the strain a little from hauling a fair bit of weight up and down some sizeable hills into strong winds. On flat ground you wouldn't notice the extra weight much but up steep hills where every revolution of the pedals is an effort that weight on the back plays on the mind a fair bit.

That was about the most interesting thing in the morning, the road itself was straightforward and uneventful. The east coast being mildly interesting but not very spectacular. Berridale Brae was about the best part, although it involved a steep descent followed by a long and steep ascent to get back out. The valley looked pretty though and the sun shone for about the only time that morning so I probably should have taken a photo. Most of the day we spent apart as there was no chance of getting lost and I find it very difficult to cycle uphill at Sam's speed. It feels good to be out on your own in a fairly empty place and after two weeks together there really isn't a great deal to say. I waited at a pub in Lybster with a pint of Guinness as he caught up and we rested for a while as pubs seemed to be few and far between and I would have liked to have stopped earlier.

This was the best view, maybe, nearly:

Then, after 16 days and around 100 hours of cycling, it all went downhill. I settled in behind Sam somewhere after the little village of Blackness deciding that it would be best to stick together as we headed for a meal in Wick. About two minutes after I had done this he slammed the brakes on, despite the road being empty, and I crashed straight into the back of his bike. The exact reason for stopping so suddenly is unclear despite the obvious need for a wee, I expect it was simply that he likes to make the back wheel skid. Either way I was extremely unimpressed and began shouting as soon as I removed the handlebar from my leg, then I removed myself from the bike and gave him a shove whilst still shouting. Had this been the first time I think I would have a lot calmer, but with basically the same thing happening the day before I coulnd't quite believe we were in the same situation again.

After a minute of letting off steam I got back on the bike and left him behind. If I was able to relive that incident I think I would have done exactly the same thing though, it was clear over the previous two weeks that he didn't listen to what I said so if I used a much louder voice maybe the message would get through. Of course it was an accident and accidents do happen, but one thing you certainly do not do when cycling along with someone else is to slam on brakes without warning unless absolutely necessary as it is downright dangerous. Had it happened one more time I would have instantly called off the rest of the trip, absolutely no doubt about that.

Long before I arrived in Wick I had calmed down and was happy to carry on as before, but Sam arrived 20 minutes later still bristling. Complaints were made about how I was treating him, and they certainly had a basis, but I would have been more annoyed at myself if I didn't have a shout than if I did. If someone puts your health in danger through stupidity it is best to point that out so it doesn't happen again. And it didn't happen again, Sam's bike-handling improved a fair bit after the first two weeks and stupid mistakes were for the most part cut out over the next 20 days.

We had a pretty poor meal in the Wetherspoons in Wick then headed off towards John O'Groats. For the first and possibly only time on the trip Sam was way out in front and had stopped at Jo'G for about 15 minutes before I rolled up. No point going to fast on a full stomach. This was definitely the nicest stretch of the day as the sun came out and the wind died down. I was really hoping it wouldn't die out completely as as Easterly wind, such as we had battled for the last week, would be really convenient tomorrow.

John O'Groats is a really unexceptional place, but anywhere this week that we could see properly and weren't getting wet or cold doing so was fine by us. The showers at the campsite were fine and we had already eaten so there was no need to do anything else before going to sleep.

Day 16 review

mileage = 85

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Diary - Day 15

2007-06-16T12:38:00.000Z

So the plan for Sam to get up first backfired and at this point I gave up expecting anything of him for the rest of the trip. My plan was not to get up before 8am, but let Sam get up beforehand in order to sort the washing out. He stumbled out of bed at 9 and we were finally ready at about 10:30. To make things worse the weather was really bloody miserable and yet again obscured the view in what is a fairly scenic part of the country. Very little happened all the way along the cycle route to Inverness bar the fact that we became wet, cold, frustrated and took the A9 for the last 5 miles into Inverness rather than the meandering cycle route. This was a good idea as it saved half an hour and was almost entirely downhill.

It looked like this a lot in the afternoon, but was much worse in the morning.

Strangely as we reached the edge of Inverness all signs of precipitation vanished and we were finally stopped from getting colder, which had been gradually happening throughout the day. Having been through Inverness two years ago on my other 'end-to-end' I had remembered some key info, i.e. where the Subway was so that we could get a big sandwich. While finding the shop and getting the sarney was easy enough, eating it was a pain due to the outdoors nature of our seat, the wetness of clothing and the bloody cold wind that belted through the streets.

Fuller, but still cold, we found the tourist info centre and they pointed us in the direction of a bike shop. Sam purchased some gloves, overshoes and possibly some other essentials. I purchased a cycling top for the most part because it was right in front of me and I had meant to do so for ages. With the weather continuing to be rubbish for most of the trip it was probably a good idea, but I don't think it made much difference in the long run. We headed on out to Munlochy, over the Black Isle, before rejoining the A9 as the Cromarty ferry was not running today. In fact we stuck to the A9 for most of the rest of the journey as it was not as busy as I expected and was wide enough for the most part to allow easy overtaking.

However, we didn't get through this stretch without a bit of drama. One reason I agreed to do this bike ride with Sam, knowing full well that he would come into it underprepared, was to test my own limited patience. Last time I did an End-to-End it fell apart after we reached Pitlochry as I completely ran out of patience with my co-cyclist, the whole ride being a shambles from start to finish, and did the last few hundred miles alone. This time I hoped to last 5 weeks without blowing my top. About ten miles before reaching Dornoch Sam looked over his shoulder, said something unintelligible, then stuck the brakes on and very nearly caused me to crash straight into the back of his bike. Not ideal, but it turned out the unintelligible words were that he wanted to stop and I possibly should have guessed. No idea why he needed to stop so suddenly though.

I wasn't exactly impressed, but no damage done and we needed to crack on. If this is the worst that happens then it's far from bad..........................................(yeah, well, of course that's not the worst, you should probably be able to guess that by now).

We arrived in Dornoch just after 8pm and didn't get into town for a meal until about 9:30 when everywhere had finished serving except one restaurant called Luigi's. A bit expensive, but pretty damned tasty and we had a bottle of Black Isle Brewery's 'Red Kite' which was expensive but pretty damned tasty. And that was about it for the day. Another tiring day rounded off with a good sleep, although I had to get up at 3:30am for a wee in weather that could be described as 'sideways rain'. Well worth it though.

Day 15 review

Mileage = 85

Diary - Day 14

2007-06-15T15:59:00.000Z

Ideally I would have liked to be away from the campsite nice and early today, but we were both pretty tired from the day before so didn't have the energy to jump out of bed and onto a bike. We left a little after 9am and headed into town from our campsite in the historic town of Scone (seat of Kings and all that). After crossing the bridge into Perth we turned right and travelled along the cycle route through the park until we arrived in the industrial site where Inveralmond Brewery resides. We plodded around the estate until we arrived at the right place and wandered in to find head brewer Fergus Clark on his way out. My optimistic scheduling came into play as we were about an hour late, but we were shown around the brewery my another very helpful person who's name I have as usual forgotten. He is on the right in this photo though.

We tried a few different beers but none were fully finished and so we couldn't fully appreciate the taste. The 'Sunburst Pilsner' that we tasted was the one that sticks in my mind though, despite the fact that I prefer dark ales. Would be well worth trying that one under good conditions and the others we tried certainly made me want to try them again. (click Inveralmond to go to the page)

We trundled through the countryside after Perth along the cycle route that leads through Bankfoot and onto Pitlochry. The final part of this route, about 10 miles into Pitlochry, is a really pleasant section and we were able to get on at a decent pace until the last couple of miles popped in a couple of steep little hills. In Pitlochry we stopped in one of the many eating places for a fry-up. The place we chose was a hotel and the fry-up was all a little too 'organised' for our liking, 'big and messy' being our preferred type of meal. On the plus side the woman who served us gave us a fiver for the cause, which was nice. We found flapjacks in Pitlochry which was probably the first time in Scotland that our favourite source of fuel was available. (It was a Julian Graves, which I believe is an English outlet).

From Pitlochry we went through Blair Atholl and then onto the old A9, which runs alongside the new one and is now a cycle route. We climbed up to the Pass of Drumochter which is about 520m pretty easily and felt that things may be going our way. Alas, as soon as we were over the top the wind smashed us straight in the face and drove us back. Very annoyingly the descent was much harder than the ascent.

In fact the last 30 miles were probably the toughest section to cycle of the whole trip and it wasn't even very hilly. After yesterday's exertions we really didn't need this.

*picture taken on the old A9 of the river Garry

We tried to visit the Dalwhinnie whiskey distillery but by the time we arrived it had closed for the day. Nothing for it but to plough into a headwind for the next two and a half hours in order to reach Aviemore. We arrived at the hostel at about 8:30 very tired.

Only one thing for it then, get showered and hit the pub. It was Friday night so plenty of people were out, despite the weather seemingly deteriorating all the time, and we found a packed pub on the main street after popping into the supermarket for essentials (pasties, lucozade, flapjacks). The Cairngorm brewery was situated just half a mile from where we sat, but unfortunately the schedule had not allowed us the chance to visit despite receiving an email from the head brewer. In honour of the fact that he bothered to respond I purchased a pint of Cairngorm 'Stag', while Sam decided he wanted a Guinness. Not for the first time he decided he didn't like something before he had tried it, I don't know what was so offensive about the pint of Stag but he eventually tasted it and decided he was right and it was rubbish. This is nonsense as it was a perfectly good pint and I had another to prove the point.

This photo is Loch Garry I think:

As we sat outside under a gas lamp thing, staying warm despite the dropping temperatures, we were approached by a local gentleman who sat down next to us and proceeded to start a conversation. On learning that we were cycling around the entire country he became very impressed and decided to tell us three different jokes about swearing parrots. I am not sure how many pints you need to drink to find the logic in that, but it appeared that he had found the answer. He made a brief mention of his own Land's End to John O'Groats, decided our efforts were far superior and pulled out a wad of notes the size of his fist. "You get yourself a decent place to stay and some good meals inside you" he said and peeled off £100. 'Bloody hell' was about all I could think, but I managed to say "thanks" instead. There had been racing at Perth earlier and by the sound of it our new friend had found some winners.

This whirlwind encounter finished after about ten minutes with us considerably richer. We began talking to a man at the next table who was also staying at the hostel before this was interrupted by a pissed-up middle-aged woman plonking herself down next to Sam and mixing kind words, abuse, unintelligible nonsense and dribble in one big melting pot of verbal diarrhea in another 10 minute explosion of oddity. It was clear after a couple of pints that while full of fascinating people, this place was probably not ideal for us to be in with 85 miles miles into shite weather the next day.

We wandered back to the hostel and I told Sam that it was his turn to get up first after 13 straight days of my having to kickstart the days operations. It made sense as he wanted to do some washing. Unfortunately it was still a crap idea on my part.

Day 14 review

Mileage = 96
Breweries visited = 1
Pints drunk = 6 or so

Diary - Day 13

2007-06-14T00:26:00.000Z

Quite frankly day 13 was rubbish and if I was some sort of Christian type or a superstitious pillock, or both, I may read something into that. What is more likely to be the cause is a bloody strong north-east wind and a high mileage through some busy areas. It was cold in the morning as we left Lanark, it then proceeded to get colder, the wind became stronger and it rained a bit. Some weird sort of summer this was turning out to be.

Today would turn out to be a real test for Sam and he responded in his usual way of complaining constantly and really getting on my nerves throughout. Tantrums were thrown over a number of things, often the state of his bike or the weather and occassionally something new to blame things on. By the evening, after 80+ miles into the wind and through the worst day of the trip he was still plodding on and showing no signs of giving up, in fact he sped up in the last 10 miles while I was slowing down. It was a little before Perth that I knew for sure he would get round the full 5 weeks. Before this I was very sceptical fearing that shoddy preperation would cause him to breakdown at some point. If there was a time to do it then today was that time, but it never quite happened so for the first time I didn't feel that I was going to have to do some of this alone.

*The street in New Lanark where we stayed

We were away from the hostel just before 9am but stopped at a level crossing just outside Lanark to wait for 4 trains in total over a period of about 15 minutes. We were taking the A706 towards Forth and this road turned out to be one of the crappest roads on the whole trip. While the road shook us about the wind slowed us down and by the time we reached Forth we were getting quite cold as well. The town of Forth, or at least the bit we saw, was possibly the biggest dump we saw over the 5 weeks so I grabbed some sarneys at the petrol station and we headed up the B715 and stopped at Climpy in the shade of some trees. Sam had cold feet due to white socks and well-ventialted cycling shoes so I lent him some inner socks to help. His cold hands were more of a pain because I had to lend him my inner-gloves just as I was about to wear them for the first time. Better cold hands than constant complaing though and when Sam gets cold he gets very slow, a little counter-productive maybe, and we were not getting anywhere fast.

It was getting a little warmer as we reached Armadale, but of course things were going too well and Sam's tyre developed a hole which we had to stop to fix. I rang John McGarva of Tryst Brewery at this point to tell him that we were simply not going to make it to our arranged visit. Time was ticking by and progress was still slow while we still had to negotiate Falkirk and Stirling on our way through the urban belt that stretches between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Soon enough we were in Falkirk and we made it through without too many dramas. It probably wasn't the quickest way through, I really have no idea what route we took, but I found a way out and we were heading towards Stirling on A9 finally able to make decent time. On this stretch the wind was cutting across us and didn't to as much damage as it had earlier, but conditions were still far from perfect. I let Sam go ahead here as I stopped on the side of the road to adjust a few things, telling him to turn off right on the roundabout 5 miles up onto the A91. Fortunately I caught him up 30 yards after he had missed the turn. The great thing about the next week or so would be the lack of roads and therefore less need for constant navigating.

We stuck to the A91 and followed it alongside the Ochil Hills on our way to Alva. The wind was now coming right at us and it was a tough stretch of road as a result. We found Harviestoun Brewery without too much difficulty and pulled in for a much needed stop. I rang Bridge of Allan brewery to tell them that we were not going to make it. Two breweries missed out in one day was annoying, in fact of the 8 Scottish breweries that we could have gone to we only managed 3 in the end. Fortunately the three that we did see were very good.

Harviestoun is owned by Caledonian but while the parent company deal with the marketing side it seems that they leave the Harviestoun team to brew as they feel fit. It makes sense because Harviestoun make some of the very best beers in the country and easily surpass Caledonian's brews (not that they are bad or anything). We met Yorkshireman Stuart Cail, the head brewer, and he proceeded to show us around the establishment. After talking to Stuart for half an hour my head began to hurt - there was a lot of info to take in and I was in no fit state to do so. Stuart obviously knew his trade inside out and we would have learnt plenty if a little less knackered. We tried the bottled versions of 'Bitter and Twisted' and 'Old Engine Oil' and were suitably impressed, well I was anyway, Sam looked as though he wanted to either go to sleep or go home but he did appear to enjoy the second beer. 'Old Engine Oil' is a 6%, strong, dark and very smooth beer and is frankly the exact type of beer I was hoping to find. Not a tough decision to make award it our 'bottled beer of the trip' award, although there would be others that took our fancy later on as well. (Click the Harviestoun link to go to their page as usual)

We left Harviestoun for once last stretch into the wind for about ten miles. The juction onto the B934 arrived eventually and we finally given some protection from the wind as we climbed steadily over the Common of Dunning. After a really crap day for the most part with too much traffic, weather and other annoying obstacles we were able to enjoy this stretch to some degree and although the conditions were not great they were certainly better. Would have been even better if we didn't end up winding around in cirles and adding 3 or 4 miles to our route after Dunning, but we made it to Perth with out too many dramas and were happy that the toughest day was probably behind us now.

We couldn't find a suitable eatery in town so picked up some fish and chips and headed for the campsite at the racecourse. It was about 9pm as we finally sat down to eat. My cheeseburger was deep-fried so we couldn't mistake which part of the world we were in. It wasn't long before we fell asleep this night, I don't remember anything after laying getting into my sleeping bag.

Day 13 review

Mileage - 98
Breweries visited - 1
Pints drunk - 6

Diary - Day 12

2007-06-13T01:04:00.000Z

I awoke to find that our tent was as I suspected quite waterproof. Unfortunately the campsite wasn't and we had to pack everything away in the wet which is never particulalry enjoyable. We cycled on into Carlisle and out the other side on a national cycle route towards Longtown. The weather was frankly miserable again and the wind was starting to blow as we headed towards Gretna. We spent most of the day travelling north or north-west and today was the day that a week of strong north-easterlies started blowing. This was not good news.

In Longtown and Gretna we tried to stop twice at cafes only to find them closed for some reason, but found one eventually that was open. Weirdly it seemed to be an old woman's house with the front-room made into a cafe of sorts. We stopped long enough to get her chairs wet and to eat a nasty microwaved sausage and bacon sarney before heading out into the drizzle once more.

The rest of the day was spent mostly on the B7076 which runs alongside the M74. It was certainly enjoyable for it's lack of traffic and the fact that it is a fairly quick route with undulations rather than steep hills. Unfortunately the wind was keeping the speed down and the weather in general, although it didn't rain too much, keeping enjoyment pretty low. The first half of the stretch along this road was not the greatest scenery, although it would be decent enough on a clear day. It picked up a little after we stopped for a late lunch in Moffat.

Moffat itself seemed a pretty vibrant place and we stopped for lunch in a large cafe with a few screaming kids nearby. The only reason we ended up here was that we had tried to pick up food in a service station a few miles back but I refused to pay the ludicrous prices on food there; £3.50 for packaged sarnies and the like. We were pretty hungry by the time we did sit down for food halfway through the afternoon and tucked in happily.

The first bouns of our detour was that the A701 and then the B719 out of Moffat back to the motorway took us through the most interesting countryside of the day, albeit it up and over a sizeable hill. This was certainly prefferable to the crappy route we had been following and it was a shame to return, although the descent where we were able to look down on the motorway from well above was quite interesting. For that short period the wind became a side issue as it smashed itself against hills rather than having a free run into us.

The second bonus was that Sam found a fiver in the town centre making him richer than he was before by infinity percent.

Eventually we left the motorway route and headed across country towards Lanark. The weather had picked up slightly in the afternoon and the wind had dropped a little as well so the last few miles through some pretty countryside was quite enjoyable except for the fact that we were cream-crackered. Unfortunately when we arrived in Lanark there was a nasty hill to climb in order to get into the town. We would climb this same hill again a couple of weeks later - noticeably I was unable to stay with Sam up this climb due to the slowness of his ascending and my own impatience, whereas when we returned I was able to follow him up so there must have been strides made in fitness. The cross/head-wind had taken it out of us today and we had decided to head for the youth hostel in New Lanark.

Bit of a surprise when we located the hostel. New Lanark is a world heritage site and it is worth visiting if you are going to be in the area. The village is actually the brainchild of 18th century entrepreneur Robert Owen who built a large cotton mill as well as the village itself to accomodate his workers. It has been well restored and looks fantastic (regardless of the weather). There is also some excellent waterfalls close by. The youth hostel is one of the old living areas and was nice enough that we chose to come back to it later on the trip - the only place we visited twice.

We needed feeding after showering and sorting out our stuff. A Wetherspoons at the top of the hill seemed like a sensible idea. Yes, I know it's a bit of sacrilege on a tour involving quality ales and breweries to end up in a Wetherspoons but we also had a budget to think about and you can't beat these chain pubs for filling up quickly for cheap. Three courses were ploughed through and a variety of cheap beers and ciders indulged as well (including an Exmoor Gold, brewed 10 miles from Sam's house and drunk by him 500 miles from home). Feeling stuffed and happy we rolled out of the pub at about 9:30. On the step as we exited was a tenner, crisp and lonely, and the race was on to pick it up. Unfortunately for me Sam was about a foot ahead and my ability to bend was inhibited by the swelling of my stomach. Another financial victory for young Sam and he now stood £15 in profit after 10 hours in Scotland, a pretty good ratio really.

An hour later we were heading for bed, tired and happy.

Diary - Day 11

2007-06-12T13:54:00.000Z

We left the George and Dragon at some point in the morning, you can work out when by this simple equation that can be used for most days of the trip: Departure = Intended Departure Time + one hour.

Probably about half past nine then.

We were delayed somewhat by a some confusion as to the state of our bill. We thought we would have one, the manager didn't. As I am not an old woman I don't have the required skills to force money upon people who have no intention of taking it so the upshot was that we had more money to spend on flapjacks. Which we almost certainly made the most of.

While it may well have been summer yesterday there didn't seem to be a meteorolgical clause stating that today would have to be the same. That means it was rubbish. We left Dent and headed for Sedbergh with our waterproof tops on, only for Sam to get a bit warm and take his off. Then he realised it was getting wetter and put his top back on, but the inevitable happened and he got a little warm................... A theme was developing somewhere but I was too busy to spot it.

Either we were ascending (posh word for going up) or the clouds were descending (Arabian word for turtle-neck sweater) as we headed into Kendall. The town of Kendall may be nice, when we arrived it simply looked damp and slightly cold, but on the plus side we did have a tasty sausage and egg bap each. If the weather was better and we didn't have a number of mechanical problems then we would have taken the A592 past Ullswater but the better option in the circumstances appeared to be to take the A6 straight into Penrith.

I didn't bother to take any photos on this stretch but if you can imagine something white and wet then that should suffice. This is a photo from yesterday in the Dales instead:

In fact it became whiter and wetter as we climbed up to around 1400m over Shap Fells to the point where it was actually pretty dangerous to be cycling, not that we had much choice. Fortunately we survived and sped down into Penrith for 3pm, the views becoming slightly better on the way down as we were able to see more than 12 feet ahead at times. We found the bike shop where we were charged a lot of money for a complete lack of improvement to the bikes and eventually we were on our way out of Penrith at about 5pm.

15 miles later we were at Hesket Brewery. However, 3 miles before we arrived at Hesket we became soaked as the heavens opened. Fortunately the heavens closed before long as otherwise dead people may have fallen through I assume. Can't have that sort of thing happening. We gently slowed to a halt outside the Old Crown where Michael Parker wandered out to meet us and we were led into the pub for a few pints of Hesket Ale. More info about Hesket can be found by clicking this link - Hesket Brewery.

In another display of spontaneous generosity our meals and a few pints were paid for by mr Parker. As we turned up over an hour late it was pretty good of him to stick around for us in the first place and after a chat about bikes and beers, an interesting tour and free food and drink we had formed a pretty high opinion of the brewery and it's head brewer, something which Prince Charles seems to have as well. Unfortunately this was the high point and it was downhill afterwards, not that there was much of the day left. We knew we had to leave at some point and it was probably best to do so before the 4th pint went down, but it looked wet and nasty outside so we dillied, dallied, dallied and dillied (lost the van and don't know where to roam...............).

After all this dilly-dallying we eventually headed out into the North Cumbrian countryside, which looked suspiciously like a river. 10 miles of cycling and occasional paddling through the rapidly darkening evening we arrived at the campsite, making a brief diversion into the adjoining hotel (it was posh and there was classical music, we are poor, there was no point in even asking), and met a very helpful warden. We also briefly tried to head to Calisle in order to get a nice dry room in a nice dry B&B, but this didn't work due to the lack of sunlight, the proliferation of darkness as a result of this, and the fact that we suddenly couldn't be bothered. A night in a wet campsite was for us, but first we found two of the best showers of the trip, which made things a little better. In fact the evening was very enjoyable despite the constant soaking, possibly the result of three tasty pints, and we went to sleep feeling pretty happy. (The end of day shower makes a big difference to morale on camping trips like this, later on we would become very irate largely as the result of crap showers).

Day 11 review

Mileage = 73
Breweries visited = 1
Pints drunk = 6 (and they were all good. Thankyou Hesket)
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Diary - Day 10

2007-06-11T13:53:00.000Z

The sun was out and we were getting pretty sweaty at 9am climbing the long hill on the A58 up to Soyland Moor. In fact the climb was long enough that we started in bright sunshine and finished in a cloud.

We took the B6138 across the top and found Little Valley Brewery in a large converted farm building in what is basically the middle of nowhere. We were met by the owner, Dutchman Wim van der Spek, who gave us a thorough tour of his premises and towered over us while he did so. He also showed us his bikes and told us about some of his own travels including a trip to Nepal where he met his wife (they weren't married at the time obviously, the story would be a bit wierd if they were, most people tend to meet their wife in their own house rather than a distant country and besides which it doesn't make for much of a story if you just meet your wife somewhere).

This was the one and only organic brewery that we visited (the produce was organic, not the actual building) and of course there is more to learn here - Little Valley Brewery.

Another fascinating tour over, we would remember Wim's 'Moor Beer' for a long time even though it was his least popular, the conditions we tried it in were apparently absolutely ideal and it was bloody tasty. Sam also developed a fascination with his name and I believe he is currently in the process of trying to become Dutch. Wim gave us a couple of bottles and I lugged them across the country for the entire day, a mistake in retrospect as we had beer on tap only yards from where we stayed this night.

From the brewery it was straight down the longest coninuous hill in Britain into Hebden Bridge, a stop in a cafe for a fry-up, then on down the A646 to Burnley. We could have taken a slightly different route but mornings were always slower and we had as usual spent longer than we should have in the brewery. The cloud had kept us cool beforehand and the valley through Hebden and Toddmorden had shielded us from the sun, but when we hit Burnley it was getting very warm. The British summertime had arrived and people would be tanning themselves outside for the next 4 weeks right.............................

At Burnley we rolled into Moorhouse's Brewery, a sizeable establishment - about the same as Butcombe maybe - set right in the town. We were shown round by the head brewer, a nice bloke who suffers from my inability to remember names, before being taken into the pub opposite the brewery for a chat with marketing manager Mike Hiscock and a pint or two of Moorhouse ale. The brewer told us a few horror stories about the temperature that he sometimes had to work in, the old buildings not being the best for ventilation maybe. Both men told us of the coming expansion, a seemingly massive upgrade from a 30 barrel to 90 barrell brewplant. Confident directors are certainly not in short supply there! Inexplicably I forgot to take any photos so you will just have to guess what it would look like if we stood next to someone from the company.

From Burnley we headed towards the Forest of Bowland, a very misleading title as there were few trees on the whole, for a forest anyway. A pretty strenuous climb out of Sabden was followed by a descent that seemed destined to give me the highest top speed of the trip. Sam had hit 52mph in Devon, while I only managed 49mph. The reason for the difference was that I realised that there was a junction at the very bottom of this hill and decided not to pedal over the top. Exactly what difference 3mph is supposed to make if anyone pulled out in front of me I don't know. Hitting 49mph down this hill in Lacashire I was all set to continue into the 50s when my sunglasses flew off my head and I had to about turn. Annoying that my bit for speed was scuppered but it did answer an earlier question of how fast do I have to go before my sunglasses fall off. Anyone who has travelled at 50mph on a bike will know there is a fair amount of wind resistance buffeting you around at that speed and I am amazed my sunglasses stayed on that far.

We headed out of the treeless forest through Settle and into the Yorkshire Dales for what turned out to be a very pretty end to the day. It took a while to get to the end though, the temperature may have dropped to a sensible level but we were getting tired and the road seemed to drag on further than it should have. The B6479 gave way to the B6255 and we sat on the side of the road for a while by Blea Moor. When we started again the turn we were looking for was just around the corner and we began to descend into Dent. One of the reasons we were flagging towards the end (75 miles in) was the amount we had climbed from Settle without realising, about 300m I think and the last 7 or 8 miles was ludicrously easy, in fact we were only slowed by some people in a car who we were able to overtake after a couple of miles. Very little peddling was involved and we arrived at the George and Dragon in Dent at about 7:30pm for a fairly strange, but very welcome episode.

This is Sam piddling in the Dales. The problem is that beer makes him wee, generally 4 minutes afterwards. Also tea has the same effect. Actually water goes through pretty quickly as well and the fact is he hardly drinks anything else, so pretty much drinking makes him wee very soon after. And then again 3 minutes later.

The George and Dragon, owned by the owners of Dent Brewery, provided us with a meal and a couple of beers. We also got to stay in a room there free of charge for which we are very grateful. We had a really good shower (shower quality is a massive concern on a camping trip and can make a large difference to the day) and fell asleep in comfort. During the night it rained and signalled the end of the British summer. That didn't last long.

Day 10 review

Mileage = 82

Breweries = 1

Pints drunk = 10ish

Diary - Day 9

2007-06-10T13:53:00.000Z

This may have been the warmest day of the trip, not that it was boiling or anything but it was warm enough. Before we even started cycling we went to Spire Brewery in Chesterfield and met David McClaren along with a few members of the local CAMRA who were helping brew a special beer for an upcoming beer festival.

The picture above shows conclusively that something is happening in there, but it is difficult to discern exactly what.

We left Spire brewery and then said goodbye to my parents as we returned to Blackwell. It was already mid-afternoon and we had plenty of miles to do, our first task being to locate the Pennine Bridleway. Having done this our next task was to get off it. It was always going to be a bit of a gamble, I knew it would be difficult but with time ticking by and nightmarish climb followed by similar descents along with far too much weight on the bikes we only managed about 6 miles along the trail. There were some great views to be had though and I will return with nobbly tyres and no panniers at some point soon.

The only option was to follow the main roads into the Mancester conurbation and too fight our way through Stalybridge, Moseley and the like towards our destination of Littlebrough. This was not a great deal of fun and it was made worse by Sam's constant verbals, complaining about pretty much everything under the general heading of 'the north'. While his mouth went into overdrive his legs pointedly refused to do likewise and my general tactic of dissapearing up the road when he started mouthing off was scuppered by the navigational and traffic difficulties on this stretch so a plod through the Sunday evening traffic of the Machester region in the heat was our lot for a couple of hours.

Eventually we made it to Milnrow and headed for Hollingworth lake near Littlebrough. It was after 8pm when we finally got in and set up camp in a field at the edge of the campsite having failed to find the attendant. Unfortunately he found us 20 minutes later as we were trying to get away for some food and we were told that we couldn't stay where we were. Apparently the field we were staying in was needed the next day, not that that was relevant as we were leaving the next morning and besides which the other family in the field were allowed to stay because they had kids! Moving a tent across a campsite to a place with crap ground and more midges was not going to help calm tempers, nor did the fact that it was 9pm by the time we finished and the pubs stopped serving food. Fortunately we found an Italian restaurant still open and had an excellent meal to finish the day.

Another midge attack getting into the tent gave us a taster of what was to come in West Scotland and we were glad to be through this day.

Day 9 review

mileage = 68

diary - Day 8

2007-06-09T13:53:00.000Z

Day 8 was to be short and very easy. We arrived at the campsite by midday after a 20ish mile stroll up the Tissington trail and had our first afternoon off.

The Tissington trail itself is not at all challenging but very scenic. In a sense it seemed a shame to waste this day as the sun was out and the wind just a gentle breeze, but then at this early stage we did not know what was awaiting us later on.

We arrived in Blackwell without any difficulties and set up camp before heading for Buxton with my parents who had come to visit us for the weekend. We were able to buy a few things in town and do some washing while my parents wandered around Buxton and by 5pm we were heading back to the campsite before leaving again at 7 for a meal in Tideswell where the old folks were staying. The second meal of the day at my Dad's expenses brought tears to both my and his eyes for completely different reasons.

Despite having a low mileage and being in a campsite with a fair bit of noise I had no trouble falling asleep. In fact for the duration of the trip I found it much easier sleeping in the tent than in Youth Hostels or houses. The downsides to camping where the insects, particularly midges later on, and Sam's drool that collected in his sleeping bag and stunk like a stagnant pond until he washed it.

Day 8 review

Mileage = 22

Diary - Day 7

2007-06-08T13:50:00.000Z

From Much Wenlock we headed through Shifnal and spent some time on the A5, or Watling street as it was once known. Far too busy for my liking and straight roads are not the best for cycling, but sometimes an injection of pace is useful. We left the A5 for Penkridge along some abysmal roads, in fact the whole morning was riddled by poorly maintained roads, and then headed across Cannock Chase where the weather improved a little from it's pretty dismal start. Through Rugeley and we rolled into Quartz brewery at King's Bromley at around 1:30pm. It was quite warm and just needed the sky to clear a bit to really heat up.

Scott Barnett met us and made us pretty welcome at the brewery. He was quite 'liberal' with the tasters and we certainly found ourselves refreshed, then tired and dozy. The brewery itself has a very modern outlook focusing on the younger drinkers rather than getting stuck into weird tasting beers with silly names. More on that at the Quartz brewery page.

So we headed into Uttoxeter feeling the effects of a few pints in the afternoon along with the closeness of the day, which increased in the afternoon as we headed north. Soon enough we were in the peak district, which turned out to be one of my favourite places on the trip (partly due to the fact that we could see it as fog and rain held off for a while).

That is a photo of the road between Mayfield and Mapleton, just to the West of Ashbourne. It looked better than that at the time. Below is a photo of an all too common problem.

Yep, Sam's constant need to urinate slowed us down a bit throughout the trip. On the plus side it did serve as an opportunity for me to get the camera out and take photos of the scenery.

We rolled into a campsite at Tissington with some pretty decent views, paid £15 for the spot which is a bit more than it should be, basically it was a bit of grass and a crap shower, then cycled to the pub on the main road just outside the village. We were pretty impressed with Tissington - a very well kept place with a real rustic charm. However it was getting dark and a well-kept pub with food and beer based charms was preferable. Being gluttonous and hungry we both went for the mixed grill option and a few pints. This explains why we went over budget on most days.

With very few miles to do the next day and full stomachs we rode back to the campsite feeling pretty happy with things generally.

Day 7 review

Mileage: 70 ish
Breweries: 1
Pints drunk: Quite a few......

Diary - Day 6

2007-06-07T13:50:00.000Z

A busy day ahead of us we stumbled out of the door a little after 8am as our host family left for work, school and other important institutions. Someone had turned the sun off overnight and forgot to turn it on again; it was overcast most of the day but still pretty warm. The wind certainly wasn't helping, but neither did it inhibit progress as much as it had and would continue to do later.

We headed away from Hereford on the A465 until we reached Stoke Lacy where we found our way to Wye Valley Brewery and met Lizzie Thomas who is pictured below between a couple of familiar faces.

We were shown around the brewery which used to be the site of Simmond's Cider before Wye Valley Brewery took it over in 2000. We were given a 'Butty Bach' (apparently 'my little friend' in Welsh) to taste and it was a pretty good beer. Not much later we were back on the road and heading away from Stoke Lacy and on to Ludlow via Bromyard and Tenbury Wells. The Herefordshire countryside is certainly pleasant although not particularly exciting, but the scenery would gradually improve through the day as we headed into Shropshire.

In Ludlow we met Gary Walters of the Ludlow Brewing Company (and as usual you can click on the link to go to a separate page for that brewery) which is the first brewery in Ludlow since the 30s. Gary owned the smallest brewery we saw on the trip and one of Sam's favourites, probably as it seemed to be a realistic dream. Most of it can be seen in this photo
Gary has made a pretty decent start to his brewing career with awards at his first beer festival in Bridgnorth and has two regular brews although it was a third called 'Footfalls', which has yet to make it into circulation, that we tasted. Not an exceptional pint, but I would have been happy drinking it for some time. Unfortunately time was ticking by and we had one more brewery to visit so we had to leave Gary and his friend and soon-to-be-employee Rob to get on with their business.

It occurred to me as I was trying to rate the pint that we had just tasted that the brewers we met on this trip were likely to have a pretty high standard of beer. The logic worked like this: if they bothered to reply to my email and to get involved with the trip they were probably of the enthusiastic type that put a lot of effort into their business, and this energy would transfer itself into the taste of the product. Well, something like that but you probably grasp the basic idea. This is why as I left Ludlow I was thinking that had I walked into my local and had a pint of 'Footfalls' I would have been very happy with my purchase, yet amongst the beers we tried on the trip it wouldn't make waves.

With the benefit of hindsight I think my theory was borne out - we did visit some excellent breweries and tried a number of superb beers made by enthusiastic and generous brewers. Our pint from Ludlow stood up against all of the beers we drunk in pubs around the country, preferable to many, but was beaten by a number of beers we tried in the breweries. We should have tried the other two brews really................

My camelbak was considerably heavier on the road to Wistanstow due to the bottles of beer we had been given at Ludlow. I don't remember which brew they were and I don't remember how they tasted, but after a few hours of being shaken about I doubt they would have been at optimum taste. We found ourselves looking at things like this
Bit dismal aint it?

At Wistanstow we found the Plough Inn behind which was Wood Brewery. Climbing the stairs to the offices we were met by a man I instantly disliked, I believe the reason for this was that he was a plank. Fortunately our brief interogation by this ape was cut short by another member of the office staff who happened to have some manners. Soon enough we were in the capable hands of the be-wellied (it's in my dictionary) head brewer who showed us around the brewery and backed up my theories on energy and enthusiasm. We were still trying to take things in (at this early stage of the trip the brewing process was still a bit of a mystery although we were getting the general idea) when we reached the cold room and tasted some 'Pot o' Gold'. Pretty nice. From there it was back into the offices where we were presented with a cheque for our charities and sent on our way. Top notch.

3 decent breweries visited and about 20 miles left to go before we reached Much Wenlock. The original plan was to ride along Wenlock Edge but time was short and Sam was knackered so we used the B4368 and arrived in Much Wenlock soon enough. A campsite essentially in the town was pretty convenient and we were able to wander into the centre for a meal. Before we made it that far we met an 81 year old man who had been cycling around Wenlock Edge all day and was camped next to us. Apparently the hills seemed bigger than they used to and he wasn't sure that he was up to it any more, especially after his tour of the Lake District being hampered by constant downpours a few weeks earlier. We didn't ask why at his age he kept cycling through the pissing rain rather than just going home and starting again some other day. We didn't ask how the hell an 81 year old propelled a bike up and down the Shropshire hills either, but we made sure he knew we were impressed by saying 'bloody hell' and puffing our cheeks every time he told us about his cycle tours.

Sam was kind enough to tell him we would be quiet when we decamped the next morning. He was gone by 7am, we didn't get up until 7:30.

Day 6 review

Mileage = 75
Breweries visited = 3

Ales consumed = 10ish

Butty Bach (x2) - Wye Valley
Footfalls (x2) - Ludlow
Pot o' Gold (x2) - Wood
?? (x2) - Ludlow
Cocker Hoop - Jennings
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Diary - Day 5

2007-06-06T13:49:00.000Z

The fifth day of our trip would turn out to be a very tough one. I knew it was going to be a high mileage and expected a few tough climbs along the way so before we started I transfered a fair bit of the weight onto my bike. Sam now carried his sleeping bag, two thermarests and our shoes, I carried the panniers full of clothes, the tent and my own sleeping bag. This was basically what I expected the ratio to be from the start, but Sam had wanted to carry more at first. In the interest of finishing before midnight I felt a change was needed and I didn't hear any complaints. This distribution was kept the same until Dornoch 12 days later and it was a more sensible idea, the only drawback being the gradual buckling of my back wheel.

Leaving Cheddar and straight up the first hill of the day we headed towards Wrington where Butcombe brewery awaited. Not the smoothest navigational effort, but the brewery was located and we stepped inside to be met by sales manager Martin Love who proceeded to show us around the brewery, more details of which can be found here - Butcombe Brewery . We left with two t-shirts and eyes wide open as Butcombe dwarfed the other breweries we had seen so far and was a thoroughly professional outfit with a huge capacity.

It was becoming warm, bordering on hot, but the temperature was kept to sensible levels by a north wind. I found myself wondering which I would prefer as we headed into the wind - no wind and a hot, sweaty day or a headwind that kept the temperature down a little. Unfortunately I never reached a conclusion to that poser. We headed towards the M5 for the bridge into Bristol and went through the curiously named Pill, which has some nasty housing estates near the river. It also possessed the stupidest driver on the entire tour; as we came into Pill a man overtook us only to hit the brakes as soon as he was past me in order to turn right into a street. I swerved quickly and was lucky not to hit the vehicle, but rode off wondering if I would have preferred to hit the vehicle in the hope that it may provide an opportunity to kick him in the groin repeatedly a few seconds later. Confrontation is probably best avoided of course, but after careful consideration I think kicking him in the groin would have been just the tonic I needed.

As it happened Bristol was a nightmare. My navigating style is to keep a few maps in a plastic cover and pull them out of my shorts (I wear two pairs) when needed. This is generally perfectly adequate and I have become quite adept at reading a map and cycling, but today I made more mistakes than on the rest of the trip put together. The easiest mistake to make is to follow roadsigns rather than what you interpret the map to say. Some roadsigns are misleading, occasionally they are plain wrong and they are all aimed at motorists anyway. We went the wrong way in Bristol following the wrong branch of cycle route through the industrial area along the edge of the Severn then had more difficulties in Pilning where a signpost pointed to a village one way when it was clearly the other way on the map. What these unscheduled meanderings did provide was a chance meeting with Rob, a friend of Sam and as he pointed out probably the only person he knows of in the whole of Bristol, who passed us in his van near Avonmouth.

Finally we made it to the old Severn bridge and crossed into Wales. I had wanted to go this way as I wanted to see Chepstow again and also wanted to go through the Forest of Dean. The latter was going to be difficult now as we had spent so much time messing about around Bristol. We stopped at the castle and sat down for a belated lunch (this generally involves sandwiches, pasties and flapjacks) before heading off up the B4228. I knew we would not be in Wales again after today and wondered where the border was as we left Chepstow, 5 miles maybe? No, it was 200 yards, the sign for England coming at Tutshill before we had really left Chepstow. Well there is a big castle there so it's not rocket science I suppose.

Another debatable piece of navigating later we had missed Symond's Yat entirely and were heading through Ross-on-Wye onto the A49 and for once I was glad to be on a major road. It was late enough that traffic was minimal and we finally found a stretch of road where we could make decent time after slogging all the way through the day. A little after 8pm we were in Hereford and finally I made some decent navigational decisions. We were heading to the house of Darren and Wendy Richardson, Darren being a friend who I had met in New Zealand 3 years before, and as we came into Hereford I saw the SAS church that they had been married in the previous year. The wedding day was a hazy memory for me, the result of drinking over 10 pints of Guinness throughout it no doubt, but I did remember which road we used to get there and soon enough we arrived at the right place. Pretty chuffed with myself I proceeded to tell Darren how we had defied the odds to make it before nightfall, or some similar nonsense. A plate of spaghetti Bolognese and a cold can of lager later we were pretty much done for the day and Darren left us to sleep in the living room. It was warm enough that I didn't need any more than a sheet all night..

Day 5 review

Mileage = 98
Breweries visited = 1
Pints drunk = 0 (lager doesn't count)

Diary - Day 4

2007-06-05T13:49:00.000Z

The 4th day of the trip proved to be an interesting and somewhat eventful one. We were on the road a little late, the result of home comforts and the unwillingness to leave them behind, but the weather was fine and there was little to complain about. Except hayfever that is, the plus side of dismal weather at this time of year for me is that it keeps me from sneezing my face off.

We took the B3188 and then the B3224 on our way to Taunton, a route that tends to be pretty quick but not lacking a few climbs as it runs along the edge of the Brendons. The late start meant we didn't have much time to hang around and we headed on towards Glastonbury after a quick lunch. Our first brewery visit was to be Moor Brewery just outside Street and a windy route through the Somerset countryside found us at our target half and hour late. A photographer was waiting and the resulting photo appeared in the West Somerset Gazette along with an article a week later, a nice bonus.

Plenty moor can be read about our time with Justin Hawke and the brewery by following this link - Moor Beer - but the condensed version is that we were impressed by the quality of beer and found ourselves enjoying the quick look around and chat with Justin. Annoyingly we had to move on pretty soon as another brewery awaited, but we had a very early contender for 'beer of the trip' in Revival - a 3.8% beer with far more flavour than it has any right to have.

Leaving Moor Brewery behind we went through Wedmore on our way to Cheddar, just short of which was Cheddar Ales. You can of course read all about that visit by clicking this link - Cheddar Ales - but the shortened version is that Cheddar Ales is a new brewery owned and run by Jem Ham, a former Butcombe employee. They currently have 2 beers, both of which are certainly decent, Potholer being the flagship and more popular beer. We tried both and had a good long chat with Jem and Toby before reluctantly moving on. Jem is on the left below, Toby on the right, the bikes being ours of course.

So all that we had to do now was the couple of miles to Cheddar and a campsite therein. We found a campsite but definitely wont be using the dump ever again. It was technically a 'holiday park' and cost £18 for a hard and ragged pitch. Not happy about that at all. We wandered around Cheddar looking for a pub, but ended up eating sarnies from the petrol station and drinking the bottles that we had been given by Jem in the campsite. Not an ideal end to a good day, but it was dry for a change and there was little to moan about throughout most of the day.

This is what a cyclist at the end of the day suffering from hayfever looks like:

Day 4 review

mileage = 64
breweries visited = 2
national parks = 1

Pints of Ale = 6ish

Revival (x2) - Moor Brewery
Potholer (a few) - Cheddar Ales
Best Bitter (x2) - Cheddar Ales

Diary - Day 3

2007-06-04T13:49:00.000Z

No camping this night, we were heading back to Sam's house and the warmth and dryness of actual beds. This meant for Sam that he would not have to panic about being inadvertently touched by another man during the night, something that brings him out in a cold sweat and makes him shout 'gay'. It also meant he wouldn't need to drool on his sleeping bag, a problem that would have knock-on effects later on. One of the interesting things about this trip was counting the number of things that were inevitable on this bike ride that Sam had difficulties with - dirt, shit, germs, public toilets, foreign people, northern people, all other people, any form of touching, other peoples feet, scratching his equipment, the cold, steep hills, straight roads, not knowing exactly how far we had to go, etc,.

We woke at about 7am and before we had made it outside the tent we were being offered a cup of tea by the extraordinarily keen campsite manager. The depressing sight of fog and dampness was slightly allayed by the mug of tea placed in our hands by, if my research is correct, Mr Lawrence Palmer. What it was that we had done to deserve the water-based punishment of the Lord I don't know and it seems that mr Palmer was blissfully unaware of it as well, dolling out mugs of tea early in the morning as if we were good and wholesome people who had done nothing to upset any aqua-wielding deities.

I began to wonder later on how this Karma thing worked, it certainly seemed that we had done plenty to upset the Karmic balance, but the trouble with it is that it's all too vague. How can you keep the balance of the universe if you don't know what it is that you have done wrong in the first place? It appeared that we were being punished for something, but I didn't have my book of 'Karma and You: How to interpret the bad shit that is happening' so I found it hard to see how I could right my wrongs. I wondered if it was a simple case of anything mildly enjoyable being essentially wrong, bad, and punishable, but then that is basically Christianity and I assumed the Karmicans, Karmics, Karmicararians, Karmis or whatever they are almost certainly not called had probably put more thought into things.

Philosophically meandering my way out of Cornwall it became apparent that Devon was a much brighter and less damp county altogether. We were on the verge of getting excited but for the fact that the wind had turned around from the convenient south-westerly to a much less convenient northerly, the effects of which were not too devastating quite yet but were yet another kick in the arse from above. Just as on entering Cornwall the weather changed dramatically on leaving it, this time from damp and foggy to bizarrely clear and sunny. North winds aside this was what we expected during June and we headed on into sunburn and sweatiness for the rest of the day.

The first half of the day we made decent progress, mostly through A-roads before joining the B3277 before Great Torrington and following that towards South Molton, the view from which looks a bit like this.............

Progress slowed a little as we headed onto Exmoor and over some pretty steep climbs to Exford. From there it was due south towards Porlock via the toll road that runs alongside Porlock hill, which is a lot of fun. Popped into see Sam's dad before moving on to Minehead and finishing the days the cycling. I think Sam was glad to be back home, the day before had knocked it out of him and there had been some steep climbs today which found him dropping a long way behind.

We had fish and chips for tea which is not a great nutritional decision but was a simple option. Sam was asleep by 10pm and I was spared his snoring for one night at least. Even better he fell asleep before he had drunk his beer so I had two. Simple pleasures.

Day 3 review

mileage = 85
breweries visited = 0
national parks = 1
beers consumed = 2

Golden Seahawk (x2) - Cotleigh

Diary - Day 2

2007-06-03T13:47:00.000Z

On the whole there is less to say about the second day, although there was considerably more cycling to do. We had to get to Minehead in two days, a considerable mileage, so the aim for the day was to get near to Holsworthy which turned out to be just over a hundred miles. We didn't get that far.

What we did have going for us today was the wind which continued to blow from a generally southern direction. Visbility was mildly better than yesterday as well although we did seem to get a little wetter on the whole and it was rare indeed to see the sun.

The photo above was taken just before we started on the Camel trail somewhere just West of Bodmin. We stopped in a tea shop on the side of the trail for fuel beofre heading into tragedy, well bloody annoyance, a few miles further. The trouble with rubbish weather and a schedule is that it tends to make you put your head down and concentrate more on moving than where you are moving to. We missed a turn and ended up halfway through Bodmin before realising the error and turning back. Half an hour at least wasted and an extra 7 miles or so added on for no reason. Great. The Camel trail itself is quite a pleasant ride though and progress was easy enough. It leads onto the cycle route that heads around the north-west edge of Bodmin Moor and that is always worth following, although low gears are useful here.

I came this way on an ill-fated LEJOG two years ago and recognised all of the landmarks. The weather wasn't going to put me off this part and we were happy enough climbing over the moor, which looked a little like this............
note the whiteness of legs at this stage. There's not much to see on Bodmin moor anyway so it may as well be dismal, the appeal is it's barrenness. I think.

Of course the weather had to play it's part at some point and it did it in a very cunning way. As we began to descend off the top of the moor we cycled straight through a load of sheep shit which threw itself up all over the place and found homes on our bikes and bags, shoes etc, for some time afterwards. Avoidance would have been smart, but the problem was that the constant rain had turned the road into a water-course and the sheep-shit had melted into the run-off, making it very difficult to distinguish between clean and unclean stretches of road. Sam's fear of germs and hatred of getting anything he owns dirty was put under immense strain here and the possibility of remnants remaining on his bike played on his mind for days. I was just happy it wasn't horse-shit and didn't bother to wash the bike at all.

That may be Brown Willy in the background, I forget, but if it is the title is misleading.

Coming through Davidstow it was getting late and we needed somewhere to camp, but it looked like we would fall short of Holsworthy. We headed towards the A39, stopped in Marshgate for a meal and a couple of pints, then found an excellent campsite on the way towards Bude. A camping and caravaning clubsite which had certainly had it's fair share of rain recently and was getting even more of the wet stuff when we arrived. Thankfully the facilities were good and we were able to have a decent shower before going to bed in the dampness of north Cornwall. Before we did so I picked up a slug thinking it was something else (camping is exciting isn't it) while Sam managed to keep his guts under control all evening, which was nice.

Day 2 review

Mileage = 95
Breweries visited = 0
Pints drunk = 4

Doom Bar (x2) - Sharps
Atlantic IPA (x2) - Sharps

Diary - Day 1

2007-06-02T13:46:00.000Z

Let us begin..............

We left Sam's house in North Somerset at around 8:30am in bright sunshine convinced that we were going to need plenty of sunblock during the day. A climatic turnaround occured around the Devon/Cornwall border that set the tone for most of the trip - after thinking we may just get lucky with the weather it became overcast and windy at the exact point of the country we were in. For some reason Cornwall was entirely covered in cloud during the 2nd and 3rd of June this year while the rest of the country scorched, the evidence is above - jackets on, grey skies, hint of rain. Not much complaint about the wind on the first day, it certainly wasn't helping but it came from the south-west, as winds are wont to do here, and buffeted us about without really slowing us down too much.

As we left Land's End at about 1pm into a foreboding greyness we had already set in motion another couple of trends that would remain throughout the trip - Sam's constant complaining and my own stubborness. An argument had developed before we even got started, not surprisingly it was orchestrated by Sam and based around equipment. It was an argument that served as a perfect example of our difference in character - Sam wanted to buy another set of panniers in which to put the thermarests and sleeping bags. I didn't. Mistakenly Sam believed that he could badger me into agreement by repeatedly suggesting the exact same thing. By 11pm I was annoyed by this gibberish and had decided that regardless of whether it was a good idea or not we would certainly not be getting panniers now. Besides which it was extra weight and extra expense and I had some perfectly good bin bags and bungy cords for the job of attaching equipment to the bikes. I had a strong feeling the less weight idea would be of great importance later on and after months of planning and organising on my part there would be no kneejerk reactions to non-existent problems at this stage.

Cassie, Sam's girlfriend (and Somerset to Cornwall taxi-service), and Sarah (Sam's sister) passed us a couple of miles up the road on their way back home and we headed north on our way around the coast of Cornwall. It felt good to finally be going after what felt like an eternity sorting things out beforehand. We took the B3306 from St Just and occasionally saw the sea, which was only 50 yards away some of the time, but mostly we saw the piece of road we were on and a host of Dutch and German tourist, mainly in camper vans, some in cars, a few on motorbikes. I reckon there is some scenery to be had in this area, but we didn't have it. On the plus side we did find a couple of magic roads (see Father Ted, episode - Holiday, for explanation) where despite the fact that the 'cline' was almost certainly of the 'in-' variety rather than 'de-' we found ourselves accelerating upwards quite easily. The wind, obviously, but a few hundred yards further on a similar incline would cause struggling and puffing of the lungs. Spooky!

An early photo stop near an old tin mine.

Fortunately these miracles of gravity and physics were enough to keep us entertained most of the way to St Ives where I nearly crashed into an Alsatian coming down the hill. (I was coming down the hill not the dog). St Ives was our first pit-stop of the tour and it came in the shape of a Beer festival, which seemed fitting. A few months earlier I had trawled through the excellent www.quaffale.com website finding as many brewery email addresses as possible. The reason for this was an idea that had sprung up about visiting as many real ale breweries as possible on the trip, learning a bit about brewing, beer, business and other things beside. I reasoned that it increased our chances of making this trip interesting and simultaneously raising some cash for the charities. As it turns out I was utterly correct, a fact that has led to confusion in many areas, not least my own brain.

One of the 30 or so brewers that had replied to my emails (I sent out over 200 and for anyone thinking about doing something like this bear in mind it takes ages!) was Steve Wilmott, the owner of Dog House brewery based near Scorrier. Steve set the tone for the next 5 weeks by being very kind to us, something that would be repeated by all of the breweries we visited, giving us free tickets to the festival and including a couple of free beers when we got there. Our visit to his own brewery would come 38 days later in not dissimilar weather conditions. We wandered around the venue, drunk a few beers, at pies and pasties, listened to a set by Jenny Bishop (www.jennybishopmusic.com), spoke to Steve Wilmott and then left in order to get to Lizard point before inebriation and apathy set in.

This is me enjoying the beer festival immensely:

Note in these photos the shortness of hair and lack of beard growth, something which would be rectified before the end of the trip.

Then an odd thing happened as we left St Ives..................

Don't worry, it was a brief bout of sunshine, in actual fact it looked better than this photo suggests but at least we could see more than 20 yards ahead and it was appreciated nonetheless. As I took out the camera to record this event we bumped into a woman who stopped to sketch the bay that we see above. She had travelled from John O'Groats on a heavy looking bike doing 40 miles per day and keeping an excellent diary of the trip including numerous sketches and drawings of whatever took her fancy at the time.

The rest of the day was decidedly average, through Helston and to a campsite near Mullion. We checked in at the site, dumped our kit and headed to Lizard point unladen. It didn't seem that easy despite the lack of weight, but the return journey confirmed that the wind was definitely from the south. Lizard point was predictably unexciting and we took photos and scarpered back to the campsite from where we would be able to head out for food.

I don't actually look like that all the time but had got bored of posing for photos already, after 1, and took a bit of a 'yokel' pose for some reason. The constant booming of the lighthouse made us glad we weren't staying in the youth hostel at Lizard point.

We found a pub in Mullion at about 8:30, walking from the campsite in drizzle, and ate a well deserved meal. I ate a perfectly adequate Sweet and Sour chicken, Sam ate a Gammon melt that on the face of it seemed fine.................

50 minutes later, back at the campsite, I was treated to the sight of a man desperate to get to a toilet who was running slower than I can walk, the result of having a mole at the counter (for those of you not of a crude disposition please don't consider what that term means). I found myself laughing harder than I normally would while taking a shower due to the range of noises Sam was able to make without using his mouth, but it became less humorous as the aftermath of the dodgy Gammon melt became airborne. How he had the energy to get up the next morning I will never know.

Day 1 review

Mileage = 56
Breweries visited = 0 (1 beer festival)

Pints drunk = 4

Indiana's Bones - Summerskills
Bucaneer - Wooden Hand
Doom Bar (x2) - Sharps

Breweries

2007-05-07T15:08:00.000Z

Click on the brewery name to be transported to a page on this site about our visit (only exe valley has one so far). Or click on the website address to be taken to the brewery website

DogHouse Brewery - Cornwall
Skinners Brewery - Cornwall - www.skinnersbrewery.co.uk
Red Rock Brewery - Devon - www.redrockbrewery.co.uk
Exe Valley Brewery - Devon
Cheddar Ales - Somerset - www.cheddarales.co.uk
Butcombe Brewery - Somerset - www.butcombe.com
Moor Beer Company - Somerset - www.moorbeer.co.uk
Wye Valley Brewery - Hereforshire - www.wyevalley.co.uk
Ludlow Brewing co. - Shropshire - www.ludlowbrewingcompany.co.uk
Wood Brewery - Shropshire - www.woodbrewery.co.uk
Quartz Brewing co. - Staffordshire - www.quartzbrewing.co.uk
Spire Brewery - Derbyshire - www.spirebrewery.co.uk
Little Valley Brewery - West Yorkshire - www.littlevalleybrewery.co.uk
Moorhouses Brewery - Lancashire - www.moorhouses.co.uk
Dent Brewery - Cumbria - www.dentbrewery.co.uk
Heskett Brewery - Cumbria - www.hesketbrewery.co.uk
Fyne Ales - Scotland - www.fyneales.com
Inveralmond Brewery - Scotland - www.inveralmond-brewery.co.uk
Harviestoun Brewery - Scotland - www.harviestoun-brewery.co.uk
High House Farm Brewery - Northumberland - www.highhousefarmbrewery.co.uk
Wylam Brewery - Northumberland - www.wylambrew.co.uk
Frog Island Brewery - Northamptonshire - www.frogislandbrewery.co.uk
Hoggley's Brewery - Northamptonshire - www.hoggleys.co.uk
Old Luxters Farm Brewery - Oxfordshire - www.chilternvalley.co.uk

And these nice people offered to see us but things didn't work out in the end. Thanks to everyone on the list anyway. Would have been great to see everyone, but partly through scheduling difficulties and mostly through weather induced chaos we missed these people out.

Masters Brewery - Somerset - www.mastersbrewery.co.uk
Wagtail Brewery - Norfolk - www.wagtailbrewery.com
Grain Brewery - Norfolk - www.grainbrewery.co.uk
Bartrams Brewery - Suffolk - www.bartramsbrewery.co.uk
St. Peter's Brewery - Suffolk - www.stpetersbrewery.co.uk
Tryst Brewery - Scotland - www.trystbrewery.co.uk
Kelburn Brewery - Scotland - www.kelburnbrewery.com
Bear Town Brewery - Cheshire - www.beartownbrewery.co.uk

The idea of doing a Land's End to John O'Groats and raising some money for charity is a good one, but I felt that with some extra effort and a bit of thought we may be able to build on the idea and turn it into something that people, and businesses, may want to get involved in.

The idea is that by visiting breweries on the route we could raise the profile of the trip, expand upon the overall concept, learn something, raise more cash, and also benefit those breweries we visit through a bit of extra exposure. I don't want to just be asking for favours or money all the time, I would much rather work with something that people can see some benefit in joining. I can not claim that we will dramatically aid anyone's business, but then what we are asking for is very moderate as well. It is all on a relatively small scale and hopefully the main beneficiary will be the charities.

Friends of BikingforBeer

All the breweries that have agreed to support us are listed here. Nobody has chucked money our way or made an enormous contribution, but everyone on this list has offered to help in some way. Some have offered us a tour and a chat, some have offered beer and other products that we can raffle at the end for charity, some offered food, some a bed for the night. Best of all these people actually replied and didn't ignore us completely, which can be quite annoying after a while.

Exe Valley Brewery

2007-02-23T22:33:00.000Z

Some beautiful rolling Devon countryside around Silverton, not that this photo really does it justice.

We were not going to be able to visit Exe Valley Brewery on our trip due to an inability to arrive on a convenient day, but as Silverton is only about 35 miles from Sam's house we managed to work it into a training run. This was to be our final training run together and our last chance to iron out any major problems. We did about 80 miles with the brewery being about half-way, few major problems encountered although we were both pretty knackered at the end and Sam did fall off once while doing around about 1mph. We did get some lovely photos though.................

Thats me with Guy Sheppard, the owner, and a pint of ale that I believe is called Dob's Choice. I would happily go back for another, very tasty indeed.

Thats Sam enjoying the same beverage whilst wearing his silver go-faster cycling shoes. Interestingly Guy's position was exactly the same in all 4 photos we took of him, possibly a seasoned verteran of having photos taken whilst leaning against vans and drinking.

The brewery itself is a small-scale operation with Guy doing the bulk of the work himself, but the pint we had certainly backed up my theory that the smaller breweries make the best beer. I can't point you to a website because there isn't one and I doubt it is easy to get hold of any Exe Valley ale if you live far away, but if you find yourself in South Devon and are faced with a choice between an Exe Valley pint and some watery nonsense from a multinational it shouldn't be a difficult decision.

Win Beer!

2007-02-16T22:50:00.000Z

Yes you can win some beer by supporting our cause. It all depends on how much beer is donated to us by the breweries, but we should have a fair bit to give away. A few polypins or cases should be given away through competitions I will be running on this site.

Competition 1 - Guess the weight

We will have an official weigh-in a couple of days before we start. Your task is to then guess how much we will weigh on our return after cycing 3000 miles. Don't expect me to lose any weight, I may well put some on, but there's a fair chance Sam will lose a bit.

Competition 2 - Identify the photos

Hopefully I should get the chance to stick some photos onto the site at some point during the trip. If you can identify the areas in the photos you could win beer.

Competition 3 - How many insects will we swallow?

Yep, a pretty daft and disgusting competition, but swallowing the occassional fly or other airborne nuisance is a acknoledged hazard of summer cycling so why not have some fun with it. Guess the number we swallow throughout our 38 days on the road, closest person to the correct number wins beer. Anyone caught training insects to fly at our mouths will be applauded, then beaten and disqualified.

To qualify you have to send an email to me at tsheasby81@gmail.com with your answers and donate at least a fiver to one of our charities. You will get one entry for every fiver you donate.

The Route

2007-02-03T12:46:00.000Z

Click on the links below to be transported to a wonderfully colourful view of our route for that day.

Route Overview

June 2nd - 8th
1. Land's End to Helston - 55 miles, total ascent 1250 metres
2. Helston to Week St. Mary - 70 miles, total ascent 2100 metres
3. Week St. Mary to Minehead - 75 miles, total ascent 2500 metres
4. Minehead to Cheddar - 70 miles, total ascent 1550 metres
5. Cheddar to Hereford - 80 miles, total ascent 2250 metres
6. Hereford to Much Wenlock - 65 miles, total ascent 1500 metres
7. Much Wenlock to Leek - 75 miles, total ascent 1550 metres

June 9th-15th
8. Leek to Miller's Dale - 55 miles, total ascent 2100m
9. Miller's Dale to Milnrow - 40 miles, total ascent 2000m
10. Milnrow to Dent - 75 miles, total ascent 2500m
11. Dent to Carlisle - 70 miles, total ascent 1950m
12. Carlisle to Lanark - 90 miles, total ascent 1500m
13. Lanark to Perth - 85 miles, total ascent 1750m
14. Perth to Aviemore - 90 miles, total ascent 2700m

June 16th-22nd
15. Aviemore to Brora - 100 miles, total ascent 2500m
16. Brora to Thurso - 85 miles, total ascent 2000m
17. Thurso to Durness - 75 miles, total ascent 2300m
18. Durness to Ullapool - 90 miles, total ascent 3500m
19. Ullapool to Balmacara - 80 miles, total ascent 2800m
20. Balmacara to Kilchoan - 80 miles, total ascent 3400m
21. Kilchoan to Inveraray - 70 miles, total ascent 2500m

June 23rd - 29th
22. Inveraray to Dunoon - 30 miles, total ascent 1500m
23. Dunoon to Biggar - 80 miles, total ascent 1800m
24. Biggar to Kielder - 85 miles, total ascent 2500m
25. Kielder to Derwent - 65 miles, total ascent 1500m
26. Rest day
27. Derwent to Helmsley - 80 miles, total ascent 1800m
28. Helmsley to Market Rasen - 85 miles, total ascent 1250m

June 30th - July 6th
29. Market Rasen to Hunstanton - 95 miles, total ascent 650m
30. Hunstanton to Lowestoft - 85 miles, total ascent 900m
31. Lowestoft to Rougham - 65 miles, total ascent 700m
32. Rougham to Northampton - 85 miles, total ascent 1000m
33. Northampton to Oxford - 65 miles, total ascent 1000m
34. Oxford to New Forest - 90 miles, total ascent 1900m
35. New Forest to Bridport - 75 miles, total ascent 1500m

July 7th - 9th
36. Bridport to Teignmouth - 55 miles, total ascent 1600m
37. Teignmouth to St Austell - 70 miles, total ascent 2600m
38. St Austell to Land's End - 65 miles, total ascent 1600m

Totals - about 2800 miles and a total ascent of about 25 miles.

Through England we will be making use of the extraordinary network of minor roads that wind across our landscape. Yes, A-roads are easier and more direct, but they are also dangerous and boring. Travelling along back-roads gives a lot more breathing space and an element of surprise. On the downside it means a longer route, more hills and rougher road surfaces. Worth the sacrifice in my opinion.

Back-roads are tougher to navigate than A-roads and decent maps will be important. Rather than buying multiple Ordnance survey maps, or relying on a road map that doesn't give much detail, we use a map program by Fugawi to design the route and will be printing out as many pages as we need. This takes up a good deal of space on the bikes though, something which will be looked into later on.

Heading up muddy bridleways in the middle of nowhere is a recipe for disaster so the only time we will go off-road for any considerable distance is along the Pennine Bridleway in the Peak District.

Route - Overview

2007-01-20T21:57:00.000Z

This is a vague outline of the full 2800 miles of our trip including the 4 corners we intend to visit as well as Land's End and John O'Groats. Day by day maps can be found through links on the previous page.

Doesn't look that far..................

Day 38 - St Austell to Land's End

2007-01-18T12:34:00.000Z

This is it then, the final 65 miles through Cornwall to Land's End - an anticlimax of a finishing place if ever there was one. May have the official finish at Dog House Brewery as it will be our final brewery and besides which we have already done all 4 corners and LE to JOG. The final 30 miles will be academic, but should be enjoyable all the same.

All that remains to be done after this is a bloody big piss-up.................

Day 37 - Teignmouth to St Austell

2007-01-18T12:30:00.000Z

Pretty heavy going today with a couple of monster-climbs onto Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor. Not too far though so it should be ok. By now we will either be super-fit or super-knackered!

Day 36 - Bridport - Teignmouth

2007-01-16T22:05:00.000Z

With any luck we would have stayed the night in a pub the night before and we will be at my uncle's house tonight so two whole nights without camping. Whoopee! A short day today and a visit to Red Rock Brewery in the afternoon. Spend a large part of the day winding our way along the Dorset coast, which should provide a fair few steep little climbs but plenty of good views.

Day 35 - New Forest to Bridport

2007-01-16T22:01:00.000Z

Not as far to go today, a simple 75 miles through the New Forest, Wiltshire Downs and along the Dorset coast. Should be scenic without being too difficult. That sort of distance should be a doddle by now anyway as we will have done 2500 miles by this point.

Day 34 - Oxford to New Forest

2007-01-16T21:57:00.000Z

Bit of a trek today as we go off at something of an angle to visit Luxter's Brewery near Henley. Then it's another 65 miles before we reach the New Forest and there are some undulations on the way. Chilterns in the morning, Berkshire Downs in the afternoon so a little bit more challenging than previous days. Wind can get up across the downs a fair bit as well.

Day 33 - Northampton to Oxford

2007-01-16T21:53:00.000Z

Home, but only to set off again the next day for another 400 miles before the end. Today we visit Frog Island Brewery and then Hoggleys Brewery before we trundle through north-Oxfordshire on our way to the dreaming spires. Couple of hills today! Bit worrying as we may have forgotten how to tackle them.

Day 32 - Rougham to Northampton

2007-01-16T21:50:00.000Z

A little short of Northampton in fact but as long as the wind isn't too strong we shouldnt have much trouble doing the 85 or so miles. Not many highlights today, maybe seeing the world-famous university town will be one, but I live in Oxford so it may be considered sacrilege!

Day 31 - Lowestoft to Rougham

2007-01-16T21:47:00.000Z

We may go a little further today but with 3 breweries to visit it seems sensible to cut it a little short at about 65 miles. There are no hills to worry about so should be a pretty easy day all in all.

Day 30 - Hunstanton to Lowestoft

2007-01-16T21:42:00.000Z

Our second flat day of the trip as we travel through Norfolk and across the Broads. Today we hit the 4th corner of the mainland and therefore complete that aspect of the tour. Now all we have to do is get down to Land's End again.

Day 29 - Market Rasen to Hunstanton

2007-01-16T14:28:00.000Z

All gets very flat today as we leave the Wolds. Should be able to crack on at a decent rate as long as the wind is sensible. Cycling past prime farmland today but that's not particularly interesting to look at so I hope we don't get bored.

Day 28 - Helmsley to Market Rasen

2007-01-16T14:21:00.000Z

The profile looks nasty but the pointy bits are not very big today. A bit of climbing as we enter the Lincolnshire Wolds, but it's a last hurrah before the flatness of the coming days. Starting in the Yorkshire Moors and ending in the Wolds - should be decent scenery at either end, not convinced about the middle bit though, looks boring. Have to go across Britain's longest bridge today to get across the Humber - really hope the wind is calm!

Day 27 - Derwent to Helmsley

2007-01-16T13:52:00.000Z

Probably coming off a rest day, although we may postpone the rest day until we reach Helmsley, this shouldn't be too difficult a day. A few climbs at the start but after that it's pretty straightforward. Last real hills for some time though, probably until we reach the west-country!

Day 25 - Kielder to Derwent

2007-01-16T13:01:00.000Z

Resovoir to resovoir today as we go from Kielder water to Derwent water. Stopping for lunch at High House Farm Brewery and then moving on to Wylam brewery before trundling up into the pennines. Not a big day today, depending a little on where we end up staying the night - maybe the YHA at Derwent, maybe a campsite a little further on.

Big climbs as we come to Hadrians Wall and then again as we head into the Pennines approaching Derwent.

Day 24 - Biggar to Kielder

2007-01-16T12:56:00.000Z

Some high peaks today although the total climb is not substantial, just a few big'uns. Our last day in Scotland as we cross the broder at the end of the day before we arrive at Kielder Water. Going to be pretty high up all day bar the descent into Hawick.

Day 23 - Dunoon to Biggar

2007-01-16T11:49:00.000Z

Last ferry of the trip today taking us just 4 miles to Gourock, then around the edge of Glasgow, maybe visiting Kelburn Brewery, before heading towards Lanark (the only place outside Cornwall we visit twice) and then on to Biggar.

Fewer undulations than any of the last week, a lot of the first half of the day is flat, then we head into the hills and stay there.

Day 22 - Inveraray to Dunoon

2007-01-16T11:13:00.000Z

If this is our half day it will be a very easy one. We visit Fyne Ales at lunchtime and camp in Dunoon before getting our final ferry the next day. Should be a nice day skirting around loch Fyne. No hills as such, just undulations.

Day 21 - Kilchoan to Inveraray

2007-01-16T10:40:00.000Z

Two ferries today, one from Ardnamurchan to Mull, one from Mull to Oban. That is if we decide to stick to this exact route. We have a half-day somewhere on the West coast and it doesn't really matter where we use it, at the moment I have it planned for the Saturday (22) between Inveraray and Dunoon, but if campsites are convenient I may well use it earlier. Maybe a half-day on Mull so we can explore the island a bit.

Otherwise this will be a fairly easy day anyway with few sizeable climbs and only about 70 miles. Quite hard to tell from the picture below but the most northern blue line we do twice as we hit our 3rd corner, the point of Ardnamurchan, then a ferry to Tobermory, along Mull, ferry to Oban and on to Inveraray. Our last day on the west coast.

Day 20 - Balmacara to Kilchoan

2007-01-11T09:35:00.000Z

Over the bridge to Skye and then a ferry back to the mainland cunningly cutting out a fair few miles. We finish the day on Ardnamurchan where we could cycle out to the point (one of our 4 corners) but may leave that until the next day. A lot of pointy things on the profile again. Scotland appears to be very pointy as a whole.

Day 19 - Ullapool to Balmacara

2007-01-11T09:29:00.000Z

A more direct and less undulating route today. Nothing particularly special, a longer route around the coast is tempting but in the interests of finishing this year we will just head straight down the main road.

Day 18 - Durness to Ullapool

2007-01-10T22:34:00.000Z

Another potential nightmare if the weather is against us. Nearly 90 miles and the most climbing we have to do on any day of the entire tour. On the plus side there wont be much traffic and navigating will be as simple as pointing forwards for the most part. If the weather proves to be ridiculous then we can take a massive chunk out by missing out the coast road.

Day 17 - Thurso to Durness

2007-01-10T22:31:00.000Z

I was on the north coast of Scotland two years ago and found it exhausting. Constant climbing and descending again, and a wind that whipped around all over the place. Could be a long day today. Look at all those pointy things on the profile!! Arghh.......

Day 16 - Brora to Dunnet or Thurso

2007-01-10T22:27:00.000Z

Not sure exactly whether we will make it to Thurso or not, probably doesn't matter much but I expect winds to be more favourable along the East coast than heading back along the north coast so would rather make hay today than leave it for tomorrow.

Today is a sort of half-way, although it isn't really. We hit John O'Groats today but I think Ullapool is closer to half-way in terms of miles.

Day 15 - Aviemore to Brora

2007-01-10T22:23:00.000Z

Will we get as far as Brora? Well that may depend on the wind direction as Brora is just over 100 miles from Aviemore so maybe Dornoch is more likely. Who knows?

Some climbs today but nothing too concerning. Only worry is that last time I was in Inverness I had two punctures within a mile of each other!

Day 14 - Perth to Aviemore

2007-01-10T16:01:00.000Z

Bit of a trek today, but as long as the wind isn't against us it should be easy enough. Spending a lot of the day on the old A9 that runs parallel to the new one. No traffic at all, but a 450m pass of Drumochter to negotiate. Pretty steady climb though. Visiting Inveralmond Brewery in Perth early on and may visit Cairngorm brewery in Aviemore, but will probably not be able to as we have a long ride and not enough time.

Day 13 - Lanark to Perth

2007-01-10T15:58:00.000Z

I hope we are a little fitter by the time we hit Lanark. Two breweries and a decent mileage today before finishing the day in or around Perth. Not the most strenuous in terms of hills, but enough to keep us occupied.

Day 12 - Carlisle to Lanark

2007-01-10T15:55:00.000Z

A long day possibly if we finish before Carlisle the previous day. This is where the mileage starts to creep up. The day will mostly be spent on a b-road that follows alongside the motorway and is not particularly challenging at all.

Day 11 - Dent to Carlisle

2007-01-10T15:52:00.000Z

Could have skirted round the Lake District but what would be the point of that? Straight over Kirkstone pass (that big pointy thing on the profile), past Ullswater and on to Heskett Brewery before rolling on towards, or maybe past, Carlisle.

Day 10 - Milnrow to Dent

2007-01-10T15:48:00.000Z

Two breweries today, Little Valley and Moorhouses, and maybe a third when we get to Dent, although I expect we will be too late. Mileage still sensible although we have plenty of climbing to do. Again there should be some spectacular scenery along the way.

Day 9 - Miller's Dale to Milnrow

2007-01-10T15:46:00.000Z

A half day on Sunday. Not a particularly easy one though as the pennine bridleway undulates to say the least. Should be spectacular though.

Day 8 - Leek to Miller's Dale

2007-01-10T15:39:00.000Z

A very small amount of progress north, the whole day being about visiting Spire Brewery and maybe popping in to look at Chatsworth house. We are taking two days in the Peak district to do one day's travel so that we can visit the next two breweries on a Monday. And we will use these shorter days to recuperate and sort out any problems.

Looking at the profile it looks as though it may be as tough a day as any so far!