Afterthoughts

Afterthoughts Page

Would we do it again

Naturally during the course of events we promised never to do this again. However, the fact is we probably would, just not for a while. In fact the more I think about it I think we should at least just go back and do the remaining bit rather than attempt the whole lot again. One thing we are all agreed on though, is as soon as possible go back and do the whole lot in the car. We are already plotting to do this at Easter 2005, and I’m actually already looking forward to it. The plan is to do the whole lot in one week, including the bit in Scotland we never quite got to, stopping at all the nice places and avoiding Huddersfield. We would also be revisiting some of our mad friends at the best campsites in the country. As I have mentioned elsewhere Lister is doing up an old mini so he his up for doing it in that, what I have not told him is that I refuse to sit in the back seat of that thing for such a long journey when there is only 2 inches of legroom – but I’m sure we’ll sort out these problems later.

Things I Forgot to Mention in the Diary

We were told off for riding on the pavement by an elderly lady. The fact that we were on an empty pavement in the town centre where there are no roads and she had to walk ten yards after summoning us to talk to us didn’t seem to bother her. Of course technically she was right but we certainly wasn’t in anyone’s way, at the time we were cycling slowly looking for the high street, so didn’t lose too much sleep. Anyway almost as interesting as that is that I have no idea where that was, I honestly can’t remember even having studied the map looking for places now. Martin might know but he ignored my email when I asked him so maybe he will read this. It was definitely quite a big place, in the first week, and we arrived mid-morning because I remember buying (very) early lunch at a Greggs bakers.

The Dr Pepper tin. I'm glad we took it, it did make our trip just that little bit different. The Land's End Price lable visible in some of the pictures may have come off one of the nougat bars mentioned below, and as I mentioned it was signed by some friends before we left and covered up with duck tape. The can finished the trip absolutely filty from being in the back pockets of the bags all the time, and worst of all when we peeled back the duck tape at the end the writing had gone, a bit dissapointing but I'm sure most people believed us!

Coming into Bristol we overtook a Ford Escort – mainly because in the young lady’s eagerness to beat us away at the lights she stalled the car.

The British Railway system. Now a lot of people slate the service, and it is easy to see why – the bar is just so expensive!! Seriously I have absolutely no doubt that if they charged normal prices for the drinks and cakes etc that they sell, they would sell a lot more and people would be a lot happier. Train-wise you can’t really fault the long distance trains they were fast and on time.

It has been in the newspapers how rail services now are no better than in the Steam age. The fact is that while in the early 30’s the Flying Scotsman was doing non-stop runs to Edinburgh from King’s cross in world-record pace – about 8 hours. Our GNER train did the same journey including about five stops in just 4 hours 20 mins. Now that’s impressive, particularly as it took 5 hours 30 mins to do the far shorter distance to Penzance. Booking was also easy – forget the trainline.com, which is has its uses, just head down to the station and get the tickets, it was no problem.

I sent a total of 6 postcard home – including three to my parents, one of which was lost in the post, and two that I knew would reach them via grandparents. Apparently this was not enough and I received complaints. I think Lister phoned home once on the whole trip, and Martin phoned his parents two or three times, plus sent I think one postcard. He also bought another postcard at Cheddar Gorge which he never wrote and we had to carry the rest of the journey.

To balance out that extra weight Lister and I made the mistake of buying some Nougat bars at the very start at Land’s End. They were cheap and looked good, but found out that evening (in the bar) they were rock hard and tasted awful, only the fudge side being edible at all. We really should have thrown out the others but never got around to it and so carried two Nougat bars to Edinburgh and home.

Other Stuff

The tent held up quite well. As if anyone cares a toss it was a Sunncamp Voyager 4, and not exactly lightweight. It survived except for one split where one of the poles goes through and it came out of the tube. Apart from that it was fine and there was just the right amount of room inside for us (it is allegedly a four man tent).

Sleeping on the floor in just a sleeping bag was cold, although I think it got better as we got used to it. I for one hardly slept at all on the first night. After a while we started using the towels under us and despite their thinness it seemed to make a difference.

The towels were better than expected. We bought 3 lightweight travel towels at camping and General (Canvey Island) and they were surprisingly effective in terms of soaking up water, and also came in handy at night to sleep on.

The tyres we were not so impressed with. Bought for £60 for the six at wiggle.co.uk, which was by far the cheapest place to get them, they were “Schwable City Jet” branded. Although I suppose it could possibly be our useless pump not getting the right pressure in them, I still don’t think so many punctures and one tyre explosion (which required a whole new tyre) is very good and does not give us any confidence in them for future rides.

The (unbranded) pump was also rubbish.

We took the following tools: Two flat multitool thingamyjigs, one tyre lever plus a screwdriver, an old pair of pliers, the chain link extractor, a puncture kit, two spare inner tubes, our pedal extractor thingy, a couple of essential allan keys, and a 10mm spanner (which does all the brakes). We couldn’t really have taken any more but still had to find help on several occasions, mainly new parts for my crappy bike.

My bike. It cost £40, I paid £45 during the trip for new parts (rear cogs, new wheel). That’s still less than any other bike you can buy, but it did prevent us from actually achieving our distance. Plus I’ve had more expensive bikes disintegrate just as rapidly, so I can’t say it was that bad.

One thing with mountain bikes is that (touch wood) spokes don’t break like they do on racers, so that’s one less thing that can go wrong (although as we proved it’ll happily find something else you never thought about to break).

The panniers were fantastic, almost new condition we paid £25 per pair. Initially we were worried there were no fastenings at the bottom, but that proved unfounded as they never swung out once the weight was in them. They were huge, nearly waterproof, easy to get on and take off and cheaper than any place we could find in the UK. See the links page for where you can buy them.

Hills – there are a lot of them, and all on your route. There are more uphills than downhills, in fact we only went down hill 4 times the whole trip. Those were fun though.

For future reference, when you get to the top of Cheddar Gorge, turn left and save yourself 10 miles or so. And ignore all signposts in the Cheltenham area, they are all wrong.

My comments having read Martin’s Diary

It was a very small lump of cheese!

I would like to point out that until we reached a certain Tescos in Stroud I had never even heard of Tot’s TV, let alone known the theme tune. Martin on the other hand seemed worryingly familiar with it…

I don’t like to take a dig at Martin but he has been asking for this one for some time. Martin claims to be “Dead against McDonalds” in his diary but this is not the case. I’m not their biggest fan myself but we have been in McDonalds countless times beforehand and neither then nor during the ride did he express any not wanting to go in there. The facts behind this are at uni Martin joined the ‘People and Planet’ society, whose actions included a protest outside a McDonalds. Martin took part in this attempt to get people to boycott the outlet despite happily going in many times before and since. Personally I think it ridiculous and in this case hypocritical to protest against Capitalism by standing outside McDoanlds, not least because McDonalds are not in any way responsible for the capitalist sysem. Sorry Martin but I had to say that I can’t believe you brought it up again!

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