Day 10 - Helmsdale to John o'Groats. The end.

The final stretch. The last 52 miles.

All of our hard work. It all came down to the final push and having finally set off at 10am, after faffing over Paul's rear tyre - AGAIN - realising that my front wheel wasn't actually attached to the bike (!) and then waiting while I bought the final supplies (then found out that the local shop didn't accept debit cards, so going on a wild goose chase to find a cash point).

The final day was genuinely fun. The only person low light was losing a contact lens at the top of a hill, then seeing both replacements blow away on the Scottish wind. I had to make do with replacing with a grit-filled lens that I somehow found on the road. Teary-eyed, but undeterred, we carried on.

We'd been warned that the final leg was hilly and there was a massive hill just a little outside Helmsdale. We found this hill and slowly, but surely managed to climb it. And boy did we nail the speed on the other side, I nearly broke 40mph, something the others had done several times over the last 9 days, but only got to 39.6mph. Good enough though, especially as my brakes stopped working properly several days ago.

Then something funny happened. An even bigger hill arrived. Yes, we'd got it wrong, the first hill wasn't "THE HILL". It was the warm up. We got through it, but my word we worked for our money.

After that we decided to have a little fun and raced our way to Wick, which was the final brief stop before getting there. Each of us averaged well over 20mph for the 10 miles to Wick. Each overtook at some point, finally after 9 days and nearly 900 miles, we got to enjoy ourselves.

At our stop in Wick, in the bright, summery sunshine, Paul uttered the immortal line "Well, even I'm going to tempt fate and say it's not going to rain before we get to John o'Groats".

20 minutes later, having waiting at the top of the final hill outside Jo'G while Paul caught me and Bri up, the inevitable happened. A massive hailstorm arrived.

Our descent into John o'Groats was wind assisted, plus also assisted by the burning desire to get the heck out of this hailstorm that Paul has brought upon us.

We were greeted, inevitably by our cheering support crew, Dave, Val, Mel and Maddie. They presented us with a bottle of champagne and their warmest congratulations. We'd finally made it.

Having posted for photos, we retired to the cafe and opened the champagne. Or, to be more accurate, Paul opened the champagne over the inside of the whole cafe. Smooth.

We settled down for a hard-earned drink and chatted to the other cyclists who'd turned up (like it or not, a lot of people seem to manage to do this challenge. At least a dozen turned up in the hour we were there!). In a brilliant coincidence, Gaz and Paul turned up 30 minutes after us, these were the two guys we'd met at Land's End on our first day, who had no idea how they were going to get to John o'Groats or how long it'd take (they were less prepared for me! One was doing it in hiking boots and they were both carrying their own stuff).

After this, we retired back to our B&Bs in Wick for a hearty, hearty dinner and drinks to watch the World Cup and unwind. It's probably only just starting to sink in what we've achieved.

Photos will follow soon. Laptop doesn't seem to recognise my iPhone at the moment. There's technology for you...

Day 9 - Auchterawe to Helmsdale

This was possibly the toughest day of the lot. We did 104 miles into a headwind. This doesn't sound much to write home about, but off the back of 8 days continuous cycling, it was enough to ruin us. We knew there was one day left to get through, but doing it was a real effort.

We trawled across central and eastern Scotland, past Inverness and the over "The Black Isle" a barren, bleak and generally dull stretch of Scotland which extends north of Inverness. Busy roads, lots of traffic, lots of leg work. Tough, tough going.

Thankfully, when we arrived at Helmsdale, the last minute accommodation seriously came up trumps. We were staying in a huge, old-fashioned Scottish hotel. Stags, deer, fish all sorts of stuffed animals on the walls. A hearty welcome from the hosts, local bottled ales and beers in the lobby. A group of girls invited the other Brian to their 18th birthday party. Dinner was absolutely top-notch, we could not have wished for a better last night.

Day 8 - Arrochar (Loch Lomond) to Auchterawe

104 miles knocked off, but my Lord what a day.

The first four hours of today were through a blazing Scottish summer heatwave. Or, more accurately, horizontal, driving rain, freezing winds occasionally reaching gale-force. All across a glorious backdrop of Scottish scenery. Sadly, Scottish scenery mainly consists of massive hills and mountains. And we were cycling up and down them

That aside, because we didn't stop for four hours (it was too cold and wet) we covered 50+ miles before stopping for lunch at the first place we found, a visitors' centre at Glencoe. The faces on the bemused faces of the tourists will live with me forever. Three drenched English idiots, dressed in lycra, drenced with a mix of sweat and rain stood shivering in front of them in the cafeteria.

Having consumed enough food to feed a small family for a month and our spirits being boosted by the news of the various toilet blockages in the office, we set off again. Miraculously, the weather improved as we approached officially the wettest place in the UK (Fort William) and the rest of the day was a (comparative) breeze. We cruised up to Loch Ness, no sign of Nessie but we did stay in a lovely converted farmhouse/B&B.

The only, hugely amusing downside to this place was that myself and Bri were in the converted attic. This, of course, meant low ceilings. So low I couldn't stand up in the rooms, let alone the shower. And I didn't fit in the bed either (it had a wooden end to it). The one thing you want to do when you've cycled 100+ miles is TO BE ABLE TO STRETCH OUT YOUR LEGS!

Everyone else found this hilarious though.

Oh and Brian snored and I couldn't shut him up. Even by kicking his bed.

We made it!

Not much else to say is there? All alive. All made it.

Full report for this time tomorrow.


Off to celebrate big time now.

Scottish Heatwave

52 miles into driving rain and headwind.

We are sat in Glencoe visitor centre, shivering, cold, soaked, hungry.

People are actually laughing at us.

We're only halfway through the day.


PS: Bruce, if you eat more fruit you won't block the toilet.

Day 7 - Kirkconnel to Loch Lomond

86 miles. We knocked it off without barely even breaking a sweat.

We're staying in what seems to be McPheonix Nights. Sadly this means no proper Internet access, so I'm doing this on my phone.

Proper write up will follow tonight I hope - we're going to be on the south end of Loch Ness tonight. In all likelihood we'll be finished by the time you all read this on Monday, but that's unavoidable given the backward technological situation north of the border (sorry Guy).

Hope you're all enjoying the heatwave. It started raining here last night and it will not stop now until we finish...

Day 6 – Ambleside to Kirkconnel.

Day 6 – Ambleside to Kirkconnel. 109 miles.

Long, long day. 9 hours of cycling. The first of which only took us through 3 miles. The Kirkstone Pass. This was Paul’s idea. You can fill in your own expletives directed at him here. You’ve done it before, there’s no need for me to help. It was tough going. In places it was barely even walkable, let alone cycleable. Once we’d regrouped, we had to go back down the other side. This was just as steep, perilously quick. And wet. And dark. Not a great start, especially when we were nearly 90 minutes in and still needed to cover 103 more miles. A late finish was very much on the cards.

We pushed on, there was no choice really. We headed up and into Carlisle. The home of Eddie Stobart, inbreeding and football hooliganism. Paul and Brian were not impressed and got involved in an altercation with some local chavs outside Subway. You can take the boys out of Essex/Sussex but you can’t take the Essex/Sussex out of the boys…
After that it became a real slog, the next 60-70 miles were into either a galeforce headwind or crosswind. One being a strength sapping nightmare, the other being extremely dangerous. Tough, tough going. We passed through Gretna and into Scotland, stopping for the obligatory photo on the border. Going into Scotland would make you believe the end is close, but in fact we’re only just over halfway through. Shows what a big “country” this is. Big. Cold. Wet. Hilly…

Scotland does at least appear to have a higher class of roadkill. We all saw a pheasant lying prostrate on the side of the road today, so that was a positive at least.

We stopped in a fantastically named village for a midafternoon “pep me up”. Having shared a room with “Naked Unwin”, as I’ve started to mentally dub him, the name of this place was too good to pass up…



After that the day flew by for me. I’ve no idea what was in the 39p Happy Shopper fake Lucozade, but I knocked the final 20 miles off in not much over an hour, leaving Brian and Paul eating my dirt. A satisfying turnaround compared to the rest of the week. That was until I got to Kirkconnel and had no idea where I was going, so had to sit on the roadside (fitting opposite a cemetery) until they turned up.


Accommodation is very good tonight. Our host excellent. We went to the next village and dined in a garden centre which has a café attached to it. We were the only visitors and were treated excellently.

Today, we go through Kilmarnock and avoid Glasgow by heading West and hitting the ferry over some sort of river or sea, I’ve no idea, but eventually we end up at the top of Loch Lomond after another very long day of cycling. Remarkable to think how far we’ve got up the country.

In the interest of fairness...

Now that my fellow riders have found the blog and are reading it, they are aware how much ribbing they are getting. Therefore in the interests of fairness. I am the only person who -

Spends the entirety of the ride anywhere between 1 and 5 miles behind the other two.
Has fallen off his bike and actually hurt himself.
Grown a beard that makes him look like a cross between a homeless prizefighter and Jesus.
Ordered 5 sausages and 5 slices of bacon for breakfast without the slightest hint of shame.

Day 5 - Ambleside

Okay, this is getting daft. I am in bed already, it is 8:30pm as I start writing this.

Today was the easy/rest day and in fairness it was. 78 miles, all pretty straight forward apart from the last 10 miles or so which were along “The Lakes” and therefore very hilly and quite hard work (see above). And also another minor cock up which we will come back to later.

Ambleside seems lovely, although we’ve only seen it briefly for dinner before retiring home to bed. The back story to staying here seems to be something to do with either Paul’s childhood or when him and Mel were courting. Not sure, we don’t really listen. Anyway, “other Brian” sees this stop off as a bad thing because it adds a lot of extra miles and a lot of added elevation to our journey. I have no idea about these things, so agree with other Brian.

As there’s barely anything to report on the cycling front, let’s instead talk about Maddie (Paul and Mel’s daughter). She has more energy than the lot of us, so we end up spending all of our evenings playing games with her. The games consist of –

Hiding the tomato ketchup sachets in our hand and getting her to guess which hand they are in. She came up with this game and, considering it’s a 50:50 shot, she is dreadful at it. Genuinely terrible.

We teach her new names, this is a good one. It was my favourite until tonight. So far we have successfully taught her to call me “Tall Brian” or “Big Brian” , to call the other Brian “old Brian” and finally tonight she has learnt a new colour. She knows that her Dad’s hair is “grey”.

Finally, tonight we played drawing. I always thought drawing was rubbish. Maddie’s efforts mainly look like a mix of sweetcorn and pink spaghetti. However, between her and the two Brians, we came up with some master pieces tonight. See how proud she is.

This is my favourite - daddy. Zoom in to the top corner. Uncanny.



Oh, I almost forgot, we've lost Brian. He's quite taken with the town and was last seen checking out the company next door, who apparently are hiring...

Day 4 - Wigan

So, I lie here listening to Brian snoring in bed on the other side of the room, trying to stay awake long enough to update 4 days worth of cycling using a laptop which keeps crashing and seemingly the only internet connection available between here and Land's End. Forgive me if this ends up being brief...

Today we did 95 miles. 95 flat miles with the wind blowing either directly towards us or across us (which is worse because it drags you into the path of oncoming traffic or into the hedge). We took the A49 all day long. This was our route.

An incredibly dull day of cycling to be honest. Hard slog. The notable things to happen were me to get a puncture whilst the others were about a mile ahead, luckily having stopped for lunch. Me being the prepared soul I am had no puncture repair stuff, so had to walk along the hard shoulder for a mile, before trying to cross the road to get to them. This cost us an hour over lunch (which was a massive Burger King in case you're wondering). But, the best was yet to come... having stopped for a drink and food later on and remarking that we'd done well to make up the lost time, we immediately noticed Paul had a puncture, which took 3 efforts, 1 1/2 hours and a fortunate call to our support crew to sort out. The picture above is just before we noticed the puncture. Look how happy we are. Look at the hope in our eyes. Plonkers.

Our "easy" day still took up 10 hours of our time....

After our customary pint, starter, main and side for a dinner. We all traipsed off to bed, weary, but we're getting through it...

Day 3 - Ludlow

Another 93 miles checked off

After a hearty breakfast at the pink palace and the now customary mechanic job by “little Brian” on my bike, we set off. Maybe not in “good spirits” but at least with some sort of belief that we might be able to do this.

Day’s highlights –
Finally sighting people that looked more daft that us – a parade of middle aged women doing some sort of fun run through Bristol city centre wearing short shorts and bras. Nothing else.

Going over the Severn bridge and into Wales.

Going back out of Wales asap.

Going past Edgar Street (ask Will)

Lowlight -
Taking a wrong turn towards Monmouth and being too proud to turn around. Then pushing onwards across what we thought would be a short cut, but instead took us up the biggest hill in the county. Then waiting nearly an hour just for our lunch to arrive, let along ordering it or eating it. That cost us the best part of two hours.





Spirits are definitely the highest they’ve been since we started. We’ve had a day and a half of, not easy, but “doable” riding. It’s taking a long time (this morning we left at 9:30 and got to the hotel at 7:30) but it’s manageable. This might change when we hit the Lakes, but we have two days before we get there, so we’ll be stronger by then.

Oh and if you want a laugh, check the forecast for the second half of our trip…

Day 2 - Cheddar

Day 2 – Tavistock to Cheddar (99 miles)



After the day from hell yesterday, it’s fair to say the early morning outlook was not rosy. Thankfully a) we are all stubborn as mules and refused to blink and b) we were staying with the nicest people in the world.

Having gorged on what is to become the customary three course breakfast, we were ready to depart along Pete and Margaret’s short cut towards Brentor and then Somerset. What we didn’t realise at the time was that this short cut was going to be up some of the steepest, narrowest roads you could imagine. The lovely couple shadowed us the whole distance though and having zoomed off, (we presumed they were bored) they reappeared at the bottom of the penultimate hill to take some action shots of us as we zoomed past (looking petrified having seen the final hill we had to climb).

After that, it was rather more straight forward. Before we knew it, we hit Taunton, Bristol, Bridgwater and then into Cheddar, our final destination. The Somerset flats were a blessed relief after the hell that was yesterday and we ended the day in high spirits and all feeling rather chuffed.

All that was left was to try and figure out exactly which B&B myself and little B were booked into (not as easy as you’d imagined). When we got there, the owner Sue gave us a great reception and while I packed our bikes away he surveyed the scene. All he could say to me was “it’s pink”. And my God he wasn’t joking. In all honesty my biggest worry was sharing a room with not only the hairiest man I know, but also a man with a reputation as the loudest snorer in the west. Thankfully the evening passed without incident.

Day 1 - Tavistock

Day 1 St Just, to Land’s End to Tavistock (94 miles).



Oh. My. God.

What are we doing?

We have just spent an afternoon from Hell crawling up the steepest hills in Cornwall. At one point I was genuinely worried that Brian was dead. And already Guy Newall is known collectively as “the bastard Guy”.

The morning was an absolute cakewalk. A great breakfast provided by our host, Steve, and we were off on our way. A lazy ride down to Land’s End. Smile and laugh with the other intrepid bikers down there, agree to meet them on the way, flirt with the old ladies, have our photos taken. Easy. Rattle along until lunch and we covered 45 miles in 3 hours. Halfway there, easy. Easy.

Hence looking like this -




We took lunch at a caravan on the side of the motorway and the lady was most accommodating and found our challenge highly amusing. Until she found out the route we were taking to Tavistock and her face changed and she told us a) it’s another 60 miles (this one we later found was true) and b) there’s quite a big hill just over the horizon (this was 100% fact). Still, we looked like this -



The afternoon was, without doubt, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I can’t quite find the words to explain it at present, that’ll have to wait until a time when we have more evening energy. If you go to the route and click on the player, then look at the elevations (and laugh at the corresponding speeds), you get a tiny idea of what it was like. These weren't hills, they were mountains. We needed Sherpas. We had no chance. Unsurprisingly, we spent a lot of the time looking like this (I didn't take a photo when I thought Bri was dying, just in case, so this'll have to do) -




Thankfully, we stayed with the nicest people in the world, Pete and Margaret. I doubt anything could have lifted our spirits after that afternoon, but somehow they did so. God bless them.

Land's End

So, potted highlights -

Weather is awful. London's heatwave feels a long time ago.
Paul drives very, very quickly.
Mel doesn't like this.
Paul gets lost on roundabouts.
Our van was dangerously flawed.
Weather so bad we didn't bother to go to Land's End, so tomorrow will be a long day.
Cornish pubs are good.
As are their beers.
Open mic nights are great fun.
Apart from when the window cleaner is allowed to sing.
Steve is an excellent host.

So, the van arrives in 20 minutes and I have butterflies.

I cycled to work this morning and got very sweaty and very lost. It's only supposed to be a 5 mile ride, so a bad sign.

Paul wasn't even allowed on the train with his bike.

Brian U looks very nervous.

This is not a good start.



The plan is to update every evening with route details, photos, videos, moans, groans and our daily local pub and ale reviews.


Sponsorship links are now live. I thought they would be straightforward to follow, however maybe they aren't as I seem to have gained a long lost sister somehow...

Brian Clifford's sponsorship page
Brian Unwin's sponsorship page
Paul Davis's sponsorship page

Thanks for all the kind words and good wishes so far. They genuinely do mean a lot.

Wish us luck, we'll need it.

Cliffo

The start

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