Pictures speak a thousand words

Fifty nine hours, fifty nine minutes and thirty seconds of constant cycling saw us here - the other end of the British mainland.

Enjoy the pictures. We do.

Re: High road, taking thereof

Tell you what, Scotland is beautiful.




Although you can always guarantee on someone coming along to ruin the view:

A quick note about progress

The more perceptive of you will have noticed that there is a lack of progress updates today. However, you mustn't take this as an indication of a lack of progress.

In fact, all teams are doing well. Tremendously well, in fact. So well that there is literally no time for the considered 'sitting down and writing about it' that we'd normally need. We're moving through the country at an unbelievable rate of knots. I'm writing this at a Travelodge in Dumbarton, north of Glasgow, on Saturday evening. My day started at 1.30am today in South Wales.

The original plan would have had us at Carlisle at this point, maybe breaching the Scottish border in the early hours of Sunday morning. We're a good seven or eight hours ahead of our original schedule. There are some scarily quick people on bikes. Whether the thought of a pint at John O'Groats is helping to concentrate a few minds, I'll leave you to guess.

But to sum up, we're doing well. And if you'd like to show your appreciation, you know what to do.

Oh. My. God.

Getting up at 1.30am is no fun.

Getting into a car in a wet and windy Travelodge carpark in Monmouth, Wales, is no fun.

Listening to Rob - capable of only two words, "Breakfast. Petrol." - is no fun.

And then I plant my foot down on the accelerator. "Where are we meeting up with team two, Tom?"

"How does Lancashire grab you?"

Blimey.

Mudguards optional

As we hit Bristol the rain started. There was a succession of misnavigations and morale started to slip a bit.

According to myth and legend, there is a cycle bridge over the River Avon. We couldn't find it. The good people of Bristol City Council clearly like to keep it a secret. Andy thought he'd found a way get over, so we drove over the road bridge to meet him in Avonmouth, taking ages due to roadblocks, etc. Then he called us:

"Erm, sorry guys, they've actually chained and padlocked it shut. You'll have to come back and get me."

"Stay where you are."

Which he didn't do. Because as we struggled back over the Avon, the call came through.

"Made it! Although I'm now stuck in downtown Avonmouth. On my own. On a racing bike. Erm, the natives are circling. Help."

So, employing intrepid swearing, we got back over the river to find him again. He'd handed over to the next team so the relay was unbroken. However, he was now being stalked by the locals. It was like a military extraction - Black Hawk Down without the helicopters.


And this was the wreckage we retrieved.

Cornwall, we have a problem

"We seem to have lost Greg."

"Is it serious?"

Greg was cycling on Cornwall's largest road. He had to take a left, the junction with Cornwall's second largest road. It is a big junction. He hadn't made it. Given this was the first time he'd been on a bike without lollipop sticks in the spokes, this was a cause for concern.

"OK," said JC over the phone, "we're going to go the way he may have taken. Can you guys take the northern route and start looking for him, in case he's realised his mistake and tried to correct it."

At one point someone was thinking about calling local hospitals. Nothing like a bit of measured drama.

But we found him. He had realised his mistake, but getting back on track involved, in his words, "the steepest hills in Christendom". Here he is explaining what happened, using his personal map:

True story: at the point I took this picture, Tom pointed out to Greg that he was holding the map upside-down. There is no hope.

Get a move on

The calls started to come through as we belted through the Cornish countryside.

"Er, fellas," said Rob, thumbing the map, "you know we were aiming for this point for the changeover?"

"I'll take your word for it Rob. At the moment I'm busy trying not to crash the car."

"Well, Jeremy's just called in and they're already miles ahead."

"Typical Finance boys. Always underestimate and over-deliver"

"Better step on it, Phil."

Right then...

A full English breakfast, courtesy of Terri and the team at Whitesands Lodge, and we in team 3 were ready for anything.

Well, I was, anyway. Rob and Tom seemed to be taking an age. So it was just me and the car:

And a monkey, for some reason:

You have to start somewhere

...and the somewhere in question was a nondescript painted white line:


Completely unphazed, Ian lined up just before 6.00am:



Then he was gone into the night:

In a stunning show of brotherly solidarity, the rest of us, as one, trooped back the the hotel for breakfast and/or a couple of hours kip.

Sorry, Ian.

Setting off

"So, you're serious about this, then?"

No turning back as a whole bunch of us left from work on a (mainly) sunny afternoon. Several hours, about three hundred miles, and a number of motorway service station meals later, we were to be found in Sennen, several miles from the End of the Land.

Not too sure if a few of these in the evening was a good idea...

We're (nearly) halfway there

Could we reach 50% of our fundraising target by the time we set off for Cornwall tomorrow? Would be great if we could - and we're only a small amount short.

If you haven't already, a quick visit to our JustGiving site would be very welcome.

You know it makes sense.

The drivers: Steve W, Jon S and Phil S

In the 'last but not least' category come our three drivers, Steve, Jon and me. The drivers will have to ferry this whole endeavour from one end of the country to the other, employing hitherto-unknown depths of navigational sills, planning and diplomacy with a bunch of highly strung and/or knackered cyclists.

Steve and Jon clearly never heard the motto of the Armed Forces: "Never Volunteer For Anything." They did, and were surprised when we bit their hands off. That'll teach 'em.

And as for me, surrounded as I was by people setting off to do this, I really had no choice. At least, as you can see from the final photo, I'm not one of those embarrassing Brummies.

Team update: Rob L - rider, team 3

Another one where I don't have a photo. However, Rob participates in those Iron Man triathlon events, so I just did a Google Image search for 'Iron Man' and this is what we got. It could have been a lot worse.

Rob told us he hopes to achieve the following from this:

• The fresh air!
• The exercise!
• The freedom of the open road!
• The camaraderie!
• The smell of being in a car for hours at a time with sweaty cyclists?
• The unsocial hours?
• The hills.
• The potential for lousy weather.
• The hills.
• The sleep deprivation.
• More hills.
• And perhaps one or to cheeky sherbets at John O'Groats when we finish.

Well, if you're buying, Rob....

Team update: James W - rider, team 2

A bit of a mystery contained within a puzzle wrapped in an enigma, is James.

Some say that his voice can only be heard by cats, and that he's been banned from the city of Winchester. Some say that his tears are adhesive, and that he's terrified by Play-Doh. All we know is that he's earned the nickname The Stig.

James joined the team and started sending out cycling vibes via the medium of email. He knows bikes inside-out and back-to-front. As he works in a different building, none of us knew if he existed until recently. Hence the mystery.

He's actually done LEJOG himself. On his own. He's just a cycling machine. We're just not sure if that's a mere figment of speech in James' case.

Team update: Richard F - rider, team 1

Don't let the shirt and sunglasses deceive you. He's calm and professional in all his dealings.

Who am I trying to kid? He's as mad as a badger, keeps a four-foot long sledgehammer on his desk and has been known to use a pogo stick in the office. And this (the whole Queasy Riders thing) is all his fault.

Richard's objectives for the trip include not only £10,000 for a good cause, but a new World Record and possibly a film contract. Given that Richard's the bloke who does my performance reviews at work, I'll leave it to you to consider who'd play him.

I'd make a few suggestions, but I quite like having a regular pay cheque.

Team update: Tom W - rider, team 3

Ladies and Gentlemen, put your hands together for the Poshest Man in the Western Hemisphere. Secretly, we believe Tom is still somewhat put out that we're not going to be performing the ride wearing tailcoats. And monocles.

Tom is also a firm believer in the maxim, "Whoever dies with the most toys, wins." He can say the words "Broadband dongle" without sniggering. I fully expect to see a solar powered Pimms mixer with GPS tracking and quad-band audio at some point in the proceedings.

Team update: Greg R - rider, team 2

As I write this, just over one week before we set off, there is one member of the team who has yet to get on a bike. As we've seen before, Greg is scared of his bike. However, he is preparing; we suspect that he's buying up most of Western Europe's supply of Ginsters pasties for the trip.

When asked how he came to be involved, he came up with the following answer:

"Ten years ago in 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire...."

Clearly Greg watches a little too much television.

Team update: Ian H - rider, team 1

Ian brings a degree of youthful energy to the whole enterprise. Just by being involved, Ian has reduced the average age of the team by about five years. When we asked him what preparations he was taking for the ride, his answer was, "Get a haircut." We think it might be something to do with aerodynamics.

Outside of work, Ian plays ice hockey for Coventry Blaze ENL. We're hoping that his jersey number isn't significant.

Fame!

We've reached the pages of the Coventry Telegraph.

And for those of you who respond better to pictures:

Team update: Andy D - rider, team 3

Andy really doesn't like having his photo taken. Perhaps he still believes cameras are soul-catchers. Nevertheless, this exclusive video captures his cycling style perfectly.

Having said that, he's taking the physical challenge very seriously. Andy ran the London Marathon last year, which showed a formidable degree of forward planning, given that we hadn't even announced the Land's End to John O'Groats thing at that point.

Andy, known as 'Stretch Armstrong' to some, claims to be cycling to work regularly. Or at least, bringing his bike to work in the car. He's also reducing his alcohol intake to just three bottles of wine per day (and only one at work).

We all have to make sacrifices.

Team update: Jeremy C - rider, team 2

Jeremy clearly has a lot of bottle. I'm very sorry, I couldn't resist it. The picture above was taken just before he took part in this year's Coventry Fun Run. We suspect it was down to the whole 'not wanting to show up in the same outfit as someone else' thing.

Jeremy, also known as 'The Mole', has a bit of a reputation for doing this sort of thing, especially when it's for a good cause. And he's looking forward to riding at 3.00am when the roads are completely deserted.

That sounds awfully like 'volunteering' to the rest of us.

Team update: Neil B - rider, team 1

We fully expect Neil to be our King of the Mountains. While we're not expecting to encounter any mountains - maybe a number of steep inclines - Neil's the chap for the job. It's just as well he's in team 1, so will have to deal with whatever passes for the Alps in deepest Cornwall.

Neil claimed he was tricked into this by Ian. But then he admitted to preparing by taking on plenty of liquid replenishment. By the pint.

We think he protests just a bit too much.

Fundraising update

First £1,000 raised at the JustGiving site.

Now it's getting proper serious.

(And if you haven't done your bit yet - you know what to do!)

No such thing as bad publicity

Someone thought it would be a good idea to mention our quest on the company-wide intranet. Apparently, pictures speak louder than words:

(From left: Richard F, Mike W, Tom W, Phil S, Ian H, Neil B, Greg R, Andy D)

The words spoken by this picture include:"don't put the fat guy on the bike."

There's nothing quite like looking like an eedjit in front of 1300 colleagues to concentrate the mind.

Which end has the handlebars?

Greg, not being in possession of a suitable bike, has borrowed Rob's second one.

I'll say that again. Rob's second bike. Rob has one road racing bike. And another one. He's like that.

By all accounts, according to Greg, this is a highly-strung thoroughbred of a machine. It bears some similarities with bikes Greg has known. In that there's a wheel at each end. But the brakes are somewhere completely random, and you have to wear special shoes that clip straight onto the pedal arrangement. A Raleigh Chopper it is not.

Greg is scared of his bike.

Driving ambition

A quick word about the non-cycling members of the team. At the beginning of all this I volunteered to drive, on the basis that any attempt to cycle would end up with me in Casualty in about five minutes flat.

Some people claim that their bodies are temples. Mine's a medieval cathedral. Behold my flying buttresses.

Anyway, at the time the job of driver seemed to be an easy option. Sitting on my backside for five days, piloting a bunch of sweaty cyclists from one end of the country to the other. Hours of relative boredom, interspersed by the odd pie.

But the plan requires pin-point accuracy, timing, navigational and organisation skills. Get the changeover points wrong, for instance, and we'll never make our schedule. And I don't think our employer will be too chuffed if we're still out doing this seven days later, somehow.

This might be why no-one's volunteered to drive the other two support vehicles yet.

Gentlemen, draw your lots

This is quite important. Deciding who goes in each time. We need to consider the personal attributes of each team member. The right personal chemistry.

And, most important, whether your musical tastes match.

So we used science. OK, we actually used scraps of paper and a hat.

Team 1

Neil B
Ian H
Richard F

Driver - to be advised

Team 2

James W
Greg R
Jeremy C

Driver - to be advised

Team 3

Andy D
Tom W
Rob L

Driver - Phil S

No-one escapes - biogs will be published soon.

All the gear, no idea

We've got a good number of volunteers. Pretty close to the nine we need, actually. But all of them blokes, it has to be said. There are several reasons for this:

• That whole "sharing a hotel room thing" was never going to be that appealing
• Men tend to have a malfunctioning common-sense circuit

I got the cyclists to send their details in so we could keep track of things. All I got was a list of blokey nick-names together with a litany of all the gadgets they could bring; bikes, satnavs, iPhones, weird cycling gadgets involving funny shoes and drinking tubes.

This was, for some reason, hilarious to the ladies in the office.

We could well be the most well-equipped team ever to crash and burn in Cornwall after six hours.

Oh blimey..

We've had our first donation at the JustGiving Site.

Real money has been donated. Suppose we'd better crack on and do this, then.

Team building

For this to work we're going to have to have teams within a team. (Is 'sub-team' a real word? Didn't think so). So we need nine riders. Not quite there yet, but there's plenty of time.

Slowly, but surely, people are getting on board. The weekly(ish) meetings are beginning to make sense. We're starting to think about things like:

• Route - what's the best way to do this? Obviously we can't use busy roads if people are cycling - especially during the night - but we do need to keep it direct if we can.
  
• Stopping-off points - between riders and then between teams.
• Hotels - this is still a point of contention. Some people want to keep this as low-key as possible, with camping being discussed. Other people (we'll call them 'sensible people', shall we?) say that this is a silly idea. Long-lost contacts at at hotel chains are being dug out.
• Bikes - now this may sound daft. But at least one rider doesn't actually have a bike. Which could be interesting.

We've started to think about publicity. At the end of the day, the whole purpose of this is to raise oodles of cash for a good cause. So people need to know about it. JustGiving, here we come...

Taking shape

The route is beginning to look right. Starting at 6.00am on a Friday at Land's End (most end-to-enders do it this way as the prevailing winds are at your back). By sundown on Friday we'll be somewhere around Bristol, maybe into Gloucestershire.

Saturday sees us heading straight up England, running parallel to the Welsh border and making for the Lake District. With the quieter roads in Scotland we should be at JOG by the end of Sunday.

Of course, there's no actual stopping as such. Someone's going to be cycling at any time throughout the day. There will be hotel rooms at three locations, which we'll swap between teams. The concept of hot bunking has been discussed.

Apparently, it's all the rage in the submarine service.

Any takers?

So far we haven't quite got everyone we need, if the plan is to succeed. Unless people are going to agree to do a lot more cycling than is practical. Or healthy, for that matter.

So the word is going out. People are looking at their colleagues in a whole new way. "Do you think so-and-so would be up for it? They look vaguely fit."

There's now a small group of us meeting up once a week to agree a plan and think about who else we can drag into this. Things are changing fast.

A plan emerges

We're beginning to have something resembling a sensible plan.

The whole 'sleeping in the van' thing was never going to be a success, to be honest. There's something about spending three solid days either cycling, or in close proximity to a bunch of blokes who have just been cycling, that failed to grab anyone's imagination.

Funny, that.

So we'll split into smaller teams. At any given time

• Team A will be cycling (one rider at a time, swapping with his mates along the way);
• Team B will be moving itself into position ready to take over from team A; and
  
• Team C will be resting/sleeping, ready to take over from team B.

This involves a whole bunch more organisation, but has the distinct advantage of being marginally achievable.

Now we just need to perfect it. And find some people to help us do it. Some bikes might be nice, too.

A meeting

It's one thing for a couple of blokes to come up with an idea at their desks. But to put some flesh on the bones, we really needed to get some more people involved. And this meant a Friday lunchtime pub visit.

There was a number of us gathered around a table. "Do you do food?" we'd asked the somewhat under-utilised barman, to be answered in the negative. This possibly explained how we were the only people there. It being lunchtime, and all that. When we'd walked in, he'd broken into a sweat at the thought of pulling a few pints. Asking for a couple of packets of crisps caused hyperventilation.

We'd gone into the pub with Richard's Plan:

• Some blokes
  
• One bike, shared by the above-mentioned
  
• A van, always moving
  
• Cyclists sleeping in the van between stints
  

OK. So not really a "Plan". In fact, it was pointed out that this wasn't a Very Good Idea.

By the time we'd emerged into the daylight an hour later, Plan Mark II was emerging. And we were a little hungry.

End to end

Land's End to John o'Groats. 900 miles, near enough; the longest distance between two points on the British mainland. It's often referred to as LEJOG or simply 'end-to-end'.

There's a whole bunch of records for completing the trip:

• Running - 9 days and 2 hours
• Motorbike - 15 hours
• Unicycle - 14 days and 12 hours
• Cycle - 41 hours and 4 minutes

Apparently the RAF did it in about 45 minutes once, too.

Not having access to jet fighters we'll have to stick to pedals. As has already been pointed out, this normally takes a good fortnight or so. None of us could spare that amount of time, so the relay idea took shape. One person in the saddle constantly, 24/7, swapping every 90 minutes or so with the next team member. Three teams of three riders, with planned sleep and rest periods. And drivers to ferry everyone around (which is where I come in - fatboyfat is not an ironic nickname).

Now we just need to find some people.

In the beginning

It all started with a conversation. Richard was wondering aloud, "What Big Thing can we do this year?" The capitals B and T were practically audible.

We wanted to do something to raise a huge wad of cash for a good cause. The cause in question being Macmillan Cancer Support, our Charity of the Year. (More capital letters; it's clearly catching). For last year's charity, someone had cycled across the country visiting each of our nearly 50 branches in a week. They raised a lot of cash, but this time Richard was itching to get involved.

"How about Land's End to John o'Groats?" someone asked.
"Nah. Takes too long," replied another. "It's 900-odd miles - you'd need to be superhuman and even if you did eight hours per day it would still take too long."

Richard was thinking. He's my boss. I can tell these things.

"How about a relay?"